User Reviews

Don't expect anything from this film from an aesthetic point of view: « Étranges Étrangers » is indeed made in a very amateurish way, its editing non-existent, its sound recording polluted by background noises that sometimes make it outright incomprehensible, ; the lighting - especially at night - is very approximate as well, to say nothing of the colors which, the copy not having been restored, have faded desperately. But if the form leaves to be desired, the substance by compensation is more than just rewarding. Judge for yourself : shocked that five African migrant workers died asphyxiated where they were crammed into a pile of fifty, directors Marcel Trillat and Frédéric Variot set out to investigate the living, working and salary conditions of the migrants that France, in the 1960s and 1970s was bringing in hundreds of thousands as labourers in industry, mining and construction. In their wake, the viewers first discover the reception of Portuguese families upon their night arrival at the Austerlitz station (only gendarmes and taxi drivers are waiting for them, apart from one or two association volunteers). They are then invited to visit the slums to which these same Portuguese people are relegated (one man interviewed reveals that he has been asking in vain for a decent apartment in a social housing project for ten long years). After that, they are introduced to the "sleep merchants" who cram Africans into hangars (no big deal, according to one brave lady interviewed, since they "like that" !) and make money off their ignominy. In the last part of the report, the viewers go to the scene of the Aubervilliers drama in an atmosphere bordering on riot, before at last visiting a building site that employs a maximum of foreign workers. In the meantime, the spectator will have been offered interesting interviews notably with André Karman, the communist mayor of Aubervilliers, and on the opposite side, with the powerful boss of a construction company , Francis Bouygues, whose arguments are not convincing but who at least had the courage to face a hostile camera). In the end, these 58 minutes of committed reportage will have enabled us to draw an unlenient portrait of the undignified way France treated (and sometimes still treats) those coming from beyond its borders to carry out the ungrateful and tiring tasks the French will not do any more. Nothing to be proud of for the Country of Human Rights, to be sure. So that in the end, substance having prevailed over form, you will probably feel neither annoyed nor frustrated. Just enlightened.