Directed by Hind Meddeb
co-directed by Thim Naccache
featuring Souleymane Mohammad
«an eye-opening exploration of the migrant experience in the French capital’s Stalingrad district»

Summer 2016, Paris, refugees are camping in the Stalingrad district. The film follows their daily life and reveals a hidden part of the city, by the side of the invisible ones. A physical labyrinth added to the bureaucratic labyrinth already in place – the city turns away. Controls, round-ups, police raids, fencing. How can you live in a space that prevents you from existing? From out of the group, the camera follows Souleymane, a young refugee from Darfur, whose poems transfigure the violence of the situation.

Paris, summer 2016. Refugees arriving from Sudan, Ethiopia, Erythrea, Somalia and Afghanistan have no other choice than to sleep in the streets. Makeshift camps start growing in Stalingrad district.
I witnessed the French state’s violence against these new immigrants and decided to film their daily life, between police raids, massive arrests, and closed immigration offices. I made this film to share my experience of their side of the story.
Until that night, when I met Souleymane, a Sudanese teenager who lost everything during the war in Darfur. Whenever others denied his humanity, whenever he faced torture, slavery or abuse, Souleymane found solace in the one thing nobody could take from him: his poetry. For him, each poem is a way to say the unspeakable, to sublimate the violence he endured throughout his journey. I film Souleymane in his Parisian wanderings, to the beat of his poetic ramblings.

Hind Meddeb

Hind Meddeb currently works between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. She mostly films by herself creating an intimacy with the characters she follows.
Between 2011 and 2013, Hind Meddeb directed two feature documentaries observing the Arab revolutions through the eyes of young musicians in the slums of Cairo and the poor neighborhoods across Tunisia. She shaped the word “Electro Chaabi” and made the world discover this new musical genre. Selected in dozens of festivals, “Electro Chaabi” premiered in BFI London Film Festival.
In her new film, “Paris Stalingrad”, selected in Cinéma du Réel and TIFF, she shows to the world a hidden side of Paris, while the city closes doors to asylum seekers, creating new borders downtown.

With a scientific background, Thim Naccache did his training as a filmmaker at the "European Film College" in Denmark, where he directed his first short movie, "Breaking in" in 2005. In 2006, he codirected the documentary “A Nation Journey“ the rise of Evo Morales, a Native American peasant to the summit of the state. In 2013, he directed "Misconception", a short movie selected at Berlin International Short Film Festival.
In 2016, during a documentary shoot in the Grande-Synthe refugee camp, he met volunteers who alerted him about the existence of the Stalingrad camp in Paris. Surprised by the low media coverage given to this situation, he began to film the daily lives of refugees arriving in Paris. Along with Hind Meddeb, he then embarked on a long-term shoot.




"60 years after ‘Chronique d’un été’ comes a new verité look at Paris". “Paris Stalingrad is a tough, ultra-modern critique of the West’s inhumanly slow response to people whose lives have been utterly transformed by the endless civil wars and environmental destruction that’s taking place in so many places around the world. »Point of View Magazine
Paris Stalingrad isn’t escapist entertainment you enjoy on a Saturday night with a bucket of popcorn. But if more of us faced and confronted the difficult realities by watching a film like this, we could be real-life heroes providing an escape route to those who desperately need it. Film Threat
This documentary highlights refugees living in Paris’ Stalingrad district, many of whom are young men from Afghanistan and impoverished countries across Africa. The film showcases the hardships of refugee life, but also its stories of hope.Global Citizen
Meddeb captures a chorus of voices expressing anxiety, friendship, history. Paris Stalingrad’s purpose seems not to presume change things with her filmmaking as much as to capture the stories that took place within this period. In that unswerving, ungarnished journalism perhaps the more political act can be found. TheSeventhRow
French director Hind Meddeb offers a humanist and committed documentary on the fate of homeless migrants trapped on the streets of Paris. Cineuropa
The film is nonetheless a vital on-the-ground document that shows how the sans-papiers were treated at the time — and how, in the months that followed, the city government erected fences, playgrounds and other structures to prevent them from settling back in the Stalingrad area.The Hollywood Reporter
Sur la question des réfugiés, la section TIFF Docs a invité la réalisatrice Hind Meddeb à présenter le documentaire Paris Stalingrad (coréalisé avec Thim Naccache) lequel dévoile une partie peu connue de la capitale française.Le Monde
The question of refugees isn’t one that hasn’t been well documented of late in cinema, but Meddeb’s project stands out for its intimacy. Each refugee she speaks to comes from a different part of the world and out of a different conflict, each carrying a whole world with them as they fled for their lives. Cinemascope
Plenty of documentaries are political in nature, but what separates Hind Meddeb’s second documentary feature, Paris Stalingrad, from the pack, is the director’s self-infusion into the film. It cannot be said that Meddeb hides behind her camera. Intheseats
Multiple docs at the fest tackle different facets of immigration in Europe, with Love Child featuring an Iranian family seeking asylum, Paris Stalingrad surveying refugees living in Paris, and My English Cousin following a longtime resident of England considering a return to his native Algeria.Hyperallergic



