Created in July 1883 in the wake of the free and secular school of Jules Ferry (1881), by Paul Cambon, then resident minister of France in Tunisia, the Foundation of the French Alliances (AF) cannot deny its colonialist origin. At the time, the objective was to teach French to the children of the colonies to counterbalance the Anglo-Saxon influence.

One hundred and forty years later, 500,000 students attend one of the 830 Alliances Françaises located in 135 countries. And the foundation, which describes itself as “the largest cultural NGO in the world”, is keen to show that it has evolved.

The documentary made on the occasion of this anniversary does just that, touring the world of AFs and their most emblematic actions: in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the country with the largest network with 53 committees; in Lima, Peru, where Ana, a future student at Paris-Saclay, is studying prep at AF; in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the AF is older than Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado; in Paris, where the emblematic building at 101, boulevard Raspail (6th) has become the first American-style campus in France, with a restaurant and theatre.

The film gives particular visibility to the Great People, a company of puppeteers from Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis), in the Parisian suburbs, which designed articulated giants, and which exported its show to Pondicherry, India (the Alliance Française was founded there in 1889). The cameras followed them there, from the preparations to the final show of the company of Yoann Cottet, in the presence of the general secretary of the AF, Marc Cerdan.

“Decolonizing the Universal”

Among the celebrities who have passed through the Alliance (Paul VI, Hector Bianciotti, Mario Vargas Llosa, Claudia Schiffer), some speak, such as Irina Bokova, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria; Erik Orsenna, writer and academician; Julia Kristeva, writer and psychoanalyst; Franco-Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado…

The historical reminders contain a few nuggets, such as the role played by the Alliance Française during the Occupation, or the commitment of the Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara: when the Castroists took power in 1959, it was he who obtained that the Alliances françaises de l’île are not destroyed, arguing that without them he would never have read Danton and Robespierre!

This access to free literature and press in non-democratic countries is highlighted on several occasions. The film finally responds, indirectly, to accusations of neocolonialism through the dissemination of the French language, by affirming that the Alliances Françaises invented cultural diplomacy. For the honorary president of the committee of Antananarivo, in Madagascar, Julien Rakotonaivo, “to say that the French practice hinders the culture or the development of the Malagasy language and culture is a non-issue”. Marc Cerdan, secretary general of the organization, quotes Souleymane Bachir Diagne, a Senegalese philosopher, who said in Le Monde: “We must decolonize the universal. »

All recall the importance of disseminating the values ??of “French-style republican humanism [inscribed] in the DNA of the Alliance française throughout the world”. But between an antiquated vocabulary – “learners” instead of pupils – and the explosive news of riot nights, is this beautiful message audible?