In 1975, director René Allio wrapped his adaptation of Michel Foucault’s tome I, Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother... Documentarian Nicolas Philibert was an assistant on this reconstruction of a 1830s murder, and here he searches out the amateurs who made up the cast, while trying to explain why a sensitive country boy was driven to kill his father’s tormentors.
The combination of memoir and historical sleuthing will make more sense when both films are released on DVD later this year, but this is a typically detailed Philibertian profile of working people contributing towards something remarkable.