Welcome to the Land of Shtis

Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, FR 2008 colour 106 min.
dir: Dany Boon
pro: Claude Berri, Jérôme Seydoux,        Pathé Renn Productions
sc: Dany Boon
ph: Pierre Aïm
mus; Philippe Rombi
ed: Luc Barnier, Julie Delord
cast: Kad Merad, Dany Boon, Zoé Félix, Lorenzo Ausilia-Foret, Anne Marivin
dis: Hagi

 

A post office manager in Provence is punished when his superiors reassign him north. When he hears that “north” does not mean Lyons or even Paris, he despairs. Colleagues tell him of a freezing dark place where it rains all year, people live in red-brick terrace houses and dunk Maroilles cheese in their coffee. When he arrives in Bergues, his car collides with Antoine Bailleul, a postman and carillon ringer in the town belfry. He believes that Antoine has a fractured jaw, but it is just his accent. The outsider, of course, finds that the Ch’timi have hearts of gold and are friendly to strangers, unlike Parisians or southerners.