The Snows of Kilimanjaro 2011

Michel lives happily with Marie-Claire, his wife of nearly thirty years. A dedicated shop steward for the CGT, he is entrusted with calling out the names in a shipyard redundancy draw, the crucial moment that will decide which twenty workers will lose their jobs. He does not need to put his own name in the hat, but he does, and his name is drawn, making him one of the two to be laid off.

Their colleagues throw a party to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary, presenting them with travel money and a ticket to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, while they sing along to the 1960s hit Kilimandjaro. Raoul, Raoul, Michel’s brother-in-law, workmate and fellow trade union official, returns with a cherished, long-lost comic book from Michel’s childhood, claiming to have found it in a secondhand bookshop.

Before the trip, Michel and Marie-Claire are playing cards with Raoul and his wife Denise; two masked men brutally rob them of the comic book and other possessions. Michel is injured, and Denise is left deeply unsettled by the incident.

On a bus, Michel spots two children reading the stolen comic. He follows them and recognizes their older brother, Christophe, one of his fellow redundant workers, and he identifies Christophe to the police, watching as the arrest unfolds. Slowly they learn that Christophe is caring for his two younger brothers, neglected for years by their mother.

Michel has second thoughts about withdrawing the accusation, but the case cannot be dropped. In the spirit of his hero, the French socialist leader Jean Jaurès, the couple decides to help the two boys by taking them into their home, even as they face resistance from their own grown children and from Raoul. In a final turn, Raoul admits he hadn’t found the comic book in a secondhand shop at all—he had stolen it from Michel when they were children, a memory that tests trust and rekindles their shared ideals.