To those who wonder how good law-abiding citizens can fall into civil disobedience, the documentary Des pebbles in the shoe provides an enlightening answer in the current social context, by recounting the fight of an entire village against a career project. A textbook case that ultimately offers a great lesson in democratic reappropriation. But it came down to little. And the case is still not closed.

At the confluence of the Bourne, in Isère, Mont Vanille overlooks the charming village of Saint-Nazaire-en-Royans, in Drôme. Without being a major tourist center, its aqueduct, its wheel boat, its Thaïs cave and its steep paths attract enough visitors to supplement the activity of the old sand quarry and the two small stone quarry fronts, closed in the 1950s.

This past explains the first images of the film, showing a gutted mountain and the refusal of the inhabitants to see their landscape disfigured again. Mine, they gave. “Me, it terrifies me,” laments Romuald-Davy Doucin, Saint-Nazairois, in front of the camera. On February 10, 2020, alerted to a mine reopening project, director Mickaël Damperon went to the public information meeting where the villagers had gathered: he was going to film them for almost a year.

Creation of an association

The project is pharaonic: 90,000 tons of rock would be extracted each year, for thirty years renewable. Moreover, they were lied to. “This project has existed for seven or eight years, and we find out about it three days before the public inquiry, it’s a scandal! sums up Laurent Garnier, manager of the Navigation and Tourist Activities Company.

From then on, the reaction of the village is organized. First in a traditional way, with the creation of the association Protégeons le mont Vanille Royans Vercors, then politically, thanks to the municipal deadline of March 2020: Rémi Saudax (without label) was elected in the first round to the head of a list of opposition to the project. The victory will be short-lived.

Mobilization sequences alternate with nocturnal visions of wildlife, without staging effects, for a very simple rendering, in accordance with the unifying commitment of each, according to their means: photographs, songs…

Feeling of contempt

However, several facts will fuel the feeling of contempt felt by the population, such as the error in the name of the village in the report of the investigating commissioner (Saint-Nazaire-le-Désert, 90 kilometers south of Saint-Nazaire-en- Royans). “According to Socrates, what is in accordance with the law is just,” quotes a resident. When you think about it, that’s not the case. »

So the struggle becomes more radical. Until the mayor pronounced the acronym “ZAD” in front of the prefect… And, on January 24, 2021, the Drôme prefecture announced that it was not granting authorization to open the quarry on the mountain. Vanilla.

End clap? Not really, as Rémi Saudax explains, reached by telephone, Tuesday May 2. The quarry having challenged the prefect’s decision with the administrative court, the latter’s decision is expected in 2023. “If the administrative court validates the prefect’s decree, the case ends there. Otherwise, it entitles the quarry worker to compensation. But the mayor remains optimistic: “I maintain that there is a concern for legality. »