A recurring image in Julie Georgia Bernard’s exquisite documentary Handmade With Love in France (screening October 4, 5, and 10) is callused fingers in close-up—painstakingly embroidering sequins, folding pleats, carving wooden hat forms, and cutting petal shapes for silk flowers. One of the veteran Parisian artisans she profiles even has his fingertips stained raspberry red from forming those floral embellishments for haute couture gowns.

“I saw there was a huge gap between fashion shows and who really makes these absolutely amazing gowns,” Bernard tells the Straight from her home in Paris before coming here to speak at screenings as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s new style series. “What I thought was really interesting as an image was these rundown hands with dirty nails—workers’ hands. These are the hands that make the haute couture gowns.”

Bernard’s documentary takes viewers behind the scenes to the cramped, back-street ateliers where much of the detail work for Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent happens—providing, as she calls it, “a look through the keyhole at haute couture”. In her film, many of these specialists are older craftspeople who’ve been doing the same work for decades. In the case of faux-flower maker Bruno Legeron, he’s following in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father and still uses their fascinating century-old studio. What comes across in the film is how much the craftspeople’s humble exis­tence, in their cluttered, computerless quarters, contrasts with the glamour of the fashion runway.

Bernard says she fell in love with these characters while filming a TV series about the ateliers, eventually spending up to a year with some of them in their quiet studios over the filming of Handmade. “They’re so giving and so funny. They really made me laugh, and I think they really understand life,” she says.

What Bernard didn’t know was that she had stumbled upon a much bigger story. The ateliers, which once filled Paris, are disappearing quickly in a globalized industry, either shutting down or selling out to large companies like Chanel that move them into bigger, new group headquarters for artisans.

Does Bernard feel sad about what’s happening? “I do and I don’t,” she says. “I do feel sad mostly because I know my daughter will not be able to walk and see these ateliers in 20 years. I think this is something the government of Paris should save. But on the other hand, it’s good that some big houses buy them off—this way the savoir-faire will not be lost.”

Bernard’s movie joins a colourful lineup in the Style in Film series—part of a burst of filmmaking about the fashion industry that seems to have kicked off with The Devil Wears Prada and The September Issue and hasn’t let up since.

Elsewhere on the roster, fashion fans will want to catch Advanced Style, Lina Plioplyte’s documentary about blogger Ari Seth Cohen and his colourful subjects—New York style hounds who haven’t given up their outrageous apparel as they’ve aged (October 3 and 5). Other offerings include Looking for Light: Jane Bown (October 2, 7, and 10), a documentary on the photographer, plus stylin’ period pieces like the ’70s-set Catherine Deneuve vehicle In the Name of My Daughter (October 3 and 7).

The $99 Style in Film Passport buys your way into all six films in the series, plus a ticket to the October 3 screening of the much-anticipated Yves Saint Laurent documentary. The latter has a prescreening panel facilitated by Eco Fashion Week. After Handmade’s screening on October 4, you can attend a panel on the slow-fashion movement, with Bernard in attendance.

For her part, Bernard says she’s thrilled to bring her film, for the first time, to North America. But nothing may live up to the emotional experience of screening it in Paris. “The main characters were all there and at the end of the screening, they held me and had tears in their eyes.”