“This is our land!”: Owning the Nation in Luc Belvaux’s Chez Nous (2017)

Abstract

Far-Right, white nationalist movements are now threatening liberal democracies across the West in ways not seen since the interwar years, turbulent times that set the stage for catastrophic violence that razed the European continent during World War II. In his recent film Chez Nous (2017), Luc Belvaux takes a fictional look at the inner workings of a far-right party striving to shed its identity as a fringe movement long steeped in racism, xenophobia, and neo-fascist hate-mongering. The rebranding project mobilizes the talents of media-savvy party operatives skilled in stoking the fears and resentments smouldering in communities blighted by decades of economic decline. Set in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Chez Nous shows that the populist rhetoric of the contemporary far right cloaks its authoritarian ambitions and the vested interests it serves. Those interests are not, viewers see, those of the populations whose fury is being stirred and turned against democratic societies and governance, which themselves have been seriously weakened by decades of neoliberal policies and economic practices that have left fractured communities and decimated futures in their wake.