“A people”, faithful immersion in the epic of the Yellow Vests

Emmanuel Gras

CRITIQUE — On November 17, 2018, the Yellow Vests began a movement that will mark history. In the documentary film “A People”, director Emmanuel Gras chooses to immerse himself within these collectives, for a story of part of the life of the Yellow Vests of Chartres, roundabouts in Paris, the first year of movement.

The enthusiasm of the beginnings, the discovery of collective struggle

Camera in hand, Emmanuel Gras follows the daily life of Agnès, Benoît, Nathalie, Allan… A group of Yellow Vests from Chartres who are fully committed to the collective struggle. These people, until now isolated in their difficulties, gather on this roundabout to share their feeling of social injustice and their contempt for a power too far from them. One of the women also explains that she calls her companions on the roundabout “the beggars”, because that is how she feels considered by the ruling class.

This feeling of social injustice creates strength in these individuals who leave their homes every Saturday to brave the cold, take sometimes risky actions, resist police intimidation, organize demonstrations of more than hundreds of people… These examples of involvement are accompanied by sincere testimonies, which allow us to give humanity, a face to this movement too often stigmatized by the media and reduced to its violence.

Images of war

The images of the demonstrations, although already widely distributed in the media, carry us away, because we discover them from a new angle. The question of violence is not the subject of bias, the aggressiveness of the police is presented just as much as that of some of the demonstrators. The camera follows the protagonists and we find ourselves in the center of the demonstration, right in the heart of the action which almost evokes scenes of war. They show the reality on the ground without falling into sensationalism: no images of injuries or blood, but barricades, stampedes, stones thrown and received… The images are sufficient in themselves.

When contempt and ignorance are the only thing these protesters get from the government, violence is for some the only way to make themselves heard. But most of these people were not prepared for such clashes. Agnès, one of the protagonists, confides that the images of confrontation with the police, particularly when she was stuck on the Étoile roundabout during Act II, were traumatic and remained in her mind long after the event.

Attempts to structure the movement until the exhaustion

The immersive nature of the documentary allows us to understand the self-organization mechanisms of the Yellow Vest movement. They have often been criticized for their lack of structure, but it is also this freshness which has given this movement its strength. Emmanuel Gras here raises the question of the concrete difficulty of organizing a movement born spontaneously on a national scale. “Leaders” naturally appear within the group, but do they manage to avoid reproducing the democratic errors of those they criticize ?

“As the filming progressed, I understood that for me it was about bringing to life the inner vibration of a popular movement, with its harmonious and chaotic aspects,” explains the documentary filmmaker.

In “A People”, Emmanuel Gras films the vital energy that animates these individuals, their strength and their humanity, without wanting to hide the moments of doubt, of fear, wandering or incomprehension, which also exists. There is no question of demonizing or angelizing the Yellow Vests, only of trying to paint a realistic portrait of them.

Immortalize communication problems

The documentary captures conversations between the main players in the Yellow Vests group and people outside their movement. Faced with the boss of a major brand or members of the political party “La République en Marche”, we see the difficulty for these rebellious citizens to make themselves heard and understood. Each of these discussions highlights the differences in perceptions of the life and misery of the Yellow Vests.

Despite the impact of Covid, the movement continues and takes sometimes other forms. The documentary does justice to the sincere commitment of these individuals determined to make things happen. The two years that have passed since the end of the Yellow Vests, however, reveal the extent to which the reasons for their anger remain just as relevant, or even more relevant.

A people, 1h45min, a documentary by Emmanuel Gras, in theaters on February 23, 2022.

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