Filmed in their workplace in the repetition of daily actions, workers in industrial slaughterhouses talk about their suffering. Added to the accelerated wear and tear of bodies due to almost unbearable paces are nightmares, stress, fear of accidents, and the anxiety of a blocked horizon. Fortunately, we are between Normandy and Brittany, and the seaside is there for moments of relaxation, for the long-awaited retirement.

The image is striking: under the neon lighting of a factory which day and night transforms living animals into trays of meat, the flesh of the animals brutally meets that of men. Largely mechanized, the work of slaughter and butchery is no less dangerous, noisy, traumatic and stultifying. In voice-over we hear the testimonies of workers who tell what it does to the flesh and the soul to spend one's life there, rubbing shoulders with the animals that one kills, that one cuts up. with an ax or knife and which are packaged to be sold – on promotion – in supermarkets. With the exception of the trade unionists who took the risk of being in the image, the anonymous testimonies form a chorus of all these crushed lives. Posing outside their factory, some workers mimic in a sort of choreography these gestures that they perform thousands of times a day and to which they refuse to allow their lives to be reduced.

Source: Eva Ségal

Before becoming a director, Manuela Frésil began her film career as a screenwriter of fiction and documentaries in the 90s. She wrote several fictions: Crossing the Garden (1993), Second Wife (1992) and My Husband's Wife (1992). 1994) where she is interested in the conditions of African immigrant women in Paris.
From 1992, she made documentaries. With Our campaign in 2000, she tried to demystify peasant life then she addressed in 2003 in Si far from the beasts the problem of industrial breeding where the life of the animals, like that of the breeders, is nothing more than a cog in the production system.
Finally in 2008, she wrote the scenario for the Abattoir project where she returns to this universe through the working conditions in the large industrial slaughterhouses of Europe. The text of this documentary, which was the subject of a theatrical production in Poitiers, became Entrance du personnel in 2011. Grand Prix of the French Competition of FIDMarseille, this documentary allows him to complete this cycle around working conditions and animal breeding conditions.
At the same time, she taught cinema in several schools and led video workshops in the 2000s, notably with Le GREC (Groupe de Recherches et Essais Cinematographics).
As part of these workshops, in 2004, with psychotic patients, she produced 7 plus an epilogue or Voisine(s), in 2008, which are video letters written by African immigrant women in Paris.
Source: L’Acid