Speak Up

Speak Up (À voix haute, 2017) is a French documentary you can watch online on iFILM. For one full term the camera trails students at Université Paris 8 in Saint-Denis as they train for Eloquentia, a public-speaking contest where the winner isn't the one with the fanciest degree but the one who can hold a room.

These are kids from the working-class suburbs, learning to pause, to argue, to breathe, to stop freezing in front of a crowd. Their coaches — lawyers and rhetoric teachers — chip away at the nerves and the stage fright. One stutters, one hides behind attitude, one hears for the first time that his voice might actually matter. The finale plays out as a live verbal duel.

Stéphane de Freitas and Ladj Ly — later the director of Les Misérables — clearly know these streets cold. The film runs on real effort rather than uplift, and after ninety-five minutes you walk away convinced that eloquence is a skill, not a birthright. A great pick if staged success stories leave you cold. Stream Speak Up (2017) online on iFILM.