Dany Boon

Set at a customs post on the French-Belgian border, Rien a Declarer (Nothing to Declare) is the long-awaited follow-up to Boon's 2008 blockbuster Bienvenu chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Sticks), which was seen by 20 million people and now ranks as the most popular French film ever.
The new film stays on Boon's home turf of the French far north, where the locals are known as Ch'tis, drink Ch'ti beer and speak the Ch'ti dialect. But if Bienvenu chez les Ch'tis was about the cultural misunderstandings that arise when a French southerner blows in, Rien a Declarer plays on another set of stereotypes - about Belgians.

The year is 1993 and, following the creation of the EU's Schengen passport-free travel zone, customs posts are to be dismantled along the Franco-Belgian border. Dany Boon plays customs officer Mathias, whose opposite number on the Belgian side seethes with a virulent and irrational hatred of all things French.

"I wanted to do a film about racism, but I wanted to make it funny. The way to do that, it seemed to me, was to focus on a French-Belgian situation. French and Belgians are basically the same - the same language, the same skin, the same religion - so the racism is utterly ridiculous....If I tried to make a comedy about a real racist situation - say with North Africans - then it would be too sensitive to work." - Dany Boon, Director… (more)

Although living a comfortable life in Salon-de-Provence, a charming town in the South of France, Julie has been feeling depressed for a while. To please her, Philippe Abrams, a post office administrator, her husband, tries to obtain a transfer to a seaside town, on the French Riviera, at any cost. The trouble is that he is caught red-handed while trying to scam an inspector. Philippe is immediately banished to the distant unheard of town of Bergues, in the Far North of France. Leaving his child and wife behind, the crucified man leaves for his frightening destination, a dreadfully cold place inhabited by hard-drinking, unemployed rednecks, speaking an incomprehensible dialect called Ch'ti. Philippe soon realizes that all these ideas were nothing but prejudices and that Bergues is not synonymous with hell...… (more)