Le vivre ensemble
2017 · 2m · España
Directed by José Luis Santos
Genres: documentary, drama
Tones: contemplative, tense
Julien directs a school in a Paris neighbourhood. After the Bataclan attack he receives Ministry guidelines against possible threats, including drills with children between 3 and 11 years old. He must choose between saving their lives or their innocence in an education system whose main motto is 'Le vivre ensemble'.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Santos could've made a screaming indictment of post-terror pedagogy, but instead he chose restraint—which is almost subversive in how it refuses the cathartic outrage you're waiting for, leaving the real horror in the gap between policy and childhood.
A formally precise essay on the impossible ethics of institutional duty, where the editing rhythm and the bureaucratic silence carry as much weight as dialogue; this is the kind of film that lives in conversation with documentary modernism and the tradition of socially conscious French cinema.
The crucial choice is the near-total absence of the children's faces during the drill—we see only Julien's measured expression as he orchestrates their fear, and that single directorial decision transforms what could be didactic into something genuinely unsettling on a micro-budget.