Le Grand Bal

Director Laetitia Carton's fourth feature film, Le Grand Bal is an immersion in the heart of the Grand Bal de l'Europe, which has been held every year since 1990 in a small village in the Auvergne. The French filmmaker spent a week filming the hundreds of people who come to dance to the sound of accordions, violins and tambourines. Placing her camera as close as possible to the dancers, the director takes us onto the dance floor where she captures bodies touching, glances exchanged, breaths and hesitations. From the mazurka to the polka, this intimate documentary reveals a place where utopias still seem possible. Laetitia Carton presents a Grand Bal where class, gender and age disappear to make way for a joyful community gathered to recreate the world and, above all, to dance day and night at the height of summer.

Chloé Hofmann (CEC Unil)