When Jour2Fête, the distributor of “la Ferme des Bertrand”, scheduled the release of the film for January 31 months ago, he obviously could not imagine that it would come at the height of the anger of the agricultural world.
Chance therefore does things wonderfully: discovering this documentary, which recounts fifty years of the life of a farm in Haute-Savoie, allows the spectator, at the best possible moment, to grasp all the specificities, the difficulties and the joys of the peasant existence.
In this case on a cattle farm, which the director and documentary maker Gilles Perret knows well (“Reprise en main”, “De Mémoires d’ouvriers”…).
Firstly because he has lived in front of the Bertrand farm since he was a child, and has seen three generations of breeders succeed one another.
Especially because he filmed his very first documentary there, “Three Brothers for a Life”, in 1997. The farm seems to attract the cameras, which is the strength of this story.
In 1972, the great journalist from the French Radio and Television Office (ORTF) Marcel Trillat, himself the son of farmers, filmed some black and white sequences there.
Twenty-five years later, Perret reunited with the three brothers who owned the place for his documentary.
A new quarter of a century later, he reintroduced his cameras with a fantastic idea: to combine images from the three films in “La Ferme des Bertrand”, which resulted in a unique document covering fifty years in the life of a cattle exploitation.
A representative exploitation
The spectator, amazed, discovers an astonishing evolution: how the approach, initially sacrificial, of three Savoyard brothers, who have sweated blood and water all their lives, resulted in a lasting, “happy” enterprise, even says Gilles Perret, now very mechanized and run by the brothers' young nephews with their mother.
What is this little miracle due to?
The fact that the Bertrand farm is located in the AOP zone, that of Reblochon: their milk, subject to more rules than that of unprotected zones, is sold more expensive.
“The Bertrands have their own constraints to best defend the Reblochon appellation,” explains the director.
But they must fight to maintain a high level of rules on the AOP, not to level down to find themselves in the law of the market.
Those who are demonstrating at the moment are not lucky enough to be in protected territories.
The Bertrands are aware of theirs…”
The other strength of the feature film is to film not, like most documents devoted to this universe, an immense exploitation or, on the contrary, a tiny farm committed to a "return to the land", but a property of medium size and representative, in terms of number of farmers, of 80% of those found in France.
“They need to be protected”
“We chose an average farm, but one that works,” insists Gilles Perret.
They are not the ones demonstrating, but they are very supportive, because they also suffer from contempt and invisibility.
We show that they are in technology, in today's world, but also in respect for the environment, because they are in an agriculture constrained by AOPs.
The specifications for Reblochon are not far from organic.
The cows must spend one hundred and fifty days a year in the pastures…”
Why have those who do not have the opportunity to work in a protected area been protesting for several days?
Gilles Perret understands the issues well: “There are too many rules: we ask them to produce better, with more standards, but, at the same time, we open markets via free trade treaties with New Zealand or Brazil .
Hence their anger.
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Does he, who has always lived alongside and lived alongside farmers, see solutions to the current crisis?
“They need to be protected according to the place where they live, their climatic constraints… Special protective rules should be enacted according to the working conditions and territories of each person.
Regulate, impose floor prices for mass distribution, call into question the sacrosanct free market…”
Reconnect with reality
If this film is so timely, it is also in its way of reconnecting urban audiences with the rural world.
By showing fifty years of the life of a farm, Perret reminds us to what extent the farms that operate today owe to the sacrifice of their elders.
“That’s not the start-up nation!”
» he smiled.
And it rediscovers the daily lives of those involved: 365 days of work per year — “especially for breeding, the cows don't take vacations” —, a family life that mixes with farm activities, exhausting but exciting jobs , the defense of the environment, food self-sufficiency, the beauty of the working environments, existence in the open air, the love of animals, and so on... Better still, “la Ferme des Bertrand” makes us reconnect with a reality that we too tend to forget: it is the farmers who feed us.
Useful reminders which undoubtedly explain the emerging success of the documentary: even before its release, 50 previews enabled it to already accumulate 15,000 admissions.
Which makes Gilles Perret say: “During these projections, I noticed the attachment to the agricultural world, even more in the most urbanized areas.
We all have family ties with farmers…”
Editor's note:
4/5
“The Bertrand Farm”,
French documentary by Gilles Perret, in theaters Wednesday.
(1h29)