Sixty-seven Milliseconds
67_Milliseconds_-_Still_1-2.png | Credits: fleuryfontaine
67_milliseconds_-_still_1.png | Credits: fleuryfontaine
67_Milliseconds_-_Still_2-2.png | Credits: fleuryfontaine
67_milliseconds_-_still_2.png | Credits: fleuryfontaine
67_Milliseconds_-_Still_3.jpg | Credits: fleuryfontaine
67_Milliseconds_-_Still_5.jpg | Credits: fleuryfontaine
Poster_-_67_MILLISECONDES.jpg | Credits: fleuryfontaine
In search of a bullet whose trail has been captured on surveillance camera footage, the film follows its trajectory and those of its main protagonists. At the heart of a reconstruction that combines the practice of computer-generated images with the history of the moving image, Sixty-seven Milliseconds questions the legitimacy of policing in France and warns of its excesses.
For the last fifteen years or so, we have been thinking about the way in which the digital tools used for artistic production can both reflect reality and, at the same time, influence it, in a practice that lies at the crossroads of research, cinema, and experimentation.
Our interest in state violence stems from personal experiences as teenagers and, later, in protests, particularly following the 2016 Labour Law under François Hollande’s government. In 2020 we produced a short film, Contraindre, a video essay looking back over four years of police violence across France. Just after that, we started working with a number of media organizations to reconstruct events in the context of cases involving French law enforcement agencies using computer-generated images.
One of these cases made a particularly strong impression on us: the mutilation of a young man by a police officer in 2020. In the middle of the night, for no particular reason, the young man, then aged 19, was shot in the head with a 40 mm riot gun, as a result of which he lost his right eye. The police officer justified the shooting as self-defence against an aggressive young man, without knowing that a surveillance camera had captured the entire scene.
Sixty-seven milliseconds revisits this event, which is particularly representative of police actions in the suburbs, unfolding it both temporally and semantically to understand its significance. As the CCTV camera filmed the scene at 15 frames per second, the bullet that hit the young man was caught in mid-air on just one of these frames, in an interval of 67 milliseconds. Created using a combination of chronophotography, eyewitness accounts and wiretaps of the police officers involved in the investigation, the film articulates a visual and political blind spot, revealing a vast system of oppression that affects us all.
In search of a bullet whose trail has been captured on surveillance camera footage, the film follows its trajectory and those of its main protagonists. At the heart of a reconstruction that combines the practice of computer-generated images with the history of the moving image, Sixty-seven Milliseconds questions the legitimacy of policing in France and warns of its excesses.
For the last fifteen years or so, we have been thinking about the way in which the digital tools used for artistic production can both reflect reality and, at the same time, influence it, in a practice that lies at the crossroads of research, cinema, and experimentation.
Our interest in state violence stems from personal experiences as teenagers and, later, in protests, particularly following the 2016 Labour Law under François Hollande’s government. In 2020 we produced a short film, Contraindre, a video essay looking back over four years of police violence across France. Just after that, we started working with a number of media organizations to reconstruct events in the context of cases involving French law enforcement agencies using computer-generated images.
One of these cases made a particularly strong impression on us: the mutilation of a young man by a police officer in 2020. In the middle of the night, for no particular reason, the young man, then aged 19, was shot in the head with a 40 mm riot gun, as a result of which he lost his right eye. The police officer justified the shooting as self-defence against an aggressive young man, without knowing that a surveillance camera had captured the entire scene.
Sixty-seven milliseconds revisits this event, which is particularly representative of police actions in the suburbs, unfolding it both temporally and semantically to understand its significance. As the CCTV camera filmed the scene at 15 frames per second, the bullet that hit the young man was caught in mid-air on just one of these frames, in an interval of 67 milliseconds. Created using a combination of chronophotography, eyewitness accounts and wiretaps of the police officers involved in the investigation, the film articulates a visual and political blind spot, revealing a vast system of oppression that affects us all.
Director: fleuryfontaine
Producer: Eliott Baillon
Image: fleuryfontaine
Editor: Marie Loustalot
Sound editing: Luc Aureille
Music: Abul Mogard
Cast: Khalil Garbia, Mathilde La Musse, Hugo Brunswick, Alexandre Blazy
With support from: Arte; CNC; Pictanovo / Région Hauts-de-France; Région Nouvelle Aquitaine; Bordeaux Métropole; Scam; Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts contemporains; Embassy of Foreign Artists
Fleuryfontaine (FR) is the pseudonym of trained architects and artists, Galdric Fleury and Antoine Fontaine, who have been working as a duo since 2011. Thinking on the place we occupy in the artificial and secure environments that condition our bodies and behaviors, their work consists of installations, sculptures, performances, video toys, and films. In 2024, their latest short film, Sixty-Seven Milliseconds, won the Arte award at the Annecy Film Festival. In 2025, the film was selected for Visions du Réel in Nyon, Indie Lisboa, and the Champs Élysées Film Festival, among others.
Fleuryfontaine (FR) is the pseudonym of trained architects and artists, Galdric Fleury and Antoine Fontaine, who have been working as a duo since 2011. Thinking on the place we occupy in the artificial and secure environments that condition our bodies and behaviors, their work consists of installations, sculptures, performances, video toys, and films. In 2024, their latest short film, Sixty-Seven Milliseconds, won the Arte award at the Annecy Film Festival. In 2025, the film was selected for Visions du Réel in Nyon, Indie Lisboa, and the Champs Élysées Film Festival, among others.
Sixty-seven Milliseconds is the interval between two frames in which a bullet was captured in flight by a surveillance camera. Narrated through multiple voices and perspectives, the film retraces the true events that unfolded in February 2020 in the southern suburbs of Paris. French duo Galdric Fleury and Antoine Fontaine employ CGI and a range of visual-footage styles to immerse viewers in the precise moment when an unarmed 19-year-old was shot in the eye by a police officer. The bullet’s invisible path is suggested through the young man’s trajectory, a depiction inspired by Étienne-Jules Marey’s chronophotographic studies of movement.
Sixty-seven Milliseconds is the interval between two frames in which a bullet was captured in flight by a surveillance camera. Narrated through multiple voices and perspectives, the film retraces the true events that unfolded in February 2020 in the southern suburbs of Paris. French duo Galdric Fleury and Antoine Fontaine employ CGI and a range of visual-footage styles to immerse viewers in the precise moment when an unarmed 19-year-old was shot in the eye by a police officer. The bullet’s invisible path is suggested through the young man’s trajectory, a depiction inspired by Étienne-Jules Marey’s chronophotographic studies of movement.