What is to be done? (Bis) is a philosophical film essay that delves into the Marxist heritage, its gradual theoretical "objectification" and the way it got bogged down in practice, in view of a History to which it claimed to hold the key. Self-criticism, but no remorse in this lively and searching film that focuses on our capacity for surprise rather than on glib answers. It is built around the

confrontation of two presences, two discourses, two men, two gene rations: Jean Burles (1916), a shining example of the militant workers whose thirst for knowledge drove them in the end to the most radical of doubts; Yves Clot (1952), another worker, who went on to become a phi losopher by trade, fired with a passion for concept, but aware that "meaning is not soluble in concept".