The Italian producer
Enrico Ghezzi commissioned the movie to
Jean-Marie Straub and
Danièle Huillet to celebrate
Roberto Rossellini's centenary. Asked to imagine a moment in the life or the death of
Ingrid Bergman's character in
Europe '51 (1952), their reading of Rossellini yielded this political pamphlet about the death of two Parisian youngsters who, chased by the police, hid in a high-voltage electric transformer and burned to death. Less than three weeks after their death, the banlieus were burning.