Le petit voleur

Bakery assistant S. tosses his job. Out for a little quick cash, he lands up among Marseille's seedier elements of society: pickpockets, thieves, prostitutes. His initiation into a life of crime turns into a series of humiliations and false hopes. Erick Zonca, who made his controversial cinema debut last year in Cannes with LA VIE RÊVÉE DES ANGES, shot LE PETIT VOLEUR for arte, the joint French-German TV channel. In just 60 small-screen minutes, his drastic realism demands more of the viewer than the medium was ever intended to. A lesson modern living, provocative, hiding nothing, showing everything - and all of it true.