Tuesday, March 19, 4:00 pm, Popp-Martin Student Union Theater
(Building 69 on this map; closest [visitor] parking is Union Deck)
Drama/Thriller by Laurent Cantet, France 2017/113 min.
French with English subtitles
Presented as part of The Tournées Festival, made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S., the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), the French American Cultural Fund, Florence Gould Foundation, and Highbrow Entertainment.
Additional sponsors are the Alliance Française de Charlotte and the UNC Charlotte French Club.
Introduction by Michele Bissière, Professor of French, UNC Charlotte. A discussion will follow the screening.
In The Workshop, acclaimed writer-director Laurent Cantet takes an
illuminating approach to a variety of key issues haunting contemporary
France. Olivia, a successful Parisian novelist, has been hired to spend
the summer in La Ciotat, a beautiful but economically battered town
on the Mediterranean, teaching a writing workshop for a diverse group
of young people whose only common denominator, as is so often the
case among twentysomethings in the French provinces, is that they
are unemployed. Among them are an emancipated but religious Mus-
lim woman, students proud of their region’s strong but declining his-
tory of labor movements, recent immigrants, some hedonists focused
on the next party, and Antoine, a strikingly intelligent, confrontational
young man with affiliations to extreme right-wing groups. Through
class discussions and the conflicts that ensue, Cantet presents an
unflinching look at the delicate integration of conflicting religious and
cultural beliefs in a period plagued by the threat of terrorism. And as
Olivia attempts to understand what brought Antoine to embrace a rep-
rehensible ideology, The Workshop builds into a breathtaking thriller
that deftly avoids formulaic answers to provide startling insight into a
situation that applies far beyond France.
