The We and the I

Closing Night! U.S. Premiere!

Cast members in person!

Michel Gondry’s delightful and wholly unexpected lo-fi experiment is a mobile kammerspiel set entirely on a crowded bus wending its way through the Bronx as it takes its high-school student passengers home on the last day of school. The film was developed by the unpredictable French director and his ensemble cast in an after-school arts-and-activism workshop—the latest in a series of site-specific open-participation film projects undertaken by Gondry between directing everything from Hollywood blockbusters to intimate personal documentaries. At first glance The We and the I might come off like an experiment in realism or ethnography, but Gondry is much more invested in celebrating the individuality of each member of his young multiethnic cast (all playing themselves) and the way the dynamics within and across its different subgroups and cliques shift and play out in a free-form setting that’s by turns raucously funny, poignantly tender, and gently observant. Moreover any notion that this is an exercise in naturalism are dispelled when you begin to notice how Gondry takes mischievous liberties with time and place (this is the longest bus ride in cinema history, and day turns to night before everybody gets home!). One of the most winning films of the year!