The life of Michèle Firk — a trailblazing French journalist, film critic, aspiring director and communist activist involved in various liberation struggles in the second half of the 20th century — as told by narrator Alice Diop, modern day French director.

Whaling has been around for centuries. It seems to be the fruit of man’s violence, destroying himself by destroying nature. Accompanying the rise of capitalism, the practice survives today, reflecting humans’ eternal destructiveness of nature and the creatures unable to resist them.

If politics were to come back, it could only be from its savage and disreputable fringe. Then, a muffled rumor shall arise whence that roar is heard: "We are scum! We are barbarian!" (Alain Brossat)

About police men's sensibility.

Today's been sad. Tomorrow won't get any better. Let's un-do it all over again

By taking us on a dense and multi-layered, beautiful travel through all the world’s infrastructure, Périot leaves us puzzled by ending on the dead-end street of a former world-war II concentration camp. (Jan Schuijren on behalf of Jury) "Remember. That I am the cause of your journey. Don't lose me on that way".

In 1914, the Czech architect Jan Letzel designed in the Japanese city of Hiroshima Center for the World Expo, which has turned into ruins after the atomic bombing in August 1945. “Atomic Dome” – all that remains of the destroyed palace of the exhibition – has become part of the Hiroshima memorial. In 2007, French sculptor, painter and film director Jean-Gabriel Périot assembled this cinematic collage from hundreds of multi-format, color and black and white photographs of different years’ of “Genbaku Dome”.

Akihiro, a native japanese filmmaker living in Paris, came to Japan to interview survivors for a documentary celebrating the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Deeply moved by the interviews, he decided to take a break and wanders through the city during which he meets Michiko, a merry and enigmatic young woman.

At the end of the 1960s the post-war generation began to revolt against their parents. This was a generation disillusioned by anti-communist capitalism and a state apparatus in which they believed they saw fascist tendencies. This generation included journalist Ulrike Meinhof, lawyer Horst Mahler, filmmaker Holger Meins as well as students Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader. Their protest against the state led to the founding of the Red Army Faction (RAF). Constructed entirely from copious film and audio material, the film describes – without commentary – their gradual transformation and increasing politicisation until they take up armed resistance; it also describes the reactions of the government of the Federal Republic of Germany at the time. Jean-Gabriel Périot’s award-winning short films make elaborate use of archive footage in order to create incisive commentaries on violence and history. Une jeunesse allemande marks his first feature-length film. His work offers an outsider’s view of the Federal Republic of Germany in the RAF era; it also provides a lesson in radical behaviour and society’s reactions to it that is alarmingly topical, although the circumstances may have changed. berlinale 2015

By going back into the cinema of the 1968 era and going forward with present-day interviews of young people who replay excerpts of films jumping out from the past, Our Defeats draw the portrait of our current relations with politics. Our Defeats, or do we keep enough forces to confront ourselves with the chaos of today?

You don't know what we are.

An intimate and political history of the French working class from the early 1950s to the present day.