Paris Paris Panorama
Tickets
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About
Canadian Premiere
In an abandoned Parisian complex, three undocumented men from different backgrounds — Yi-En from China, Junior from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Hamzah from Palestine — squat in a derelict apartment. Outside their sparse accommodations, the three wander the streets and evade immigration officials while attending language classes and sharing meals. Occasionally, they also dream of home, which in Yi-En’s case is another Paris: Tianducheng, a vast housing estate in China explicitly modeled after the City of Light. As the three go about their days, we see Paris from ever more unlikely vantage points.
At once a luminous city symphony and a stirring drama of dislocation, Paris Paris is a film that asks what it truly means to belong somewhere. Gorgeously composed and full of deadpan humour and surreal touches, Isabelle Tollenaere’s film lingers on each small event — from the changing of a lightbulb to the wanderings of a stray cat — as a source of wonderment. Moving to the unhurried rhythms of its characters’ lives, the film finds beauty in the everyday.
In an abandoned Parisian complex, three undocumented men from different backgrounds — Yi-En from China, Junior from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Hamzah from Palestine — squat in a derelict apartment. Outside their sparse accommodations, the three wander the streets and evade immigration officials while attending language classes and sharing meals. Occasionally, they also dream of home, which in Yi-En’s case is another Paris: Tianducheng, a vast housing estate in China explicitly modeled after the City of Light. As the three go about their days, we see Paris from ever more unlikely vantage points.
At once a luminous city symphony and a stirring drama of dislocation, Paris Paris is a film that asks what it truly means to belong somewhere. Gorgeously composed and full of deadpan humour and surreal touches, Isabelle Tollenaere’s film lingers on each small event — from the changing of a lightbulb to the wanderings of a stray cat — as a source of wonderment. Moving to the unhurried rhythms of its characters’ lives, the film finds beauty in the everyday.
