VIFF 2012 review: Journal de France

Raymond Depardon is one of the world’s great documentary filmmakers, as well as one of its top photojournalists. This illustrious, high-profile past (Biafra, the West Bank, Chad, Italian asylums, the French penal system) is amply illustrated by classic clips, while the man’s strangely serene present is made manifest through his quietly relentless back-roads quest for “timeless” images of rural France. A great life and a splendid dialectic winningly constructed by the artist’s spouse, Claudine Nougaret.