Bienvenue au Lycée Turgot

The SAS (Section Administrative Spécialisée) were created in 1956 by the French army during the Algerian war to pacify "the natives". During the day, the SAS were used as treatment centres and at night as torture centres, in order to crush the Algerian resistance. The SAS were inhabited by French soldiers and auxiliaries (harkis, goumiers) and their families. At independence in 1962, a few families of auxiliaries stayed on; the vacant buildings were occupied by families of martyrs awaiting the better days promised by the new Algeria. 46 years later, the SAS at Laperrine, in the Bouira region, still exists, a unique place inhabited by people who have taken refuge there. They have been joined by farmers fleeing the terrorism of the 90s. They all live as best they can in a place they did not choose, suffering the consequences of war.

In March 2000, the Institut d'Études Politiques de Lille was occupied for ten days by the Comité des Sans Papiers de Lille, which had been fighting for four years for the regularisation of undocumented migrants. For ten long days and nights, this emblematic initiative transformed this nursery of republican aristocracy into a microcosm, an echo chamber where a dissonant polyphony resounds.

Filmed in Libercourt in the Pas-de-Calais, "Un figuier au pied du terril" orchestrates various testimonies, in particular those of Nanass and Hélène, two grandmothers of Algerian and Polish origin respectively, highlighting in turn the colonial management of the working-class population, male domination and the residential segregation to which Nanass's descendants are still subjected.
The dialectic of the film does not exclude moments of poetry, in Nanass's garden, where the fig tree, which is the same age as Nanass's stay in France, is still cherished even though the cold prevents it from bearing fruit. The humble tree from the South transplanted to the land of the North is seen as an allegory for the family of this amazing grandmother, forever uprooted but still standing, who continues to hope for the good days when her "family tree" can finally bear full fruit...

Once an industrial centre at the junction of Roubaix and Tourcoing, the Union area is undergoing radical change as a result of an ambitious urban renewal project. Everything has been demolished, with the exception of "Chez Salah", a café that opened in 1965 and is the ultimate relic of a district inhabited mainly by workers. Its owner, Salah Oudjane, refuses to sell the worn-out two-storey building where he has spent most of his life. In spite of himself, he has become a symbol of resistance to gentrification (the renovation of a working-class neighbourhood for the benefit of wealthier social classes), and is the unlikely hero of this chronicle in which, as the seasons go by, we see bulldozers clearing the area around his café, which stands like a beacon whose glow seems to attract former residents of the district.

Lamine and Boris live in a working-class neighbourhood in the north of France. One is looking for somewhere to live, the other for a job. To kill time, they wander around and take us to somewhere called Les Brigodes, a chic ghetto. They question the notion of space for power, self-determination and freedom, and for the space of an escape they make possible the existence of an unconstrained political discourse.