With his 1999 feature debut “Human Resources,” director Laurent Cantet – who later won the Palme d’Or at Cannes with “The Class” – traced the economic and cultural fissures between France’s blue-collar, non-urban set, and the country’s managerial elite.
That conflict has played out writ large across the streets of Paris in recent weeks, as members of the “Gilets Jaunes” (Yellow Vest) movement have taken to the streets to protest French President Emmanuel Macron’s technocratic style of governance.A perceptive examiner of his country’s various fault lines, Cantet has been on jury duty at the Marrakech Film Festival, which wraps up Saturday.
When Variety sat down with Cantet to discuss past and future projects, we also asked about the protests that he seemed to foresee nearly two decades ago.What do you make of the ongoing situation in France?I feel that the government is completely deaf to the cries of the country.
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