On n'est pas des racailles

On October 25, 2005, Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, visited the Argenteuil housing project. His visit was marked by a phrase that has since become famous: "Are you fed up with this gang of scum? We're going to get rid of them for you." In the front row, a young man from the neighborhood was shocked: Djamel Mazi, 19 years old. Starting in 2001, with a DV camera in hand, Djamel filmed his neighborhood and his friends, without imagining that these images would one day become a historical record. Twenty years later, now a journalist at France Televisions, he decided to reopen his personal archives to find his childhood friends and understand what had become of them. Through their portraits, the story of the Argenteuil housing project, which has become one of the symbols of sensitive neighborhoods, emerges.