Hexagone

Malik Chibane (1994)

France

Malik Chibane had no prior training in filmmaking before making Hexagone, and took six years to make the film, working outside the normal structures of the French film industry thanks to support from his local community and to an amateur cast and technicians who were willing to work for free. His second film, Douce France, came out the following year (the year of La Haine).  

Hexagone, shot in the Parisian suburb of Goussainville, documents the life of a working-class banlieue through a fragmented, episodic narrative which interweaves the lives of a variety of characters, principally drawn from the Maghrebi community.  While the older generation are preparing for the festival of Eid, the young people of Maghrebi origin are seeking ways of finding a place for themselves in France, be it through jobs, crime, drugs or relationships.  Chibane, unusually, gives a significant place to young women of Maghrebi origin and their views on life; he also accords Slim, the sympathetic male lead, a voice-over which allows him to assert his subjectivity. The film both demonstrates the obstacles which lie in the path of the beurs seeking integration, and, as its title suggests, aims to represent them as central to any conceptualisation of contemporary France. 

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 30 May 2006 •

Next entry: La Fille de Keltoum/Bent Keltoum/The Daughter of Keltoum

Previous entry: Le Ciel, les oiseaux … et ta mère (Boys on the Beach)