For 5 years, Denis Gheerbrant has followed the daily life of Mallé Doucara - on the stairs or in the empty offices of the Parisian buildings he cleans, in his tiny room in the workers’ hostel surrounded by his community -, but above all his film makes us privy to the intimate relationship between two men who address each other from opposite standpoints, showing, nevertheless, a willingness to explore each other’s differences. Mallé doesn’t fit the profile of the “good immigrant” we might expect a filmmaker to choose to film. There is no “good intention” trap here, and we are invited, instead, to bore into the complexities of the societies we live in. Mallé was born in a noble Soninké family in a small village in Mali, where the population is very hierarchically divided into “free men” and “captive men”- the so called slaves. In Mali, he belongs to the high-society who own slaves, while in France he is a slave. In Mali, he has a wife who obeys all his orders, and all women of his family are circumcised. In between Mallé’s two worlds, the words these two men exchange are placed in this schizophrenic position. Each of their conversations is based on the immediate reality they share every time they meet: they are jointly creating this documentary, listening to one another - while we listen, with them. (Vanina Vignal)