‘Géographie humaine - Claire Simon’

Documentary portrait of the famous Gare du Nord in Paris. People from the suburbs, from the provinces and international travellers all pass through this station. The film takes you on an immobile voyage through the Gare du Nord in the company of the director’s friend Simon Mérabet, a young man of Algerian origin from the Var region. Fleeting encounters in which everyone recounts their life in a few words before catching their train and disappearing. Behind each anonymous travellers there lies a story, a life. Life stories that intersect as globalisation forges destinies, subject to constraints of geography and economics. Like a book, the film contains what everyone writes in it: their final words before leaving. As Simon experiences all this he remembers that he is the son of an immigrant.  

Claire Simon

Born in London in 1955, Claire Simon was raised in France in the Var. Acknowledged for her work as a director, she is also a screenwriter, an actress, a director of photography and an editor. Refusing to follow a classic cinema course, she made her first films on her own in the mid-1970s. It is through the editing and a passage at Ateliers Varan that she continued her schooling. Her film work navigates graciously and subtly - without ever getting lost - between documentary and fiction. This prolific director has more than 15 films to her credit. Among her most notable films are "La Police" (short film, from 1988) or "Scènes de ménage" (short film, from 1991), "Les Patients" (1989), "Récréations" and "Coûte que coûte", "Sinon oui" - her first feature film (1997), "Ça brüle", her second feature film (2006), "Les bureaux de Dieu" in 2008, "800 km de différence / Romance", "Mimi", "Gare du Nord", "Géographie Humaine" and "Les bois dont les rêves sont faits". 

On the occasion of the BOZAR CINEMA DAYS (6 - 10.01.2016), BOZAR will present three films of the director: Le bois dont les rêves sont faits (2015), Géographie Humaine (2013) and Gare du Nord (2013).