The Measure of a Man

Thierry Taugourdeau (Vincent Lindon) is unemployed. Laid off from his factory job, every day he goes through a series of humiliating ordeals in his search for work in an effort to support his family. From insufferable and ineffective retraining courses that lead to dead ends, to workshops where fellow job seekers heavily criticize Thierry for being an introvert, he finds that what he has to go through often compromises his integrity and strips him of his dignity. When Thierry finally lands a job as a security officer at a department store, he's faced with a new set of moral dilemmas.

Director Brizé explains his film this way: "It’s one thing for a business to make money. It’s another if it physically or morally abuses its employees to do so. Work has become a rare commodity. Like water. And companies ultimately have an enormous amount of power. If a company is healthy, the exchange between it and the employee is harmonious. But if this company acts like a dictatorship brandishing a nuclear weapon, then the employee becomes little more than canon fodder.”