This Is Our Land

(Chez nous, Lucas Belvaux, France/Belgium 2017, 114 min., DCP, French w/subtitles)

Labor Film Series | Rochester Premiere. Though Marine Le Pen was defeated in the 2017 French election, her far right-wing party and its nationalist, anti-immigrant platform live on. This Is Our Land is a fictionalized story of a working-class single mother in Northern France who naively agrees to run for mayor, representing the Patriotic Bloc. Lucas Belvaux, who previously directed Rapt, a terrific thriller about a French politician’s kidnapping, deals with another type of kidnapping here as Populist rhetoric dominates the electorate.