Géographie humaine

Human Geography, which forms a duology with Gare du Nord, was shot entirely in the huge and confusing railway station of that name in Paris. The filmmaker was obviously not primarily interested in the building or in the trains that arrive and depart, but in the people who hang around there. These people don’t usually leave and nor do they arrive, but they stay there almost permanently, as if it were one large village square.
The guide in this film is Simon Mérabet, a sociologist of Algerian descent, just as in the fictional part of the duology, Gare du Nord, where the main character is a sociologist of Algerian descent.
The conversations that Mérabet has with the inhabitants of the station are very informal, often humorous and regularly moving. The interviewees reveal the great dramas in their lives to the genial professor fairly quickly.

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