"Welfare : une plongée au cœur du système social américain"

Discover this exceptional and necessary documentary on the functioning of public assistance in the United States, and an incredible portrait of American society in the 1970s. Released in French cinemas for the first time this summer, 50 years after its filming . Duration: 2h47min. Vosft. Usual prices. Directed by Frederick Wiseman, it places us, for almost three hours, in the premises of a social assistance office in New York. Where employees and users find themselves helpless in the face of a system that governs their work and their lives. Welfare offers a very simple framework: people in need go to a social assistance center to present their requests to employees of a public institution. A situation from which Frederick Wiseman continues to create complexity. Assignments, meanings, causalities, explanations never stop moving, turning around, hesitating. This is what makes it such a tense, breathtaking, trying, moving film, open to numerous interpretations. Everyone comes to the Waverly welfare center with a pleading story. Employees are led to believe it or not, to identify its validity or possible flaws. And when this narrative is approved, employees of good will sometimes find themselves victims of the complexity, of the impossibilities of their bureaucracy.

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