Filmmaker Laure Portier documents her younger brother’s development, beginning with his tumultuous teenage years and culminating with the introspective process which determines him to reconsider his entire life. Carried by large temporal leaps, the film thus moves through various spaces – from the childhood home to Peruvian carols – following this self-taught adventurer in close combat with the years of his youth, as he pursues his own path. An initial feeling of silent desperation which threatens to engulf the entire film as the protagonist drifts away deeper and deeper (at some point, for instance, he ends up living on the streets in Spain), gradually gives way to brighter images bearing promises and hope. In this way, “I Am Free” becomes the story of an escape, of a trajectory which leads this young man to the edge of a society which makes itself felt in all its oppressive moralism. Portier unravels the thread of this fluctuating relationship by translating it cinematically – what a great initiative to offer her brother his own camera in order to film himself from a distance – to the point where it becomes the living testimony of this centrifugal drive. A confirmation of cinema’s solidarity mission – a guide and a form of support for the vulnerable -, which eventually represents an act of gratitude for those who have managed to take life into their own hands. (Victor Morozov)