Long a champion of the marginalized, Tony Gatlif (Latcho Drom, Exiles) fashions a sumptuously visual and typically musical docudrama from 94-year-old French Resistance veteran Stephane Hessel’s surprise anti-capitalist best-seller Indignez-vous!, a pamphlet that served as a call to arms for the young people of France. Gatlif’s film is an equally impassioned cri de coeur in support of the Outrage/Occupy movements worldwide.

Motivated by Sarkozy’s 2010 speech demonizing France’s Rom, Gatlif develops a loosely structured drama that has him following the plight of a young illegal immigrant from Africa named Betty (Mamebetty Honoré Diallo) as she is caught up in the European-wide protest movement. As Betty is buffeted about—from Greece to Paris to Madrid—Gatlif’s camera, serving as witness, plunges us into the heart of various demonstrations, capturing the genuine emotion of the 99% who feel abused by an unfair system. Interspersed with these powerful scenes, and indeed overlaying some of them, are the musical interludes that both amplify the themes already present and serve as achingly beautiful moments of their own—most notably a set piece set in an abandoned Parisian apartment block covered in graffiti, where a singer and violinist perform on a balcony and a flamenco dancer, leaflets raining down upon her, gives her all in the courtyard below. A heart-soaring moment that—like all of Indignados—could only have come from the heart of Tony Gatlif.