MENSCH
Dominique and Didier live together.
As death hovers, Dominique films precious moments of a great love story.
The man honoured in this film’s beautiful title had shared Dominique Cabrera’s life since 1995, a year that saw the making of a film which recounted, among other things, the start of their relationship. With Demain et encore demain, Didier Motchane, a figure of French political and intellectual life, stepped into the life and work of Cabrera, then shooting her first feature-length film. Un Mensch shows him stepping out of this life and work, carried off by a cancer against which it was agreed they would not fight. The moments gathered in the film are among the last shared by the couple. They could be ordinary moments, were they not inevitably permeated by the near prospect of death. This prospect is at the centre of their conversations, of course, and hangs like a shadow over the many moments of silence (Didier reads the paper, Dominique watches him, filming him), broken by the filmmaker’s soft voice, when she says: “This is nice” or “It’s nice to be here”. Meaning: We are here. All these chunks of a present so bare and so quiet (the film doesn’t show anyone other than them, nothing else but their companionship) are bound up in the acute awareness of a moment being lived, if only because it is among the last. In Demain et encore demain, speaking about an ordinary piece of bread, Cabrera says: “I want to film it because I want to see it.” Here, addressing her lover on the eve of farewells, she says: “I’m filming you to watch you later,” once again coining one of the clearest definitions of cinema.
Jérôme Momcilovic
Dominique Cabrera, born in Algeria, directed her first documentaries in 1991: Rester Là-Bas, a film about pied-noirs who had taken Algerian citizenship and, Un Balcon au Val Fourré, Chroniques d’une Banlieue Ordinaire, a film about the history of a tower block. She followed these in 1992 and 1993 with Rêves de Ville and Réjane Dans la Tour. In 1995, Une Poste à La Courneuve explored the relationships between public service employees and its users. In 1995, Demain et Encore Demain marked the beginning of a series of autobiographical documentaries which she followed up with Ranger les Photos, 2009, Grandir, 2010 and Mensch, 2023. In 1996, she used contemporary Algeria as the starting point for her full length feature, L’Autre Côté de la Mer, whose lyrical realism would blossom into Le Lait de la Tendresse Humaine in 2000, Folle Embellie, in 2004 and Corniche Kennedy in 2017. With Nadia et Les Hippopotames, Ça ne Peut Pas Continuer Comme Ça, Le Beau Dimanche, Notes sur l’Appel de Commercy, Je Marche Avec #noustoutes and Je ne Lâcherai Pas Ta Main en 2022, she continues to make openly political films allowing herself great freedom regarding duration and form.
Ad Libitum (Edmée Doroszlai)
Dominique Cabrera
Dominique Cabrera, Cécile Chagnaud, Nathalie Vidal
Dominique Barbier, Matéo Brossaud, Ariane Prunet
Fabrice Sinard
Ad Libitum - libitumad@wanadoo.fr
