Shot in Paris in 2016, Hind Meddeb’s urgent and intimate documentary immerses us in the Paris Stalingrad neighborhood where floods of immigrants who have fled wars and persecution in Africa and the Middle East sleep on the streets where they are continually subject to police raids. We see a French bureaucracy overwhelmed and undermanned; we see sympathetic activists and volunteers trying to help in the face of increasingly brutal repression. This empathetic on-the-ground report puts us in the shoes of these abandoned refugees. At the center of this story is 17-year-old Souleymane, whose family was lost in the war in Darfur. Souleymane, who has been homeless and adrift since he was 13 and is praying that he can find a legal home in France, recites poetry to keep his spirits alive. The filmmaker becomes an active participant in her own movie, developing deep connections with her subjects, further emphasizing the level of empathy generated by these stories.

Director Hind Meddeb is expected to be in attendance on January 3 and 4.