In so-called "peripheral" France, where public services are disappearing or being dematerialised according to a purely utilitarian logic, I use the disappearance of the public telephone as a symbol. This road-movie in search of these twentieth-century ruins is built around telephone conversations, archives and chance encounters. It's also a journey through time. I'm looking for traces of abandoned collective projects, displaced political horizons and unfulfilled promises of emancipation. From the disappearance of the telephone booth to the advent of the "medical booth", I question what we call "progress".

-- Dir. Floriane Devigne - 77min - 2023 - France --

"The telephone booth, that generic "object", is a common reference. They were found absolutely everywhere in France, and as they disappeared, they went from being totally commonplace to being rare and symbolic. Searching for the last ones in operation was initially a choice motivated by the pleasure of adventure and a taste for the "useless". The phone booth is the brake I've found to take the time to take the side roads. They are "my mid-life crisis". An age I've reached at a time straddling the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A time when a technological revolution of staggering proportions is taking place. As fascinated as I am worried by what seems to be a mutation of our humanity, I wanted this film to put my generation's journey into perspective." - Floriane Devigne

"Devigne’s talent for moving from a specific object to larger socio-political issues turns what could have been a nostalgia-heavy film into a clear-eyed examination of contemporary legislation and its consequences. With the past squarely in its rearview mirror, Allo la France looks towards the future, sounding an urgent warning about the disintegration of public amenities." - Guardian

"In this "telephone" road movie, Floriane Devigne offers a stroll through so-called "peripheral" France. From remote villages to abandoned areas, guided by telephone conversations collected in the last public telephone booths, she takes an amused, critical and scathing look at our rapidly changing society." - Visions du Reel

"They are more than just places to make a phone call: they are clandestine meeting spots, shelters from a storm, a quiet place to be alone...the wealth of information about political, economics, technology, and humanity that Devigne pulls from a seemingly nondescript object is impressive" - Kate At The Movies

"This playful telephonic road movie is a charming, offbeat look at our changing communities, and a call to consider how we communicate in our globalised, digital world." - DocHouse

"Fuelled by playful curiosity, she takes us along for the ride in this mischievous road movie to visit the last remaining booths scattered throughout the countryside, in France’s so-called “dead zones”.....a charming and thought-provoking investigation into the inevitability of progress and the complexities of globalization" - True/False