Franck Venaille
Writing
Biography
The poet François (known as Franck) Venaille was born in the working-class 11th arrondissement of Paris. He received a Catholic upbringing and joined the Communist Party at a very young age following his military service in Algeria. Papiers d'identité, his first book published in 1966, looks back on this period, which he would also explore in Hourra les morts! (Obsidiane, 2003) and in L'Enfant rouge, published by Mercure de France shortly after his death in 2018.
Known For
When his father dies a young man has the choice to continue the farmwork of his old man who suffered because of the hard labour and all the regulations.
Le grand paysage d'Alexis Droeven
Pierre, a young man of Brussels, has lost his job. Unbeknowst to Barbara, the woman he lives with, he has become a pickpocket to survive. He works in partnership with a young Tunisian immigrant he meets every Sunday in an abandoned bus where they share the loot of the week. One day, Pierre finds his accomplice dead in their hiding place. Pierre suddenly realizes that he does not know much about his dead friend. Taking possession of his identity papers, Pierre decides to go to Tunisia to find out who his friend actually was.
The Son of Amir Is Dead
In the 1980s, writer, poet, radio personality and football enthusiast Franck Venaille is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He decides to travel the length of the Scheldt river, to dip his hands in its source, and brings back the long epic poem La Descente de l'Escaut. Today, the disease has progressed, but Venaille still spends much of his time working in the study where he wrote the text. Je me suis en marche is both a road movie weaving together the poem, Venaille now and during his journey, and a documentary adaptation of the epic odyssey of a sick man retracing a river across 450 kilometres.