FERMETURE DE L'USINE RENAULT À VILVOORDE

February 1997: Louis Schweitzer, CEO of French car company Renault, makes the irrevocable decision to close the big Renault factory in Vilvoorde (Belgium) within three months. The Renault workmen immediately begin a strike and carry out a programme of action in Belgium and in France. The film shows the development of the strike by following some workers and the Film Director, in the demonstrations (with interviews of Belgian and French politicians and trade unionists), meetings, and at home.
After the closure, Jan Bucquoy and a worker think about what could have been a more radical action and draw up the report of lost battles. The - very subjective - documentary turns into a subversive fiction. The small team kidnap Louis Schweitzer... .

"The managers have to understand that even if they are human beings, with wife and children, even if they have the right to compassion, the moment comes when too much cynicism condems them. But this is not a call for anybody's assassination. It's merely the breaking of ethics allowed by fiction" says J. Bucquoy.

This docu-fiction is the third part of The Sexual Life of the Belgians. Having examined the affective side in The Sexual Life of the Belgians Part 1 (1994) and the cultural side in Camping Cosmos (1996) Jan Bucquoy considers here the labour world.

This work has been digitised in the frame of DCA Project