This film is followed by a prerecorded Q&A.

DOXA audience favourite Claire Simon returns with a project that defies easy categorization. Edited from footage shot for her recent TV series (the similarly titled The Village), The Grocer’s Son, the Mayor, the Village and the World… explores globalization and technology through the microcosm of Lussas, a small French village with an unusual dual economic base. Lussas is home both to traditional family farms and wineries, as well as to a renowned international documentary film festival: Les États généraux du film documentaire. Looking to build on the festival’s success, Lussas-born filmmaker Jean-Marie Barbe (who participated in DOXA Industry in 2017) embarks on an ambitious and utopian project to simultaneously bring into being L’imaginaire, a physical facility to support international documentary filmmaking, as well as Tënk, an online documentary streaming platform (a goal that draws oddly near to DOXA’s own recent experience). As the title suggests, the project pits workers against Barbe, Barbe against his fellow villagers, and villagers against tourists—all in service of carving out a place for documentary filmmaking in a world that can feel both large and small at the same time. -TA

“Hand-picked fruit and handmade cinema are equally up against it in this environment, a parallel that this wry, humane film manages to make tacitly and without undue self-importance.”- GUY LODGE, VARIETY