The Palm Desert band Eagles of Death Metal was performing at the Bataclan theater in Paris in November 2015 when terrorists opened fire, killing 89 people. The best friends who formed the band lead us through the horror and its aftermath in this moving documentary about the power of friendship and rock and roll.
Since the cult success of Merci Patron!, activist/journalist/filmmaker François Ruffin has become an MP. Here, he attempts to table a law aimed at upholding the rights of what in Quebec are known as caregivers, and shows us in passing how a law whose need seems patently obvious is put together, debated, voted on and . . . dies on the battleground of French politics. A stirring documentary about social injustice that somehow manages to make us bust a gut laughing as we rage with indignation. And also cry at the beauty of it all, thanks to the director’s humanist sensibility and a deft play between reality and fiction.