A woman, a child, a man and another child, the noise of bombs falling and of planes passing by, in a urban landscape destroyed by war. A man dies before he had the time to write on the back of Delacroix’ La liberté guidant le peuple: that could be the plot, just the enigma consisting of a missing word. A question opened before death, resolved by a child, the shadow and spirit of Gavroche.

Episode of Comment vont les enfants?, commissioned by UNICEF.

French spoken

Episode of the series The Century of cinema, commissioned by the British Film Institute.

“Why pay homage to cinema? Hasn’t it been celebrated enough, or is that no longer so? I don’t like commemorations. I make cinematographic (his)stories because I've occupied this terrain a bitand because nobody ever told me what I was doing there. Honoring implies, in a sense, to exaggerate the value of something that has been neglected or forgotten, as a way to make up for it in an honorable way. Understand me well, I have nothing against festivities, but if cinema were to be what it should have been, it would be just fine without them."

French spoken