Today, last talk of the Forum at 4pm (FID Lounge, 3rd floor of the Artplexe Canebière) and Tête-à-tête with Isabel Pagliai at 6pm (BLUM Brasserie).

For its 36th edition, FIDMarseille remains true to its mission: to spotlight independent cinema that is attentive to the echoes of the contemporary world and to the stories that reveal its fractures, both intimate and collective.

The Audience Award is open for voting until Sunday noon: among the competing films, choose your favorite!

To end this 36th edition on a high note, join us at the Petit Théâtre of La Friche la Belle de Mai from 10:30 p.m. - and until 4 a.m. - this Sunday for the Grand Closing Party!

Today, last talk of the Forum at 4pm (FID Lounge, 3rd floor of the Artplexe Canebière) and Tête-à-tête with Isabel Pagliai at 6pm (BLUM Brasserie).

For its 36th edition, FIDMarseille remains true to its mission: to spotlight independent cinema that is attentive to the echoes of the contemporary world and to the stories that reveal its fractures, both intimate and collective.

The Audience Award is open for voting until Sunday noon: among the competing films, choose your favorite!

To end this 36th edition on a high note, join us at the Petit Théâtre of La Friche la Belle de Mai from 10:30 p.m. - and until 4 a.m. - this Sunday for the Grand Closing Party!

Ne quittes pas ton pays, Do Not Leave Your Homeland

Aliha Thalien

85’

Augustine lives in social housing in the south of Martinique island. Her weeks are marked by visits from her care assistant, phone calls to her family in Europe and funeral notices on the radio. As part of the BUMIDOM migration programme, she left Martinique in 1964 and decided to return in 2004. At home, the volume of the TV attempts to hide her solitude. A few metres away, a group of neighbours try to kill time by repairing their motorbikes, chatting in the parking lot and going on outings in town. Finally, 6,800 km away, in the Paris region, a group of young friends do what they can to stay close to their Caribbean origins.

Director’s statement

In 1963, Michel Debré set up the Office for the Development of Migration in the Overseas Departments in order to bring people from the West Indies and La Réunion to “mainland France”. A propaganda tool that is little known today, this programme had a triple function: to curb the unemployment rate, to control the demographic level of the overseas departments and to curb the desire for independence in a climate that was very propitious for independence at the time. Ne quittes pas ton pays is a feature documentary that will be shot both in Martinique and in the Paris region. In particular, I want to explore the question of BUMIDOM and its legacy in the present by focusing on different characters: my grandmother, Augustine; her neighbours, a group of men in their thirties and forties who wander in the parking lot of the housing estate; and a group of young people of West Indian origin from the Paris suburbs. Augustine’s home, the council estate parking lot and the Paris periphery will be the spaces in which the chosen characters will evolve: their different testimonies will echo and contradict each other and reflect the plurality of voices and trajectories of BUMIDOM.

Technical sheet

  • Development budget:
    39 797 €
  • Acquired budget:
    24 297 €
  • Funds:
    Bourse de repérages de la SCAM, bourse d’écriture de la région Martinique
  • Shooting countries:
    Martinique, France
  • Production:
    LECX FILMS (Nicolas Lecx : nlecx@lecxprods.com)