La ferme des Bertrand (2023)

A story of rural life on a farm in Mieussy (the hamlet of Quincy), 800 metres above sea level overlooking the Giffre Valley in Haute-Savoie, the film traces the life of a farming family over 50 years by interweaving several documentary films. The Bertrand farm, a mid-mountain dairy operation with around a hundred head of livestock, run by three unmarried brothers and their father, was first filmed in 1972 by Marcel Trillat’s camera. As a neighbour, director Gilles Perret devoted his first film, “Three Brothers for a Lifetime...,” to them in 1997, as the three farmers were in the process of handing the farm over to their nephew Patrick and his wife Hélène. In 2022, 25 years later, the director-neighbour picks up the camera again to follow Hélène, who in turn is about to pass the farm on to a new generation: Marc, her son, and Alex, her son-in-law. Through the words and gestures of the people who have succeeded one another, the film weaves together the three eras and reveals deeply moving life journeys in which work and passing things on play an enormous role: the intimate, social and economic story of a certain rural world.