Based on the memoir by Didier Eribon, Jean-Gabriel Périot’s documentary tells the intimate, political history of the French working class from the beginning of the 1950s to today.

Didier Eribon’s memoir, Returning to Reims, is an account of one man’s return to the town where he grew up after an absence of 30 years. A frank, personal story of family, memory, identity and time lost, it is also a view of what it means to grow up working class and then leave that class; of inequality and shifting political allegiances in an increasingly divided nation.

Bringing together film fragments, news footage and scenes from documentaries with Eribon’s words, Retour A Reims examines the development of the French working class over the past 70 years and looks at injustices passed on through generations, reflecting on what it means to leave the working class and lead an intellectual life.

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