Speak Up

Note: The October 12 screening has been moved to the Francesca Beale Theater at 9pm.

Q&A with Stephane de Freitas following the screenings on 10/12 and 10/13. Leila Alaoui will join the Q&A on 10/12 and after the 6:30PM screening on 10/13.

Each year at the University of Saint-Denis in the suburbs of Paris, the Eloquentia competition takes place to determine the best orator in the class. Speak Up (À voix haute – La Force de la Parole) follows the students, who come from a variety of family backgrounds and academic disciplines, as they prepare for the competition while coached by public-speaking professionals like lawyers and slam poets. Through the subtle and intriguing mechanics of rhetoric, these young people both reveal and discover themselves, and it is impossible not to be moved by the personal stories that surface in their verbal jousts, from the death of a Syrian nightingale to a father’s Chuck Norris–inspired approach to his battle with cancer. Without sentimentality, Speak Up proves how the art of speech is key to universal understanding, social ascension, and personal revelation. Special thanks to French Cultural Services.