Champs Elysées Film Festival: Our opinion on "Atlantic Bar" by Fanny Molins (French Feature Film Jury Prize and Audience Award). Documentary in competition in the French independent feature film category.
At dawn, in a working-class district of Arles, workers repair the public road while garbage collectors crisscross the streets. Among this "France who gets up early" and who is busy in the shadows, Nathalie and Jean Michel prepare the opening of their bar. Fanny Molins' documentary immediately sets the scene: we are immersed for an hour in the France we meet, without really daring to look at it.
From photographic series to documentary
The genesis of the film can be found in Fanny Molins' photographic project, "The Musicians". The director, who wants to produce a series of photos in a bar, sets her sights on the Atlantic Bar. If the first tests sometimes give rise to 'great moments of solitude' – as she confided during the meeting following the screening – she gradually made her place and became friends with the boss, Nathalie. She will finally stay four years at the Atlantic Bar, and will leave with fifty hours of rush that will allow her to make a feature film. During the viewing, we understand that we can drag on. Because the Atlantic is not just a bar, but also singular protagonists.
Fanny Molins during the meeting at the Champs Elysées Film Festival on Friday, June 24, 2022
Atlantic Bar: A theatre of everyday life
During the days that pass and look alike, the characters cross paths at the Atlantic, for an espresso taken on the spot, or a summer evening that drags on. With their outspokenness and their marked faces, the regulars of the bar animate the daily life he shares in this place that has become their refuge. The camera has been forgotten, and the director is now one of them, resulting in deeply authentic moments. The proximity forged with these characters gives rise to a double narrative. Because if the majority of the scenes take place in the tumult of the bar, almost suggesting a scripted film, others take place in the apartment just above, in a more intimate space. Alone in front of the camera, the regulars gradually give themselves up and tell us their intimate stories. We then understand the importance of the Atlantic, a real saving landmark, and the strength of the group that allows to escape its misfortunes in the party and its excesses. Atlantic Bar makes us look in the face, without taboos, these stories of lives so marked by violence, addiction, but also struggle, redemption, and especially solidarity.
The testimony of a social and economic submission
The Atlantic Bar is therefore an arena where characters, life stories clash, as well as a protective setting, an escape, a refuge against loneliness. But this does not protect him from the harsh law of the strongest, when the owner decides to sell the business. Nathalie, who gradually establishes herself as the main character of the film, fights not to abandon him. But the latter must face a double oppression: that of the bar, to which it devotes itself body and soul, and that social, financial, against those "who possess but respect nothing". The history of the Atlantic Bar is therefore also the story of the disappearance of neighborhood bars, the systematic erasure of these populations little considered, even knowingly hidden in favor of the gentrification of neighborhoods.
"Atlantic Bar" is a human adventure, almost a coincidence. It is a series of unique portraits, stories that we would hardly want to believe. Fanny Molins delivers here a documentary as funny as poignant and gives voice to those who do not have the means to do so. It is hoped that after winning over the jury and the public – Atlantic won the Jury Prize and the Audience Prize – the film will be released in cinemas.
