Looking Forward
L'Histoire d'un réveil citoyen à l'heure du changement climatique
Laura Lardeux
2020 - 30 min - Film 16 mm & vidéo Full HD - Couleur - France

In 2020, the hearts and minds of a group of villagers in La Clusaz, a well-known ski-resort situated at the foot of the Aravis mountains, in the French Alps were upset by a local development project. The cornerstone of the project was a Club Med resort, which aimed to increase the tourist capacity, in a village that was already saturated in the winter months. Building, digging, pulling down, destroying, supplying…the never-ending process…
A group of men and women…pensioners, business owners, ski instructors, full-time parents… most of whom had absolutely no political experience, outraged by the development project, and by the local council’s lack of environmental vision, decided to get together and create an electoral list, ADN, six months ahead of the council elections.
They overturned the political landscape of the village, which, for decades had been used to voting for a single list, often led by the same figures.
Pulling together mountain lovers, and committed defenders of nature, the list was headed by the thirty-something Alexandre Hamelin, born organizer and highly active in the life of the resort. His motivation and powerful leadership take us behind the scenes of the campaign. With his desire to offer a sustainable future in a healthy environment, guaranteed for future generations, the outspoken, ski-hatted and ski-booted Alexandre leads his colleagues to challenge the age-old assumptions surrounding the ‘white gold’ economy.
The resilience and resistance of these modern-day pirates carries us along with their contagious enthusiasm and altruism through the adventure of an electoral campaign, which itself was disrupted by fate. The COVID-19 pandemic hung like the sword of Damocles right up until election day, at which point France was forced into lockdown. Would this renewal of political ideas, whose aims were to reinvent the modes of tourism and to act in kindness and empathy for all, and would this civic momentum, spurred on by the need to reclaim their environment, be sufficient to install in people’s minds the necessity for progressive measures in an area reluctant to change?
The adventure of this collective, considered naive by some, and sensible and visionary by others, restored many people’s faith in the word "politics".