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PLEASE MADAM, ANSWER ME !

S'IL VOUS PLAÎT MADAME, RÉPONDEZ-MOI !

By Marie-Laure DÉSIDÉRI, Christian ARGENTINO

NOVANIMA PRODUCTIONS - as PROD

Historical - Completed 2021

Between the wars, more than eight hundred young Polish women came to the French countryside to work as farm maids. Their story has come down to us thanks to the letters exchanged with their social worker, Julie Duval.

- Year of production
- 2021
- Genres
- Historical, Social issues, Documentary
- Countries
- FRANCE
- Languages
- FRENCH, ENGLISH
- Duration
- 55 mn
- Director(s)
- Marie-Laure DÉSIDÉRI, Christian ARGENTINO
- Cast
- Karolina CHABIER, Marie-France ARGENTINO
- ISAN
- 0000-0005-685A-0000-L-0000-0000-B
- Producer(s)
- Marc FAYE (NOVANIMA PRODUCTIONS)
- Synopsis
- Between the two wars, France recruited large numbers of Polish women workers, often very young, to work as farm maids. Thanks to exceptional archives, kept at the Departmental Archives by their social worker, Julie Duval (employed between 1931 and 1934 at the departmental committee for the aid and protection of immigrant women), as well as photographic portraits of these foreigners taken by Louis Clergeau, a country photographer, the film sets out to tell the story of the destiny of these immigrant women in the countryside and their relationship with Julie Duval, who was herself engaged in a bitter fight to defend their cause.
  
  The correspondence and unpublished photographs give an embodied, human and moving dimension to these women's journeys, which combine both the small and the big stories. The filmmakers decided to return to the places where these women workers were welcomed and to stage these archives in contemporary settings. "Please madam, answer me!" tells the story of this little-known part of the history of immigration to the countryside. It is about a double discrimination that affects them: being a woman and an immigrant.