General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Welcome to the Sticks

Welcome to the Sticks (Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis) is a 2008 French comedy directed by and starring Dany Boon, about a postal manager from the south of France who is transferred to the far north and discovers that the regional stereotypes he believed are false.¹ With 20,449,865 admissions in France in its first year, it broke a box-office record that had stood since 1966 and became what one analysis called a genuine social phenomenon.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis; the English title was changed at the last minute from "Welcome to the Land of the Ch'tis"⁴
French release	27 February 2008, distributed by Pathé⁵
Director and writer	Dany Boon, co-writing with Franck Magnier and Alexandre Charlot¹
French admissions	20,449,865 in 2008, a record that surpassed La Grande Vadrouille (1966, 17.2 million)²^•³
Worldwide box office	$245,144,417, of which $193,764,365 in France⁶
Runtime and genre	1 hour 46 minutes; comedy⁷
Critical and audience scores	AlloCiné press average 3.6/5 (21 reviews); AlloCiné audience 3.1/5 (87,324 notes); Rotten Tomatoes 67% Tomatometer, 78% Popcornmeter⁸^•⁷
Awards	César 2009 nomination for best original screenplay; jury prizes at Alpe d'Huez 2008⁹

Spoilers

Plot and setting

Philippe Abrams (Kad Merad) is the director of the post office in Salon-de-Provence, in the south of France. To please his depressive wife Julie (Zoé Félix), he cheats to obtain a transfer to the French Riviera, is caught, and is punished with a posting to Bergues, a small town in the Nord department of northern France.¹ To southerners full of prejudice, the North is a frozen region of rustics speaking an incomprehensible dialect called "cheutimi"; Philippe travels there alone, expecting misery.¹

Instead he finds a charming town, a warm team of colleagues, and a friend in Antoine Bailleul (Dany Boon), a postman and village bell-ringer with a possessive mother. When Philippe returns south and describes how much he enjoys the North, Julie refuses to believe him, so he pretends he is living in hell to keep the peace, sliding into a comfortable lie.¹ The English-language synopsis on Rotten Tomatoes summarizes the setup the same way: a prejudiced French public servant from Provence is "banished to the far North" and leaves his family behind intending to return quickly.⁷

The main supporting cast includes Line Renaud as Madame Bailleul, Anne Marivin as Annabelle Deconninck, Stéphane Freiss, Philippe Duquesne, Guy Lecluyse, and Michel Galabru in a brief comic appearance.¹⁰^•¹¹

Making of the film

Boon conceived the story before directing his first feature, La Maison du Bonheur (2006), but held the project back because the story meant so much to him; he then wrote alone for a year until he had the plot, the characters, and many of the scenes.¹² He wanted the story told through the eyes of an outsider from the South carrying heavy prejudices about the North, so that the film could show the humanity, welcome, sharing, and generosity of the region's people.¹² The idea also drew on one of his own comedy sketches pleading with audiences to take holidays in Nord-Pas-de-Calais.¹³

Filming was under way at the studios of Arpajon in Essonne by mid-2007, and the film premiered in advance in the Nord on 18 February 2008, where the team and about 300 guests traveled from Paris for screenings in Lille, Lomme, and Roubaix.¹⁴^•¹⁵ The production companies included Région Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Pathé Renn Productions, Hirsch Productions, Canal+, and TF1 Films Production.⁷

Box-office record

In 2008 the film sold 20,449,865 tickets in France, distributed by Pathé, making it the year's top film by admissions.² This surpassed the 17.2 million admissions of Gérard Oury's La Grande Vadrouille (1966), a record that had stood for more than forty years.³ Within five weeks of release it had drawn more than seventeen million viewers, and The New Yorker noted that France measures popularity by number of spectators rather than money.¹⁶

Abroad, the film grossed $245,144,417 worldwide, with $193,764,365 from France, followed by Germany ($17.1 million), Belgium ($10.7 million), and Switzerland ($9.9 million).⁶ A survey of European admissions put it among the French-language films with the largest international audiences of its period.¹⁷

Critical reception

Press reviews were divided. AlloCiné's normalized press average was 3.6 out of 5 across 21 reviews.⁸ Reviewers who praised the film singled out its warmth: Paris Match called it the comic cure for a bad mood, Ouest-France a "true popular comedy" with no malice, and Télérama credited Dany Boon with giving his characters enough humanity and tenderness to make the clichés digestible.⁸ Critics who disliked it pointed to a thin script: Positif found the central idea unable to compensate for a scenario and rhythm it called impoverished, and Les Inrockuptibles judged it a feeble but not unlikable comedy.⁸ Première's critic enjoyed the early grotesque situations but found that the dramatic tension and comic effects quickly fell away, exposing a repetitive script.⁸

Audience responses were warmer than the specialist press. Exit polls reported 97% satisfaction among moviegoers nationwide and 90% in the Nord region, and Rotten Tomatoes later recorded 78% on its audience meter against 67% from nine professional reviews.⁹^•⁷ At awards level the film was nominated for the 2009 César for best original screenplay and won jury prizes at the Alpe d'Huez comedy festival, with additional public prizes at festivals in Seville and Hamburg.⁹

Cultural impact

The film became what one analysis called a genuine social phenomenon, seen in theaters by a third of the population of metropolitan France.¹⁸ Its subject, the prejudice against the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region and its dialect, the ch'ti, gave the region new visibility; the town of Bergues became a filming landmark, and the local tourist office later created a "Ch'ti Tour" tracing the shoot.¹⁹^•²⁰ The interjection "biloute!" from the film became a rallying call among fans after its release.²¹ Scholars of French cinema have noted that the film reverses the usual comedic direction of travel, turning stereotypes of the South's sun and accents against the northerner's needling by undermining the stock image of the North.²²

Remake and follow-up. In December 2008, Boon said he was in the United States preparing an American remake, whose rights had been bought by Will Smith.²³ Ten years after the original he returned to the same region with La Ch'tite Famille (2018).²⁴ Le Monde's retrospective of French comedy records the film's 20.5 million admissions as the moment the popular-comedy blockbuster model it represents was established, a line that runs through Intouchables (19.5 million in 2011) and later French hits.²⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026