À l'ombre de la République

Here is the “lower-risk consumption room”, the drug injection room that opened in October 2016 in a building at Lariboisière Hospital in Paris. A place that the film never quits, except for a few seconds out on a stretch of pavement, as the credits open. One or two shots are enough to establish the exterior and remind us of the hostility of some nearby residents – the glimpse of a board tied to a window: “No to the drug injection room”.

As part of child protection, the Parental Center hosts mothers and fathers for whom parenting is not easy. In this place where feelings and emotions are sharp, the boundaries are thin between protection and constraint, between advice and admonition, between repair and separation. While, not without rebellion, two girls try to learn to become mothers, a couple agrees to ask for the placement of his child in a host family.