Deux jours, une nuit

Tonight’s film comes from Belgium.

Deux jours, une nuit (2014)

Whether you’re learning French or just looking for something to watch, Deux jours, une nuit is an important film.

The film takes place in Liège, and sheds light on how companies exploit their workers. The phrase ‘divide and rule’ is often associated with empires, but it’s also a common tactic of companies seeking to squeeze every penny from their wage bill. When Sandra’s colleagues are offered a €1,000 bonus in exchange for her dismissal, she has only a weekend to convince them to change their minds. Given the economic hardship faced by the workers, it’s a decision weighed against pressing burdens like monthly bills and rising debt.

The film highlights one of the most degrading and harmful consequences of capitalism; it makes it difficult to act in our best nature. Though there is much more that needs to change, a starting point is joining a union. This makes it harder for companies to exploit the difficult individual situations of workers for the sake of increased profit margins. If the workers had been paid a fair wage, the bonus in exchange for Sandra’s dismissal would never have been accepted in the first place. And if a business says it can’t afford not to underpay its workers, it’s not a viable business.

If you’re learning French, the following video discusses the notion of work, and the problems around it today :

Les infos clés sur le travail, l’emploi et le salaire

The following video looks at the history of revolutionary syndicalism in Belgium :

Une Histoire du Syndicalisme Révolutionnaire en Belgique

If you’re unsure when and how to use subtitles, advice can be found here :

How to Use Subtitles to Learn a Language

If you’re interested in learning French, there’s a How to Learn Languages guide :

How to Learn French

Take care, and enjoy the process!

Sean Price

This article was written by Sean Price, the Founder of How to Learn Languages.

When he's not teaching English as a foreign language, he creates eBooks and Courses that make learning languages affordable and enjoyable for anyone.

He learnt French in 2018 during a study abroad year at the Sorbonne, before completing a degree in History at the University of Leeds with First Class Honours in the summer of the following year.

During his final year, he taught himself Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Catalan, as part of dissertation research into fascism in Europe during the 1930s.

Although he says ‘learnt’ and ‘taught himself’ in the past tense, he also says one of the joys of learning a language is that there’s always more to learn.

More recently, he's been teaching himself German, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian.

Since moving to Vietnam to teach English in 2022, he's been enjoying learning Vietnamese. In less than one and a half years learning Vietnamese, he was able to achieve Level 5 (the highest being Level 6) of the official Vietnamese proficiency exam of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities at the National University, Hanoi (Trường Đại học Khoa học Xã hội và Nhân văn - Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội).

If you'd like to learn a language, all you need is an internet connection and a How to Learn Languages eBook or Course.

https://www.howtolearnlanguages.info
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