The French nouvelle vague has left barely a ripple, but French cinema has not lost its capacity to shock and entertain. Its vitality is due in some part to the French government’s subsidies to filmmakers, which have encouraged a handful of original and talented filmmakers: documentary maker Nicolas Philibert is perhaps first and most subtle among them. A man who hates being told what to think, he refuses to ram his own ideas down others’ throats.

“My approach is the opposite of Michael Moore’s,” he says. “He’s right to attack the gun lobby and the health system but the way he does it is manipulative. He treats his audiences like children.”