Ceux qui travaillent
Antoine Russbach
Frank, a senior executive in a big shipping company, is fully dedicated to his work. While facing an emergency situation onboard a cargo ship, Frank, under pressure, takes a wrong decision with serious consequences, and gets laid off. Deeply upset and betrayed by a system to which he has given everything, Frank is forced to put his whole life in question.
With : Olivier Gourmet, Adèle Bochatay, Delphine Bibet
Screenplay : Emmanuel Marre, Antoine Russbach avec la collaboration de Catherine Paillé
Image : Denis Jutzeler
Sound : Benjamin Benoit
Editing : Sophie Vercruysse
Scripte : Elodie Van Beuren
Screenplay : Emmanuel Marre, Antoine Russbach avec la collaboration de Catherine Paillé
Image : Denis Jutzeler
Sound : Benjamin Benoit
Editing : Sophie Vercruysse
Scripte : Elodie Van Beuren
Production : Élodie Brunner, Thierry Spicher, Elena Tatti (Box Productions), Bernard De Dessus les Moustier, Olivier Dubois (Novak Production) en coproduction avec RTS, Teleclub AG, RTBF, Shelter Prod
Distribution: Condor Films
International sales: Be For Films
Distribution: Condor Films
International sales: Be For Films
With Swiss and South African parents, Antoine Russbach was born in Geneva where he lived until the age of 20. He then studied directing and screenwriting in Belgium at the IAD (Institute of the Broadcasting Arts in Louvain-La-Neuve). In 2008, he co-directed Michel with Emmanuel Marre. The film was selected for a significant number of festivals, where it won several awards, notably in Teheran, Angers, Brussels and Paris. In 2009 he directed Les Bons Garçon (The Good Boys), his thesis film, which competed at the Angers Premiers Plans Film Festival and in international competition in Clermont Ferrand. Those Who Work is his first feature film, and will premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. It was Ateliers d'Angers in 2015.
There are certain aspects of society that fascinate me, questions for which I just can't find the answers, niggling issues that play on my mind. I try to drill down into these grey zones, these moments in time where our ideologies fail us. The reality is that all our lives are characterised by compromise and by disorder, and these are the areas which should be explored by film – the grey zones where everything becomes uncertain and unknown. I'm drawn to subjects which are highly charged from a moral perspective. In Those Who Work, I was interested in the notion of alienation at work, but in a white-collar context. Here, we see something of an extreme form of self-alienation. An employee thinks he has to commit a crime for his firm, even though no-one has actually asked him to. How is it that work can contaminate our minds, our families, our psyches? Frank's character successfully manages two separate worlds – work and family – with disconcerting ease.
There are certain aspects of society that fascinate me, questions for which I just can't find the answers, niggling issues that play on my mind. I try to drill down into these grey zones, these moments in time where our ideologies fail us. The reality is that all our lives are characterised by compromise and by disorder, and these are the areas which should be explored by film – the grey zones where everything becomes uncertain and unknown. I'm drawn to subjects which are highly charged from a moral perspective. In Those Who Work, I was interested in the notion of alienation at work, but in a white-collar context. Here, we see something of an extreme form of self-alienation. An employee thinks he has to commit a crime for his firm, even though no-one has actually asked him to. How is it that work can contaminate our minds, our families, our psyches? Frank's character successfully manages two separate worlds – work and family – with disconcerting ease.