Paris Is Us

A few hours in Paris, one summer evening in 2020. The camera follows one passer-by then the other, traveling through the streets of the city and multiplying curious encounters: eccentric young people, original characters and nonconformists. During a single uninterrupted shot, the camera links the characters together through the same city, and the same time in crisis that each one goes through and questions in their own way.

The plaster is crumbling from the walls and his sweater hangs loosely around his old body, but the quality and beauty of the clothes the nearly 90-year-old Frenchman turns out in his laundry are still immaculate. Superb, even. And he knows it. The octogenarian tirelessly presses creases in pants and works his way through baskets of uniforms, using just a single washing machine and one dryer in his shop in a back street of Nice. He is becoming a rarity; all around him, the other laundries are closing down. But Jean-François is loyal to his clients, and they to him.