Les Héritiers

Hubert, Thierry, Dominique. For these farming brothers from the Artois region, their tasks seem to be shared out quite naturally: the eldest buys the cattle, the youngest fattens them up and the middle brother cuts them up for sale to the butchers. The spacious framing recreates the whole spectrum of this family business, stretching from the birth of a calf to its slaughter. Yet this routine, which is not immune to fierce negotiations, is gradually spoiled by a nagging worry: what will “our young ones” do? Imperceptibly, doubt sets in, affecting the routine journeys to school of Dominique’s son’s, his teenage nephews’ farm jobs… One young girl casually lets drop that she prefers sheep and dreams of moving to the Aubrac region. The lurking dissent is in no way personal, but rather a generational phenomenon, a new relationship to work: “They’ll maybe take time off for holidays”, says one of the fathers, caught between admiration and regret. Maxence Voiseux’s respectful distance encounters the caring distance of the future “inheritors” who hedge and elude when confronted with the paternal hopes. “Would it bother you if I were a farmer?” the youngest timidly asks his father, the end-of-the-chain specialist, in a delicate finale that shows youth siding with life. (Charlotte Garson)