French original: “Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis” par Dany Boon, 2008
(In English: “Welcome to the Sticks” by Dany Boon, 2008)
Just a brilliant linguo-cultural comedy. “Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis” (“Welcome to the Sticks”, France — 2008) is about a guy who is punished for his inappropriate tricks while managing a post office in the South of France.
His superiors decide to punish him: they do promote him to his desired post of a director, but… they send him to the North of France, to Picardy. In southerners’ imagination it is somewhere so close to the Arctic.
However, our guy very soon finds out that it is one of the most hospitable places he’d ever been to.
Un étranger qui arrive chez nous, pleure deux fois: la première, quand il arrive, et la deuxième, quand il part.
A stranger who arrives in our land, usually cries twice: first, when he arrives, and second, when he has to leave.
Watch and see whether this Picardian adage is true.
The film also popularizes Picardian, a language very close to French, spoken in the North of France, as well as the culture of this region.
First published in the Levinarium Telegram Channel (now closed and deleted)