COUNTRIES: Germany, France YEAR: 2024 RUNNING TIME: 216 min
DIRECTED BY: Guillaume Cailleau, Ben Russel
LANGUAGE(S): French, Maroccan-Arabic, English
SUBTITLE(S): German
FSK: 12
PRODUCER: Guillaume Cailleau
EDITED BY: Guillaume Cailleau, Ben Russell
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ben Russell
Screenings
Synopsis
DIRECT ACTION is a contemporary portrait of a militant community of activists in France —a rural collective of 150 people that withstood several violent government eviction attempts, successfully prevented an international airport expansion project in Brittany, created an autonomous zone from 2012 to 2018, and grew into a significant environmental movement three years later. The film documents the daily life of a diverse ecosystem of activists, squatters, anarchists, farmers, and people labeled “eco-terrorists” by the government, in order to better understand how the success of radical protest movements can carve a path through the climate crisis—perhaps even out of it.
“A great political film, radical in its subject matter and radical in its form—simple on both levels. The most radical things, the ones that unsettle us the most, are the simplest: taking the side of life.” Libération
Links /Contacts
WEBSITE: https://www.filmgarten.at/direct
PRODUCTION COMPANIES: CASKFILMS, Volte Film
WORLD SALES: Shellac
GERMAN DISTRIBUTION: Filmgarten, Filmgalerie 451
Director
Guillaume Cailleau
Biography
Guillaume Cailleau (1978) is an artist, filmmaker, and film producer based in Berlin whose work focuses on exploring new ways of addressing political and social issues. His films have been screened at renowned film festivals (Berlin, New York, Rotterdam, Edinburgh, …). His works have been exhibited at art institutions such as the Bangkok Art & Culture Centre, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, and the Centre Pompidou. In 2014, he won the Silver Bear for Best Short Film from the Jury at the Berlinale for his short film LABORAT. He produces films through his company, CASKFILMS.
Filmography
Selection: H(i)J (2009), Through (2009), Austerity Measures (2012), Laborat (2014), Wunderschein (2018), A Kind of World War (2021), DIRECT ACTION (2024)
Ben Russell
Biography
Ben Russell (1976) is an American artist, filmmaker, and curator whose work lies at the intersection of ethnography and psychedelia. Russell was an exhibiting artist at documenta 14 (2017), and his works have been presented at the Centre Pompidou, MoMA, Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art in Chicago, the Venice Biennale, and the Berlinale, among other venues. He currently lives in Marseille, France.
Filmography
Auswahl: Let Each One Go Where He May (2009),Trypps #1-7 2005–2010 (2010), Austerity Measures (2011), A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness (2013), He Who Eats Children (2016), Good Luck (2017), The Rare Event (2018), The Invisible Mountain (2021), DIRECT ACTION (2024)