Les Arrivants

Claudine Bories / Patrice Chagnard Frankrijk 2009 111 min.

Every day, they come from Azerbaijan, Mongolia, Congo, Sri Lanka, Iraq or Chechnya: whole families, with or without luggage, with or without passports, by charter flights or in trucks. Among them, there are pregnant women, young lovers, old people. They have exhausted and feverish eyes. In them, one can detect intense fear and hope. Caroline and Colette are social workers. All day long, they receive families who are seeking asylum in France to assist them with the process. Every day, there are new arrivals, from the four corners of the world, by charter plane or by covered truck. How can they deal with the overwhelming flood tide of all this distress, of all these needs? Caroline is young, impulsive and irascible. Colette, older, is compassionate and disorganized. Opposite them, the “arrivals”, exhausted, woundedbut obstinate – exasperating at times and moving at others. The film relates this tense and explosive confrontation in which each defends his or her own role.