Direct Action

The film follows a militant activist community in France populated by squatters, anarchists, farmers and government-labeled “eco-terrorists” to better understand how the success of a radical protest movement can offer a path through the current global climate crisis.

Whenever political power defends private interests against the common good, direct action is inevitable. In this regard, the price paid by environmental activists in France in the first decades of this century has been famously high: in 2012, protests against the construction of a new airport in the Grand-Ouest region were met with crackdowns, as was the march organized in protest of massive water reservoirs in Sainte-Soline, on 25 March 2023. In between these two events, activists also sealed an insolent victory with the creation of a ZAD (short for “Zone to Defend”) in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, broadening the idea of direct action beyond State-centred conflicts to include a way of living that is in tune with the environment. Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau filmed in the ZAD for a period of two years, starting with the tenth-anniversary celebration of Operation César’s failure and ending with the action led by Soulèvements de la Terre in Sainte-Soline, where activists were greeted by a spectacle of police force worthy of Apocalypse Now. In more ways than one, Direct Action takes up the premise of Sanrizuka and flips it around. Shinsuke Ogawa’s series centred on a group of local farmers in Narita and their fight against the construction of a new airport: the recurring shots of a lighthouse built on the site of a control tower that never came to be are arguably a reminder of it. In Notre-Dame-des-Landes, we see what happens when a vision once confined to the realm of utopia overrides the future set forth by proponents of economic growth. In forty-one long takes, Direction Action gives us the time to inhabit that vision, challenging the idea that activist rhetoric should be equated with the conventional forms of direct cinema.

Antoine Thirion