A grocery store like a beacon in the night

The Start of Hunger

At 10:50 p.m. on France 2

In the Cap Sud social and solidarity grocery store in Poitiers, you enter with a smile and you are greeted by Chloé’s sunny smile. The coordinator and manager of the place knows the 450 beneficiaries, their situation, their preferences, their little habits. “The people who come here have a daily income of less than five euros per day, sometimes to feed a family of four,” she emphasizes. Kitty Rios Palma’s documentary is a gem of sweetness. The testimonies are mixed with life scenes, in which children are often an absolute priority. It’s not always easy for Sabrina to make her ten-year-old son understand the dietary constraints linked to poverty. Even more difficult to say no to him, when he expresses a desire that his budget does not allow him to satisfy.

It is often small accidents in life that led Sabrina, Laurent, Denis and the others on the road to Chloé’s grocery store. For everyone, she was a beacon in the night. Laurent, photographer and beneficiary, tells how the solidarity grocery store freed him. “When we no longer spend our days wondering what we are going to eat the next day, we can finally live and think about something else,” he says. He still only has one meal a day, but that one at least is assured.

Chloé, always a positive and welcoming ball of energy, is their common denominator. During the cooking workshops she organizes, taboos fall. Sharing experiences and sometimes tips strengthens friendships and provides a caring framework for expressing unresolved pain outside of this precious circle. We feel the bonds of trust that the director has formed with Chloé and the beneficiaries of her social grocery store over the months of filming. There is no miserabilism in his documentary, only pieces of life, mutual aid and a humanity on which a little light is shed.

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