18/05/2002 - As work progressed Romain Goupil's Une pure coïncidence became the story of France's sans papiers

Nobody wanted to touch this film. Foreign distributors and French television wouldn´t come near it and yet Une pure coïncidence, presented last night in Directors´ Fortnight, was extremely well received by critics and the public alike.
During production, Romain Goupil and his five-man crew discovered an illegal immigrants´ racket operating in Paris´ 19th arrondissement.
«The original idea was to make a film for the father of one of my co-workers - said Goupil - but after hearing this illegal immigrant tell us about the existence of an office, disguised as a bureau de change, where his fellow illegals were forced to leave a part of their earnings if they wanted to avoid trouble, we changed our minds.
Armed with a digital camcorder, the filmmaking team included footage reporting this situation and thus speeded up intervention by the French authorities. «We have 60,000 sans papiers in France who have stated their desire to pay taxes just like any other French citizen quite a number of times. Unfortunately, nobody listens. These people are all victims of racket, they work in the black economy, are isolated and live under a kind of house arrest. They are second-class citizens and this is absolutely scandalous in this day and age,» said Goupil, who began his career as assistant to Jean-Luc Godard and Roman Polanski.
Une pure coïncidence is a fine example of a militant film even though it is the exact opposite of the work of another famous politically-committed director, Ken Loach. The film is scheduled for release in France on 29 May and it will be interesting to what reception this intriguing mix of reality and fiction will get.