Luxemburg. Hopes, doubts, galleys… an intimate dive into the daily lives of cross-border workers
They are called Lucie, Nicolas, Aurélie or Magali. They are miner’s widows, fund accountants or housekeepers. We call the frontiers.
In twenty years, the number of these French people working in Luxembourg has doubled. For twenty-four months, Mehdi Ahoudig, sound and audiovisual producer, and Samuel Bollendorff, photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, shared their daily life. Earned, day after day, the trust of these men and women for whom the Grand Duchy was able to echo El Dorado.
A technological journey…
Technically, “Frontier, lives in stereo” is “a sound and visual experience, inviting the viewer to a sensory engagement”. Who will transport you for example, in the literal and figurative sense of the term, in the traffic jams of the motorway.
Four vehicles, marked with the first name of their owner, will be carpooled on board. Helmet on the ears, passers-by of their confidences. Their hopes dashed. their doubts. Their galleys. “We had carte blanche”, insists the Marseillais Mehdi Ahoudig. “We were lucky enough to work in complete freedom”, adds the Parisian Samuel Bollendorff, himself Franco-Luxembourgish.
Sociologically, “Border workers, lives in stereo” is an investigation opened just before the health crisis. “The confinement forced our immersion”, willingly agree the two authors who will have collected a hundred testimonies to keep only “a few of these singular destinies”.
… and intimate
Humanly, “Border workers, lives in stereo” is a hypersensitive photograph. Who looks at himself, listens to himself and lives by proxy through these anonymous slices of life. So many voices to make the muted violence of a system heard. Its cynicism but also its paradoxes.
Alexandra, former fund accountant. “I burned out. I have been unemployed ever since. We live in France but we did not realize the French salaries. But I don’t want to go back to the stress of the banks anymore” Michaël, machine driver: “In two years, with a change of employer, a wedding, the house and a child arriving. My salary doubled. If I had stayed in France, not sure we would have done all that so quickly. But it’s overtime all the time. And I work on my holidays.
Claire, director of human resources, about employees in finance: “We will ask the maximum of you: from the moment your performance drops, we will make you understand that there are ten waiting for your place . It’s assembly line work, there are 2,000 per company and they audit accounts all day long. These are the factories of modern times”.
The weight of evils. The clash of photos and audio.