Ali’s grocery store is the only store in the »La Source« neighbourhood that has remained in business since the shopping centre closed down and slowly started to fall into decline – like many other things here in the Paris suburb of Epinay-sur-Seine.
A victim of the political desire for modernisation in the 1950s, this once lively district with its many cafés and pedestrians is now a concrete desert. Three thousand people from over 20 nations live here in confined conditions in buildings that have never been painted, with lifts that only occasionally work. The community is one of the most densely populated on the earth. Modern France – for its inhabitants a mere postcard dream. Epinay-sur-Seine is one of the banlieues, or Paris suburbs, where riots erupted in 2005.
Ali’s grocery store is the neighbourhoods most important meeting place. Although he has problems of his own – the roof leaks and he doesn’t have enough money to repair it – Ali greets each of his customers with a welcoming smile. Some of them he’s known since they were born.
Chantal Briet’s award-winning documentary is a moving, often amusing account of everyday life in a so-called social hotspot: children and pensioners, workers and housewives all come to Ali’s store to pass the time, gossip, sometimes sing, and then they leave again. The supermarket that gives the film its title is a comfort zone in a neighbourhood in which public authorities, urban planners and architects have failed in every respect.

Film programme Broken Landscapes

Awards for ›Alimentation Générale‹
Grand Prix Doclisboa Odisseia for the best feature documentary, Festival DocLisboa 2005 | Grand Prix du Jury, Documenta Festival Madrid 2006