This film takes the viewer meandering through Paris over the course of three years--2001 to 2004--ostensibly in search of a series of mysterious grinning cats whose stenciled image has sprung up in the most unlikely places: high atop buildings all over the city. The film begins in November 2001 in a Paris still fresh from the shock of the September 11 attacks on the U.S., and where newspaper headlines read "We are all Americans." Over the next year, in the lead-up to the Iraq war, the city's youth march in numerous demonstrations for all manner of causes as the filmmaker continues his pursuit of the mysterious cats. He finds them again, to his surprise, showing up as the emblem of the new French youth movement : "Make cats not war!" Street art is the flip side of the idealism and exuberance driving the young people marching in protests, the likes of which Paris hasn't seen since the mythic events of May 1968.

Chris Marker, director
While many biographic elements surrounding the director have remained deliberately obscure (including his name), Chris Marker was likely born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, in July 29, 1921 in Paris, France.
A cinematic essayist and audio-visual poet, Chris Marker was one of the most innovative filmmakers to emerge during the postwar era. Working primarily in the arena of nonfiction, Marker rejected conventional narrative techniques, instead staking out a deeply political terrain defined by the use of still images, atmospheric soundtracks, and literate commentary. Adopting a perspective akin to that of a stranger in a strange land, his films -- are haunting meditations on the paradox of memory and the manipulation of time. He investigates the philosophical implications of understanding the world through media and, by extension, explores the very definition of cinema itself.
One of his short film, La Jetée, only made of still images, was adapted by Terry Gilliam in 12 Monkeys, a science-fiction film starring Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe.

 Chris Marker, director
1997 Level Five
1992 Le Tombeau d'Alexandre (The Last Bolshevik)
1983 Sans soleil (Sunless)
1977 Le Fond de l'air est rouge (Grin Without a Cat)
1974 La Solitude du chanteur de fond (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Singer)
1965 Le Mystère Koumiko (The Koumiko Mystery)
1962 La Jetée (The Pier)
1959 Les Astronautes (The Astronauts)
1957 Lettre de Sibérie (Letter from Siberia)
1952 Olympia 52