Veiller sur le sommeil des villes

At the end of one summer, Louis sets off on a month-long solo journey through the ghostly, deserted Pas-de-Calais. He began to write pages and pages. Five years later, his travel diaries are published and he is invited on to the radio for an interview with Mathilde, a strange interviewer. Lost, or distraught under this spotlight, temporalities mingle, shifting from the whimsical radio interview to dreamlike recollections of a puzzling, and oddly funny, journey.

The journey actually takes place, in September 2020, as part of the Croquis de voyage of the Ecole du Nord in Lille, where Louis Albertosi was a student actor. Originally, the idea was to reprise the role of the angel in Wim Wenders' film Les Ailes du désir performed by Bruno Ganz. Like him, he wanted to watch over the inhabitants of the cities he passed through. His journey, like all journeys, took an unexpected turn. The covid decided that he would watch over the absence of others. He then finds himself in absolute solitude: a clueless angel who needs all the help in the world, he who wanted to help others.

Through this absurd, comic and musical journey, a vibrant manifesto gradually emerges, a declaration of love for works of art and their necessity. For they open us up to that which is greater than ourselves. And it's in the most ordinary everyday things - the city, its walls, its silences - that wonder often emerges.