three peasant brothers recount fifty years of a life of labor against a backdrop of agricultural crisis

While tractors block Paris and the prefectures of France, the coincidence of the programming sees the release of an edifying documentary on life on the farm from 1972 to 2022.

While the agricultural world has been rumbling for a week, The Bertrand Farmwhich comes out on Wednesday January 31, comes at the right time to understand the nature of an extraordinary work that is rarely mentioned or idealized on screen.

Documentarian of the world of work, Gilles Perret films for the second time the Bertrand brothers, cattle breeders in Haute-Savoie. But their first appearance, of which he is not the author, dates back to 1972, and extracts are included in the film. Their second appearance on screen (Three brothers for one life) remained confidential in 1999, but the latter, The Bertrand Farmis good, thanks to better distribution, and extends until 2022. The film “takes advantage” of hot news, with peasant blockades currently everywhere in France.

Written in advance

Haute-Savoie 2022: the Bertrand brothers, three single people, and their sister-in-law Hélène, remember fifty years of a life devoted to their dairy cow breeding. In 1972, it was the almost forced takeover of the farm and its modernization, after the retirement of the parents. 1992 saw the sale of the estate to their nephew Patrick and his wife Hélène. But her husband has disappeared, and she must now separate from him and find a new owner.

This family saga overlaps with that of the rural and agricultural world, with production, mechanization, and today computerization in constant evolution. At the same time, a way of life is affirmed, choices and duties which are part of an intimate conviction. That of being in one’s place in the continuity of a story, of a history. To hear them, the Bertrand brothers and their sister-in-law are like the heirs of a path marked out in advance, at once intimate, social and economic. André’s assessment is mixed: “an economic success, but a human failure”. Bitter.

A story in progress

Gilles Perret takes his subject head on with a simplicity which is that of an encounter and a transmission. A spontaneous naturalness is established between the viewer and this family of three brothers and a sister-in-law who are farmers. They explain and experience before our eyes a conversion to the land, initially unplanned, which has become a reason for living. Filmed to the rhythm of the seasons, the harshness of the earth’s profession mixes with a modernization which rubs shoulders with the use of ancestral tools such as the scythe.

The Bertrand Farm bears witness to an agricultural history in progress. The film transmits this mutation, but it is also a human story in the journey of each of the three brothers and their sister-in-law in the distribution of tasks or the responsibility that farmers have in shaping the landscape while remaining productive . So many factors, personal investments, and human relationships that transmit The Bertrand Farmto encounter a reality that we are passionate about discovering, or getting to know better.

The sheet

Gender : Documentary
Director: Gilles Perret
Country : France
Duration : 1h29
Exit : January 31, 2024
Distributer : Day2Party