I was excited about this French documentary the second I read its synopsis, so I couldn’t be more excited to speak with one of its directors. Following the daily lives of squatters, anarchists, farmers and so-called eco-terrorists as they camp out to sabotage and stop land developers from destroying the environment, it’s a poignant and timely film that also manages to reach toward the tender and poetic. Winning the Best Film award in the Berlinale’s Encounters section, coming at a time when people across the world are becoming more politically conscious, this is one of the year’s most important movies. Naturally, I was very excited to speak with Ben Russell, who co-directed this film alongside Guillaume Cailleau. I hope you enjoy our discussion!
You’ve mentioned wanting to make a film about what happens after a movement is successful. What is the biggest surprise about how victory affected this struggle?
The idea of victory is a really relative one. For us, going there was really trying to see what a place that had succeeded looked like. Because we also went there after COVID, I would say the community had gone into a different moment of its activism. It had been organized around the anti-airport movement, and when that movement succeeded there was no longer a central core. I think a lot of people felt a bit lost as to what exactly their focus was or where the energy they’d put into being there was going to go. There are other historical events that occurred. In order for people to stay in the ZAD [Zone to Defend] they had to legalize, which I think was a strategy from the state to ruin the community. It had previously been constituted of people who are explicitly anti-state and anti-legalization. A lot of people did, in fact, leave. People that refused to legalize often had their houses destroyed and were forcibly evicted. A lot of that happened in 2019-2020. We started going there in 2022 so we didn’t really witness the people who left. What we saw initially seemed a lot more utilitarian, maybe more agrarian than it had been. Folks there were casting about for a center, and that center slowly materialized in one form or another through the Soulevements de la Terre movement, which was another manifestation of a lot of the energy that had taken place in the ZAD recently.
In the US, a lot of filmmakers would cringe at their work being called ‘political.’ Do you feel similarly about this term?
All work is political, right? [laughs] The conditions of production, what sort of subjects you choose, how you choose them, who you are when you’re making it. Cinema is a kind of ideological practice, so it always has political repercussions. This work is explicitly more political in that it has a subject that would describe itself as a political subject. I think that the position of the film can also be interpellated as a kind of call to action. For a film that’s three and a half hours long, it takes its time making the call, but it’s been one of the outcomes of our experience showing the film thus far. Especially younger people who are coming to the screenings and feeling like they can see a way in for themselves, that’s quite thrilling.
Is connecting with those young people and starting these kinds of conversations at the core of the work from the very start or is there something else that initiates the creative process which later develops?
I’m not a storyteller, so that’s not how I position the work. I’ve been making films for twenty years, this is my fifth feature. I’ve made forty shorts. I’m pretty comfortable in the margins of cinema, some place between artmaking practice, experimental cinema, nonfiction. I make work hoping that as many can see it will see it, but I’m never under the illusion that it’s going to be a blockbuster. I think when you take on a project that involves an apparently difficult form—I say apparently because I don’t think it’s at all difficult—you’re sort of accepting that the audience is going to be necessarily limited. For myself and Guillaume, I don’t think we anticipated that as an outcome. But in our attempt to do service and justice to the people we were portraying it felt like this was one of the best things that could happen.
I’m always interested in the visual language of documentaries because the real-life element seems like a wildcard. You’ve talked about the importance of being present when shooting. How was the process of learning to be present behind the camera?
I’ve made a lot of work, so I feel like I get better. Part of the practice of making work is trying to not repeat myself and learn new things. To go where my pleasures and discomforts lead me. But I would say that because my general subject is located within the realm of nonfiction it means that I’m always entering into a certain contract with what’s happening. Part of that contract is learning to be attentive to what’s happening, but being attentive in a way that’s relative to cinema. To think about what my presence with a camera can do in relation to the thing that’s happening or how I can choreograph the set of relationships that will materialize in the most interesting, cinematic way.
You were both somewhat familiar with this movement before the film started production, but did being so immersed in encampments among so many politically radical activists cause you to reckon with any of your own beliefs or to view this movement differently?
I’ve never encountered a group of individuals who are as articulate, ideologically, as these people. They’re all quite unique, extremely thoughtful and the fact that they embody their politic is something I find totally remarkable and completely admirable. I didn’t not expect that, but I was happy to have that be the experience of working with this community. It’s something that’s led myself and Guillaume to re-engage with them. We’re currently working on a book that’s meant to exist in parallel to this film. It’s comprised of interviews with all the people in the film. We have hours and hours of discussions that are mostly monologues and are extremely articulate. It’s the first time I’ve spent with people who were put on terrorist watchlists by the state and the fact of their everyday-ness coupled with their remarkable political attentiveness is awe-inspiring.
Was the book something that developed organically out of the project or was it the idea from the start?
It definitely wasn’t the idea at the beginning, but it felt like there was such a wealth of discursive ideas happening that didn’t have a place in the film. We decided very early on to not do interviews, to not have the camera addressed and to instead spend time in action and labor and presence. At some point it felt like there was this whole other terrain of being that we just weren’t addressing because it wasn’t the thing we assumed our medium to be taking on. We decided to make a text that would create a kind of parallel space for all these political, personal, contextual histories that are the foundation of every shot in this film. Everything we see is a political action. Everything we see is in service to this higher cause. From the kinds of horses people are using to the materials they gather for plowing fields, the way the field is harvested, the way the bread is made, where it’s sourced. Hopefully that’s felt through the materiality of the film but it’s definitely not underlined or spoken about. Those contexts are very exciting and deep. The book is a place for that stuff to really come forward. To exist.
Direct Action releases in French theaters on November 20th, and will screen at the New York Film Festival on October 7th and 8th with Ben and Guillaume in person! Tickets are available here.
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