The Workshop

Antoine signs up for a writers workshop led by a famous novelist, Olivia, where a group of young people in insertion try their hand at a noir tale. The project asks them to mine the city's working class history for material, revealing a community shaped by decades of factory work and a shuttered shipyard. As Olivia guides them, the act of writing awakens memories not easily spoken, and the fiction begins to echo little dramas from the real world. Antoine confronts his own anxiety about the present moment and his place in a city that feels both old and unsettled. The workshop becomes a social microcosm where ambition, loyalty, and the pull of nostalgia collide, without offering easy answers today.

Released in 2017, The Workshop is directed by Laurent Cantet with a screenplay credited to Robin Campillo. The cast features Marina Foïs as Olivia Dejazet, Matthieu Lucci as Antoine, and Warda Rammach as Malika, among others, and marks a collaboration.

Box office data for The Workshop are not publicly disclosed and there are no widely reported worldwide grosses. The film played mainly in limited release and festival circuits, which is typical for intimate dramas of this scale in European venues.

According to public records, The Workshop did not receive major nominations at the Oscars, Emmys, or Golden Globes. The film did, however, gather attention at smaller festivals and press screenings, where critics noted its patient pacing, social concerns, and the way performances carry a quiet tension throughout the viewing experience.

The Workshop uses a small circle of characters to examine class, memory, and the lure of storytelling in a city facing economic change. It favors observation over loud shocks, letting performances carry the weight as Antoine and Olivia hedge between aspiration and the past and the present for the city.