Alain Cavalier is a pedestrian of Paris. He loves this city. Unexpectedly, on his walks, with eye and ear always alert, he came across a mattress maker, a woman working in a dry cleaner’s, the owner of a café, a woman spinning thread. In 1988 the director of Thérèse decided to film them. Working in the same way as on his features, he built his portraits out of these women’s stories, blending realism and fantasy. He then went on meeting women in trades that fascinated him, small trades some of which will soon disappear, and built other portraits in Paris and in other cities too. ‘I am not a documentary maker, I am more a lover of faces; I love the generosity of these women who agree to let me film them,’ he says.