DIRECTOR

Hind Meddeb

 

CO-DIRECTOR

Thim Naccache

 

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Hind Meddeb, Thim Naccache

 

PRODUCER

Sylvie Brenet

 

CO-PRODUCER

Abel Nahmias

 

PRODUCERS ASSISTANTS

Raphaël Deslandes, Léa Sansonetti

 

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Mike Lerner

 

PRODUCTION COMPANIES

Les Films du Sillage, Echo Films

 

POST-PRODUCTION

Seppia, Black Milk

 

WITH

Lami T. Nagawo, Souleymane Mohammad, Valérie Osouf, Houssam el Assimi, Adam Misscall, Galaxy Mohammad, Agathe Nadimi, Ousmane, Lamrana, Johan Corceron

 

EDITOR

Sophie Pouleau

 

SOUND DESIGN

Damien Tronchot

 

SOUND EFFECTS

André Fèvre

 

COLOR GRADING

Christophe Reynaud

 

TRANSLATERS

Fred Chast, Philippe Aronson, Michelange Quay, Omer Omrane, Abubaker Mohamed Imam

 

MUSIC

Bachar Mar Khalife « Ya Nas » / InFiné Music

 

GRAPHICS

Myriam Barchechat

SPECIAL THANKS

Amina Meddeb, Joseph Paris, Abel Nahmias, Michel Zana

 

THANKS

Alex Akoka, Shona Bhattacharyya, Nour Abichou, Clara Menais, Dina Amer, Milo Peret, Catherine Cody, Jane Sautière, Théo Stefanini, Johan Corceron owner of the garage Jcp Auto

 

GRANTS

Grant “Brouillon d’un rêve” of SCAM (The civil society of multimedia authors in France)

Writing and Development Grant of CNC (National Film and Moving Image Centre in France)

Writing Grant of the “Région Ile de France”

Development Grant of Procirep Angoa

Production Grant “Fonds Images de la Diversité” of CNC

Production Grant of “Région Grand Est”

Production Grant of “Arab Found for Art and Culture” (AFAC)

FESTIVALS

· 41th Cinéma du Réel

· Toronto International Film Festival 2019

· Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage 2019

· DOC NYC 2019

· Festival des Cinémas d’Afrique du Pays d’Apt

· 41th Cairo International Film Festival

· Rencontres Films de Femmes Méditerranée 2020

· Sharjah Film Platform 2019

· 31th Palm Springs International Film Festival

· 6th Sudan Independent Film Festival

· 26th "Africa Alive" in Frankfurt

· CPH:DOX* Copenhagen int. doc. festival 2020

· Bergen Arab Film Festival 2020

· Amsterdam Arab Film Festival 2020

· Stockholm Women Int. Film Festival 2020

· African Film Festival of Tanger-Tetouan 2020

· Festival du Film du Cap Spartel 2020

· Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa 2020

· ZINEXIT Human Rights Film Festival of Bilbao

· 10th Festival Internacional de Cine Político

· Festival Cinéma du Monde de Sherbrooke 2020