This Is Our Land

This Is Our Land is a 2017 French-Belgian drama film directed by Lucas Belvaux and starring Émilie Dequenne, André Dussollier and Guillaume Gouix. It received seven nominations at the 8th Magritte Awards, including Best Film and Best Director for Belvaux, and won Best Actress for Dequenne. Plot Pauline is a home nurse who lives with her children, Tom and Lili, and her father Jacques, a retired worker and former member of the French Communist Party, in a small village in Pas-de-Calais, in northern France. Pauline belongs to a working-class family and has to worry about supporting the whole family on her only salary. Pauline is much loved by her patients, thanks to her open and caring character. Doctor Philippe Berthier, a right-wing physician who had assisted Pauline's mother before she died, approaches the woman to the ideas of a nationalist party led by Agnès Dorgelle, who proposes Pauline as candidate for mayor of her village. Pauline is reunited with Stéphane Stankowiak, an old friend from school, who trains the woman's son's soccer team. Pauline is unaware that Stéphane plays in a group of skinheads thugs, from which he gradually tries to move away so as not to damage the woman's election campaign. Berthier invites Stéphane to move away permanently from Pauline, threatening to disclose his subversive militancy and his past as a hitter in the service of Dorgelle's party.