In 1977 France, the Ministry of the Future chooses two “normal,” white, middle-class citizens, Claudine and Jean-Michel, for a national experiment. They will be monitored and displayed on television for six months in a model apartment outfitted with state-of-the-art products and nonstop surveillance—the template for “a new city for the new man".
Direction
Klein's agitprop style weaponizes Brechtian alienation brutally.
Production
The sterile apartment set feels like IKEA designed Panopticon.
Acting
Anémone's deadpan descent into manufactured normalcy haunts.
Director
William Klein
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Klein made this after decades as fashion photographer—he literally helped create the image-obsessed world he now satirized.
The 'video screen' keyword undersells it: this is basically The Truman Show's angry socialist grandmother, released 21 years earlier.
FR
CH
