Terrain Vague

A film between a short story and a social documentary, combining stifling atmosphere with humour and reflections of the millennials. We follow a fictional female journalist who tries to report on changes happening in poor neighbourhoods of Philadelphia with empty half-built compounds, the high-end centres of the future, for now reminiscent of some Kafkaesque novel. Black and white photographs on 16mm film accompanied by a monotonous female voiceover leading the audience through a dystopic fantasy with a caustic commentary on gentrification and class inequality in American cities. "Set in Philadelphia in the recent past, Terrain Vague takes the conversion of an industrial plant into a new tech-hub as a starting point to explore some of the tensions of the neoliberal city." E. Kihn