cinematography
Zoltan Hauville
editing
Christine Bouteiller
music
Thibault Frisoni
sound
Maya Rosa

with
Fatsah Bouyahmed

production
Label Vidéo
producers
Véronique Holley
Raffaele Ventura
co-productions
Revolver
Via93
E2P
co-producers
Paolo Maria Spina
Sylvain Poubelle
Bruno Niepceron
Pierre-Jean Bartheye

with the support of
Région Île-de-France (in partnership with CNC)
Procirep – Société des producteurs & Angoa
Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée
Fonds Images de la Diversité
Agence Nationale de la Cohésion des territoires

Italian distribution
Revolver

After an accident leaves actor Fatsah Bouyahmed with memory loss, previously unseen archival footage from Aubervilliers – the housing estate on the outskirts of Paris where he grew up – begins to reconnect him with both his own personal past and the collective memory of his community. Filmed in the 1980s when an ambitious urban renewal project was underway, the images capture a neighborhood striving to improve its living conditions and imagine a better future. As Fatsah revisits the footage forty years later, memories of family, friendship, music, and daily life resurface alongside the social tensions of the time: the growing racism, inequality, and exclusion. Moving between past and present, Auber 89 revisits a fleeting moment of hope before disillusionment reshaped the Parisian suburbs, while the textures of television and VHS ground the story in the sensory world of the 80s.

2026 Auber 89 (doc)
2024 Bosco Grande (doc)
2022 Il Modernissimo di Bologna (doc)
2021 Zabut (short)
2019 Transhumance (VR, short)
2017 Tranzicion – arte e potere in Albania (doc)
2016 L’ombra del padrino – ricerche per un film (doc)
2013 Apolitics Now – tragicommedia di una campagna elettorale (doc)
2011 Cosmic Energy Inc. (doc)
2009 The Cambodian Room – situazioni con Antoine D’Agata (doc)

“Auber 89 came about following the discovery of a previously unseen archive containing hundreds of hours of footage documenting the regeneration of a Parisian suburb, Aubervilliers, in the 1980s. [...] When I discovered that the actor Fatsah Bouyahmed appeared, aged fifteen, in those footage clips, I contacted him to show him some of the sequences, but he told me he no longer wanted anything to do with Auber and that, moreover, he had recently lost his memory following an accident. The film thus became a healing ritual, in which Fatsah rediscovers his past and I come to understand the history of an area I’ve lived in for over a decade, but which I’ve always associated with the clichés of violence and marginalisation from the 1995 film La Haine. Thanks to Fatsah, however, I have discovered another history of France’s working-class neighbourhoods, one made up of struggles and community involvement, racism and disillusionment. Auber 89 reconstructs an intimate yet collective moment of solidarity and social transformation, before the banlieues went up in flames, – as they continue to do even today, and not only in France.” (Giuseppe Schillaci)

Giuseppe Schillaci published his first novel, L’anno delle ceneri, in 2010, and L’età definitiva in 2015. He’s an editor at Lit-blog Nazione Indiana and contributes to the French literary journals Revue Litteraire and Atelier du Roman, the Canadian Les Ecrits, and the Brazilian Mundo Mundano. As a filmmaker, he directed The Cambodian Room – situazioni con Antoine D’Agata in 2009. The documentary won numerous awards, including the Special Jury Prize at the Torino Film Festival. In 2011, he directed Cosmic Energy Inc., selected for Hot Docs at Toronto. Two years later, his Apolitics Now – tragicommedia di una campagna elettorale won the Italian Docs Londra Award and the SalinaDocFest Audience Award. In 2022, Schillaci made Il Modernissimo di Bologna, selected for the Torino Film Festival and winner of Best First Film at PriMed in Marseille. In 2024, his documentary Bosco Grande premiered at Giornate degli Autori, winning Best Film at Salina Doc Fest and Grand Prix de la compétition nationale at Fipadoc in Biarritz. He also holds writing and filmmaking workshops at film schools and the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.