"We Are Battlefields"

This film is an investigation into the global business of war and control (and what resists it). It is completely self-produced and self-distributed. We have also made the political and economic choice to offer it at a free price. This means you can donate whatever you want/can afford to see it.

Your donations allow this project to exist and to continue making tools for struggles.

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If you encounter any problems, please contact atelier.aaefp@gmail.com

A tool for critical understanding of the business of war and control, this film is also an artistic and philosophical reflection on the power of images and our shared participation in ongoing catastrophes.

Since the early 2000s, I’ve been investigating the origins and workings of the security system. I’ve come to know it intimately. In 2017, 2021 and 2023, I managed to get accredited as a journalist to enter Milipol, the “world trade fair for internal state security”. There, I conducted interviews with arms manufacturers, sales people and communications managers from the war and control show, who responded by treating me as one of their own.

I was able to film the director of Axon, the company that markets Taser electric guns and equips police forces worldwide with intelligent cameras and data processing software. I interviewed an executive from Gicat, the French defense and security industry group, the parent company of the French military-industrial complex. I filmed and interviewed two Israeli company directors, proud to present their latest riot control technologies and “preventive treatment” software for “crowd control”.

I conducted interviews with “augmented reality” start-ups overseeing “security” for the upcoming 2024 Olympic Games and preparing to sell their “Smart and Safe cities” management technologies worldwide. I interviewed the marketing manager of Nobel France, a shotgun company doing its utmost to sell its latest Flashballs all over the world. I filmed the director of Idémia, the world leader in biometric technologies. He calmly explains how his company is preparing to install facial recognition in France, as it is already doing in Singapore. He shows me their latest technologies for managing flows, prisons and borders...

These interviews are the raw material for a film about the security order and what resists it.

I decided to confront the images of this global market in violence with the views and experiences of those whose bodies and lives are affected by the technologies of power. I propose to reflect together, at the intersection of our existences and our resistances.

I’ve been involved in struggles against state violence for years, both as a supporter and as a victim of police beatings. Along the way, I met Fatou Dieng and Fahima Laidoudi. They became my friends and comrades. They experienced the concrete implications of the security order in their own flesh and blood, and became critical analysts of it. Each, in her own way, has committed herself to surviving and coping. They have agreed to tell their stories and reflect with us on this global market in violence.

Life has brought us together as witnesses. We tell our stories as investigators. And this film shows how we become strategists. Our collective transformation through friendship and struggle is the hidden fabric of this story. To tell it, I take the camera into the shelters where we help each other. Together, we analyze the architecture of violence. We decipher the day-to-day workings of the power of security over our lives. We retrace the paths of our struggles. We look behind us, and with a deep breath, we plunge into ourselves to imagine common liberations.
To get the film completely free of charge, write to noussommesdeschampsdebataille@gmail.com, and we’ll send you a password for the film.

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