Laëtitia and Sylvain settled in a spring-fed farm. He became a market gardener, she became a sheep farmer.
Olivier and Cécile live in their yurt: they have decided to depend a minimum on the outside and are fully living their autonomy project.
The partners of GAEC Radis & Co five of them work on their farm which produces organic vegetables, milk, flour and other products while doing without banks as much as possible, especially the one which dominates the agricultural sector.
Three examples of returns to the earth, as we said in the 70s of the previous century? Or rather life as it should be considered tomorrow, out of conviction or out of necessity?
To see “Autonomous” in the light of the context of confinement, the direction taken by these families or communities filmed by François Bégaudeau in Mayenne sounds like a premonition.
In any case, like the concrete implementation of a deep reflection on a world which from their point of view was already wrong.
If they were not the only ones to think so, they put their vision into action, and now give us more than ever food for thought.
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Autonomous yes, but not alone
Autonomy is their choice, and also a solution: producing your own food, electricity, pooling your work force, it is also a way of overcoming the economic constraint imposed on many. What rural areas allow with their more affordable housing or land, cultivable areas and resources.
What these rural people have in common is that they have decided to count on themselves first: they are networked, the opposite of being withdrawn.
If Olivier and Cécile have taken the step of depolarizing their children, it is to educate them otherwise, not to withdraw them from the world. Around them in Mayenne, dozens of families have made the same choice, the children of some rub shoulders with those of others, meet other adults, apprehend other models.
Solidarity, mutual aid around projects designed for the common good … but not always well accepted.
“Autonomes” is a large part of the testimony of Caroline founder in 2013 in Soulvache, rural town of Loire-Atlantique du Blotting paper, a café-auditorium-bookstore-free store.
This former banker and the collective that she had gathered thought to do useful work to animate her village which otherwise had no trade. The municipality ended up finding that all of this created a stir.
After months of conflict, Papier Buvard has closed. Soulvache has no more business.
The Le Verre Solidaire association, which led the project, set up another one a few kilometers away, in Ile-et-Villaine.
Extension of the field of alternatives
The challenge of the film is to bring together and forge links between very different communities. Not an enumeration then, but the echo of singular lifestyles on the Mayenne territory, playing field of François Bégaudeau who had already shot a documentary there in 2015, “Anyone”.
The camera thus penetrates the daily life of the Orthodox nuns of Fontaine-Daniel, and ventures into contact with dowsers and a healer.
Because this Mayenne of the neo-rural remains a countryside where esoteric practices still thrive on which the centuries do not seem to have taken hold.
This culture of witchcraft, the “warm hand” that heals has certainly already been documented : compared with the slow but continuous movement of the search for autonomy and a newfound familiarity with working the land, it completes our look at this Mayennais territory where the hedged farmland is hidden from view and hasty judgments these individuals and these collectives outside the usual canons of society.
Autonomous, two films
François Bégaudeau’s film was previewed at the Angers Premiers Plans festival January 24, 2020, which gave rise to an exchange between the director and the public.
Exchange between François Bégaudeau and the public of Premiers Plans around “Autonomes” -Lasting 112 minutes, this cinema version, which most fully reflects the director’s intention, is built around fictional sequences by introducing the character of Camille, a man from the woods who could be qualified as a graduate in autonomy. , survivalism and confusion option, interpreted by the brilliant Alexandre Constant!
I highly recommend that you go and see it in theaters when it becomes possible again.
In the meantime, do not sulk your pleasure to discover the 52-minute version that France 3 Pays de la Loire offers you this Monday, April 20, available then 30 days in replay.
The director, François Bégaudeau
Singer and songwriter of the group Zabriskie Point in the 90s, François Bégaudeau published his first novel, Jeu Juste, in 2003, at Editions Verticales.
Will follow, from the same publisher: In the diagonal, Between the walls, End of the story, Towards sweetness, The real wound, Two monkeys or my political life, Politeness, Molecules, At war (September 2018).
He is also the author of A Democrat, Mick Jagger (Éditions Naïve, 2005), of an Antimanuel of Literature (Bréal, 2008), of a children’s book, The Invention of the Game (Helium, 2009), d ” an essay on youth co-written with Joy Sorman Because we like it (Larousse, 2010), an ironic essay on literary ideology, Tu seras writer my son (Bréal, 2011), a novel with Editions Alma (At the beginning, 2012), an alphabet, D’âne à zèbre (Grasset), a work from the collection Raconter la vie, Le lesser mal (Seuil, 2014), and L’ancien régime, on the entry of Mr. Yourcenar at the French Academy.
He has edited two collective works: Sport through gestures (Calmann-Lévy, 2007), Politics through sport (Denoël, 2009) and an interview book with Sean Rose, Une certain anxiety (Albin Michel, 2018).
His novel Entre les murs became a film by Laurent Cantet in 2008, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival. He is the co-writer and the main performer.
His novel The wound, the real was freely adapted to the cinema by Abdelatif Kechiche (Mektoub my love, canto uno).
He co-created the films of Patricia Mazuy (Girls’ sport, 2012), Fred Nicolas (Max and Lenny, 2015) Pierre Courrège (A statesman, September 2016), Eric Capitaine (Rupture pour tous, 2017).
He is a member of the Othon collective which writes, shoots and produces documentaries (Young Sarkozyst militants; We are in a democracy!; The river, the tuff and the architect; Conte de Cergy), or comedies (Réunion, Repérage).
In 2016, he made a documentary, N’obody (Atmosphères Production).
Member of the editorial staff of Cahiers du Cinéma in 2003 and 2007, he writes today on cinema and literature in the magazine Transfuge.
For eight years he wrote a chronicle on sport in Le Monde.
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