28/03/2025 - Gaspard Hirschi revisits Don Quixote with stupefying and joyful audacity, mapping out Marseille by following in the footsteps of an improbable duo

“Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we could have ever hoped.” In the image of this line from Cervantes’ world famous masterpiece, it is indeed in the heart of the adventures, unusual and full of an eccentrically intelligent charm, that Gaspard Hirschi takes us with I Am Night at Noonday, unveiled in competition at the 47th Cinéma du réel Festival and also screening this week at CPH:DOX.

For it is indeed an extravagant and rambling “Don Quixote, knight of the sorrowful countenance” who is today in the flesh in Marseille’s labyrinthine neighbourhoods, riding his steed, with his armor, helmet, spear and shield to support him, under the intrigued and mocking looks of the population. Who is this madman (Manolo Bez) escaped from the equestrian theatre of the Centaur, “who has come to the world to restore the order of the errant knighthood”, help the dispossessed, find his Dulcinea and ride into the construction site engines like so many giants? Fascinated, pizza delivery driver Daniel Saïd improvises himself as Sancho Panza and, on his scooter, accompanies the urban peregrinations of a weirdo who proves less insane than he seems.

“We will cross ten countries, meet twenty tribes.” King of Spain, Château-Gombert, the Vélodrome, Noailles, Saint-Charles, Félix Pyat, the 14th arrondissement, etc.: roaming through the Phocean city from south to north, through the days and nights, the incredible and improbable duo becomes a sociological mirror for a city taken over by segregation, residences and closed roads, as well as the dangerous economy of drug trafficking. But a sympathetic and extremely unbridled youth also emerges, oasis in the concrete desert of the popular neighbourhoods (the community fast-food shop L’Après M), existential conversations, side roads and evenings under the stars, Add a pinch of history (from country houses to housing estates), a map for the local geography, a zest of philosophy (“being before appearing”, or Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia), a resounding of the alarm for biodiversity and a state of mind freed from norms (“we listen, we breathe, we do nothing”), and you get a hybrid documentary film like no other.

Requiring a short time to adapt to its mechanics and sometimes flirting with a chaotic narration (and purposefully artisanal) worthy of its mad main protagonist, I Am Night at Noonday reveals itself to be a very original piece of work, at once funny and dramatic in its blend of hyper-realism and Ariadne’s “theatrical” thread, successfully creating an unusual look at the surrounding society. The whole is cradled by very beautiful music (Asturiana by Manuel de Falla and Capricho árabe by Francisco Táregga). But it is also a very endearing human story for, as Don Quixote-Emmanuel finally says, “I am happy for in this life that did not keep all its promises, I have at least met a faithful friend.”

I Am Night at Noonday was produced by Les Films de l’oeil sauvage and co-produced by Image de la ville, Théâtre du Centaure and Seconde Vague Productions.

(Translated from French)