The film Hélène trésore transnationale, directed by Judith Abitbol, offers a layered portrait of Hélène Hazera, a force in French counterculture. This cinematic piece unfolds like a conversation: sometimes orderly, often exuberant, and frequently surprising. The documentary — dated 2026 and set to be screened in cinemas on Wednesday 1 April — follows a woman whose life spans roles as a radio voice, a newspaper writer and a persistent trans activist. Viewers are invited not to a strict chronology but to a mosaic where memory, music and activism intersect.
Hazera’s trajectory is both intimate and emblematic. From a troubled break with a bourgeois upbringing to episodes of survival on the margins, she channels experience into a public life that includes radio shows, cultural criticism and political organizing. The film foregrounds her command of song and sound — her expertise in French chanson and an affection for arabo-andalusian music — while also documenting her central place within LGBTQ movements such as the FHAR, the Gazolines and later Act Up-Paris, where she helped found the commission on trans issues and AIDS.
From voice to visibility: Hazera’s cultural career
On air, Hazera became known for a distinct presence: articulate, sharp and often irreverent. She worked as a chronicler on radio programs led by figures like Jean-Louis Foulquier and later collaborated with Laure Adler to produce shows that continued her lifelong engagement with song. In print, she wrote for publications including Libération, becoming one of the first trans journalists at a major national daily. The documentary revisits these professional milestones while emphasizing how Hazera’s cultural work was inseparable from a wider politics of gender and desire.
Acting and counterculture
Beyond journalism, Hazera occasionally appeared in cinema, performing in films by Ado Arrietta, a detail Abitbol uses as a structural entry point. The director deliberately opens with footage from Arrietta’s Tam-Tam, letting the images set the tone for a portrait that will slide between scenes of performance and intimate reminiscence. This allows the film to frame Hazera not only as a commentator on culture but as a participant in the creative scenes she admired.
Politics, memory and filmmaking choices
Judith Abitbol explains that the main difficulty in shaping the film was not cataloguing achievements but containing the subject’s constant flow. Hazera’s memory is prodigious — she summons facts, poems and anecdotes across centuries and geographies — and the director responded by embracing a fractured, non-linear form. The result is a film that functions like a temporal collage: moments of activism sit next to personal recollections, and scenes of conviviality intersect with the trauma of the AIDS crisis. The editing intentionally resists a tidy timeline to preserve the vitality of the storyteller.
Challenges of representation
Abitbol’s approach posed practical hurdles: long takes, off-center framing and spur-of-the-moment exchanges were necessary to capture Hazera’s uncontainable energy. As Abitbol has remarked, to film Hazera in full would require a sustained, observational rig à la Frederick Wiseman — a camera running constantly to catch a relentless stream of thought. Instead, the documentary opts for a patchwork that honors both the subject’s unpredictability and her wide-ranging intellect.
Legacy and resonance
The film paints Hazera as a figure who bridges generations: she is a witness to the sexual revolts of the 1970s, a participant in the activism of the 1980s and 1990s, and a cultural custodian into her later years. It is careful to recount painful episodes — periods of survival sex work, the devastation of friends lost to AIDS — while balancing these with laughter, song and solidarity. In doing so, the documentary stages a celebration of endurance and a meditation on how personal histories feed collective memory.
Why this story matters today
What emerges is more than a biography: it is a study of how one life can embody broader shifts in media, activism and cultural taste. The film positions Hazera as a transnational treasure whose voice helped shape radio, journalism and queer politics in France. For contemporary audiences, the portrait offers both a history lesson and a model of creative resistance. It is a film that asks viewers to listen closely — to music, to testimony, and to the ways in which a single life can carry many histories.