The Arrivals

Claudine Bories & Patrice Chagnard

Caroline and Colette are social workers. All day long, they receive families who are seeking asylum in France to assist them with the process. Every day, there are new arrivals, from the four corners of the world, by charter plane or by covered truck.
How can they deal with the overwhelming flood tide of all this distress, of all these needs?
Caroline is young, impulsive and irascible. Colette, older, is compassionate and disorganized.
Opposite them, the “arrivals”, exhausted, wounded but obstinate – exasperating at times and moving at others. The film relates this tense and explosive confrontation in which each defends his or her own role.
For Colette and Caroline, it’s a matter of doing their work without becoming snowed under, but for the arrivals, through their asylum requests, it’s a matter of saving their lives.