We

Filmmaker Alice Diop creates a kaleidoscopic portrait of people from largely Black and immigrant communities in the Parisian suburbs, their lives and work connected by the RER B commuter train that cuts through the city from north to south. Her subjects include a migrant from Mali working as a mechanic; her own sister, a community care worker making house calls to the elderly; the writer Pierre Bergounioux, expounding upon centuries of French history and inequity; and an energetic variety of young people enjoying coveted leisure time in their own corners of the banlieues. Appearing on screen -- and therefore making herself part of the "we" of the title -- Diop says that in her filmmaking she aims to "conserve the existence of ordinary lives." Her film is not just a work of conservation, but also of intellectual rigor, and of love.