“Cry a good blow, it’s normal to cry”, the listeners of SOS Friendship collect the overwhelming speech of anonymous

The documentary “Listenings” explores the mission of SOS AMIENTIAL volunteers. Behind each call, a human emergency, a sometimes silent cry, captured with sobriety. Dorothée Lorang and David Beautru sign a sensitive portrait of anonymous listening, in the heart of the night.

At the end of the line, a woman is in full panic attack and barely manages to speak. “”Do you want us to breathe together? Maybe then we can talk?“Quietly suggest the volunteer of Permanence that night in Nantes. This stifling sequence, which opens the documentary” Les listeners “, precipitates us in the urgency of situations that we know nothing except that overflows. She intensely sums up the motivation of the callors: to speak to someone, immediately, and often as a last resort.

Breathe first, when anxiety imprisoned the speech itself. And then listen to the words that come, as they come. Situations of loneliness, mourning, illness, fear, exclusion. Listen to silences, breath, sobs and sometimes cries. The calls are sometimes lighter, generate more banal conversations.

But is there really banality to call someone you don’t know to discuss the weather, dogs and cats, except to admit that we have no one else to talk to?

Documentary just and tense, “listeners” precipitates us in the daily lives of these volunteers who have chosen to hear the word of other men and women, in respect, without judgment, and without giving in to the temptation to tell them what they or they must do.

We do not give advice, but we can listen to everything insofar as the person is respectful

A volunteer from SOS Friendship

Whenever the phone rings the permanence of SOS Friendship, a new story begins, that you will have to know how to listen without preparation. This is regularly similar to an event, when the appellant develops suicidal projects, is aggressive or insulting. In the latter case, we will hang the phone courteously.

Listeners do not leave these long hours of conversations. A solid training of a hundred hours, regular supervision and sharing groups make it possible to analyze and evacuate emotional loads that are sometimes too strong.

Listening is to fulfill your role with your own personality, experience and intimacy, necessarily it touches in sensitive places. “”It’s normal to be touched“Said one of them during a sharing group, because”It brings us back to our lives“Add another one. Touched yes, but you have to be careful not to be injured.

Dorothée Lorang and David Beautru have chosen a sober, neat, clinical realization. In a few night plans of buildings of buildings dotted with rare lit windows, the credits, suggests solitudes suspended in the anonymity of Nantes darkness.

The assembly, then alternating the medium and tight plans in the functional and impersonal decor of the listening office, shows us the concentrated, but never impassive faces of the listeners of SOS Friendship. He grasps the imperceptible movement of a shoulder which falls under the blow of the relief, a eyebrow which rises under the effect of surprise, a look that is lost in the void to seek the right word. An option that gives value and power to the words and silences exchanged.

In this closed door where the lighting of the office lamps suggests the night outside, little loopholes by wide plans, economy of cutting plans, no interview with the protagonists: each call is a new dive which begins with a deep inspiration before winning, where humanity reigns in all its complexity and contradictions. It is sometimes, like anonymous reunion, one or a regular, who comes to find from the company.

To convince SOS Friendship to authorize them to film telephone permanence, the directors made a non -negotiable commitment with the association: the absolute preservation of the anonymity of the appellants. This is why the votes on the phone were replayed after the editing by actors, and substituted for real calls at the end of a work of interpretation of goldsmith.

For having followed the production of this documentary since its premises and during the editing could have heard the real voices of the appellants, I can testify that the remarks we mean in the final version are not only in the tone of the original calls, but are above all the exact restitution of their content, with the exception of the mentions of cities which would have made it possible to locate the person who calls.

“Listeners“is a singular journey to the end of the night. The fragility of which the documentary testifies and which touches us is not only that of men and women of all ages and of all conditions which call. It is also the fruit of a society whose individualism exercises on many of us its violence and which, the day when we lose work, spouse, and simply hope, offers too little comfort.

“Cry a good blow, it’s normal to cry, it will do you good“Said a listening to a mourning woman, she lost her daughter. She does not recover. Her family tells her that she would now have to turn the page. Just as hell is paved with good intentions, loneliness sometimes takes the face of those around him.

To reach SOS Friendship 24/7, compose: 09 72 39 40 50 (price of a local call), or by chat 7 days a week from 1 p.m. to 3 a.m.

Listeners, a documentary by Dorothée Lorarag and David Beautru, To see Thursday, May 1 in the second part of the evening on France 3 Pays de la Loire.

A co -production strongly on Monday! – France 3 Pays de la Loire

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