The great arc

Located west of Paris, La Défense is often called the most beautiful business district in Europe. With nearly 70 monumental works of art erected alongside its skyscrapers, the busy, opulent neighbourhood doubles as an open-air museum. In The Great Arc, the French animator Camille Authouart takes the audience on ‘a poetic and social stroll’ around La Défense, with her beautifully textured pastel animations of the district ultimately evolving into a surreal meditation on class and shared space.

Authouart draws a connection between La Défense’s public art and an unhoused man she observed sleeping under the film’s titular arch and resting against Alexander Calder’s steel sculpture Araignée Rouge, noticing how they had each become invisible to rush hour commuters. Blurring boundaries between documentary, narrative and poetic storytelling, Authouart’s immersive work forms a layered examination of urban life. Producers: Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, Pierre Baussaron Light, geometry and symbolism: how Jean Nouvel’s architecture reimagines culture From Celtic village to world capital: how Paris became Paris Timothée built his identity around his absent father.

What happens when they meet? Household items are reborn in a ‘visual symphony of everyday objects’ A whirlwind tour of Hong Kong’s high-rises is an awesome meditation on urbanity Moved by my father: a hallucinatory animated meditation on the body in motion The hopes and fears of the migrants selling souvenirs in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower Wry animations expose the gap between anxious aspiration and real life When his grandfather won’t talk about the war, Bastien is left to his imagination