Nabila Ramdani talks to Barbara Serra

French-Algerian journalist Nabila Ramdani gives a perspective on crisis-ridden France that is very different from that held by the establishment elites.

Ramdani was born and brought up in a neglected Paris suburb and says the romanticised and revolutionary land of liberté, egalité and fraternité is failing its citizens and its admirers around the world. She examines the fault lines in the nation and finds an all-powerful president with little interest in democracy, the danger of a far-right figure as head of state, segregated suburbs, institutional rioting, economic injustice, discrimination, paramilitary policing and a duplicitous foreign policy. She says constitutional reform is needed to fix it.

Ramdani works as an academic and journalist covering France and the Arab and Muslim worlds. She has worked in the BBC Paris bureau and for Sky News, Al Jazeera, and CNN. She has also taught at the University of Michigan and at Jesus College, Oxford. Here she talks to journalist and Sky News presenter Barbara Serra. Serra is currently writing a book based on her award-winning documentary Fascism in the Family.

Part of the festival’s programme of French literature and culture and the voices of Europe programme.