Plots(1)
Allo Police is the third part of a trilogy the first two films of which were shown at the festival of Nyon. Du beurre surles Tartines shows the inside of a company, Malaise is an analysis of the mix-up of political and cultural interests in a city. In Allo Police Manu Bonmariage presses yet further into a bit of reality when he demonstrates the miserable conditions of life people without a chance can come to. He succeeds in doing this by following, for some months, the daily work of policemen in Charleroi, Belgium, formerly a prosperous industrial town. Faced with charges, riots, rape, frights, fear and death the officers can often only try and settle matters between parties as best they can. Allo Police is not a film about police-work, yet it proves that policemen are not prepared to carry out the tasks assigned to them in practice: those of psycho the rapist, social worker, judge…. Bonmariage addresses his style of filming as a 'cinema de la pauvreté'. By means of a sober technique and free from any aesthetic artificiality, a report is made of a reality the emotional tension has sufficient symbolic value to speak for itself. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)
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