François Ruffin announces the release of his next film on November 6, called “Au boulot!”. After challenging lawyer and polemicist Alexandra Saldmann, the Somme MP filmed her working with workers paid the minimum wage. The goal? “Reintegrating the rich.”
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It all started with shocking comments made on a TV show about people declaring themselves on sick leave.We’re sick because we want to go home and get paid. That’s why we’re sick. A cold, a sore throat, and we’re not going to work? What kind of people are doing nothing?” said Parisian lawyer Sarah Saldmann in September 2022 on RMC Story.
The thirty-something liberal, who has since become a regular polemicist on the Bolloré group’s media (Europe 1, Cnews, C8), sometimes described these people as “glandus”, d'”assisted“, of “lazy people“, sometimes from “fragile” and of “weak“. The statements made François Ruffin jump, who challenged him a few months later.”I come with a friendly invitation to Mrs. Saldmann: that you come and settle in for a month with the minimum wage,” he proposed to her in February 2023 on the same channel.
This bet finally became a film: the deputy of the Somme announced on September 19 on X (ex-Twitter) the release of his new production, called At work !in collaboration with his co-director Gilles Perret.
In the trailer for the film, which is scheduled for release on November 6, we see Sarah Saldmann scrubbing toilets, participating in a distribution by the Secours populaire d’Abbeville and meeting fiber installers. This implies that the controversialist tried her hand at these precarious jobs, in total opposition to her activities on the sets.
“What I want to do is the social reintegration of the rich, the deputy-reporter ironically states in the short promotional excerpt. Is Sarah Saldmann good or bad, has she really changed, we don’t care, that’s not the subject, the subject is people.“
THE timing This film announcement comes as a surprise, in the midst of a storm within the left following the boos received by François Rufin at the Fête de l’Humanité on September 15, during a debate where he confirmed his distance from the ideas of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The reactions on the left to the film were not long in coming. On X, the rebellious deputy Rima Hassan deplores that the Picard elected official is making “the modest and poor classes (…) with the sponsors of the genocide in Gaza” and calls for a boycott ofAt work !. “The problem is not that she is rich but that she is a fascist, says ironically Cédric Herrou, a farmer from the Zuréen region known for his commitment to undocumented people.. And I also imagine that the promotion will be beneficial to minimum wage earners. (sic)? Well, have a good slide in the land of the Fascists, my dear François.”
The interested party assures them that the film is a “right of reply (…) of people on RSA“face”to the horrors that the editorialists [comme Sarah Saldmann] “They tell stories behind their backs.” In the press kit, the two directors add that the filming took place before the lawyer’s arrival on C-News, her “switches to a very right-handed position“and his positions”without compassion” with regard to Gazans since October 7, 2023.
Answers in theaters on November 6. If you can’t wait, a preview screening is already scheduled for Friday, October 18 in Abbeville.
