They live on chips and beer under endless rain and talk funny, but today, les Ch’tis, the people of northwestern France, are relishing a chance to shake off their uncouth image in the eyes of their compatriots.

The media made a national event out of the opening in Lille last night of Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, a film that makes fun of the region’s unflattering stereotype to reveal the warmth of the people from opposite Kent and Essex.

Starring and directed by Dany Boon, the film has won critical praise and predictions of comedy of the year. It will boost the much maligned Ch’ti country, the old port and mining area that runs from the Channel ports of Calais, Boulogne and Dunkerque to Maubeuge in the east.

Boon, a popular stand-up comedian and actor, is a native Ch’ti or Ch’timi, a name that comes from old Picardy patois. Like Geordie comedies, much of the fun stems from a dialect so impenetrable that it sometimes needs subtitles. In Ch’ti, “ch” replaces “s” and it includes expressions from old Picard and Flemish as well as from the Italian, Polish and other migrants of a century ago.

“The whole world envies us la Ch’ti attitude!” the front page of Nord Éclair, a regional newspaper, joked. “Long mocked for their accents, their slag heaps and their grey sky, northerners are rising up and claiming their identity,” it said. L'Express, the news weekly, called the film “an invaluable gift to the Nord-Pas de Calais, a tourist brochure that the regional council could never have dreamt of.”

The council joined in the act with a subsidy of almost €1 million (£750,000) for the film, which was shot mainly in Bergues, a town five miles from Dunkerque. It has also produced a “Little Ch’ti dictionary”.

The plot involves a post office manager in Provence whose superiors punish him by reassigning him north. When he hears that “north” does not mean Lyons or even Paris, he despairs. Colleagues tell him of a freezing dark place where it rains all year, people live in red-brick terrace houses and dunk Maroilles cheese in their coffee.

When he arrives in Bergues, his car collides with Boon, a postman and carillon ringer in the town belfry. He believes that Boon’s character has a fractured jaw, but it is just his accent. The Provençal is confused when told that his predecessor left his furniture to his dog because “ aux siens” (to his family) is pronounced “ au chien” in Ch’ti.

The outsider, of course, finds that the Ch’timi have hearts of gold and are friendly to strangers, unlike Parisians or southerners.

Boon, 41, a native of Armentières, calls his film a homage to his home country. “I have long wanted to claim my Ch’ti identity,” he said. “I am always moved by the hospitality and way that people open up to strangers here. There is something poetic about the poplar trees, the smells, the very low skies and the welcome of the people.”

At Bergues they hope that the film will put the town on the map. “I think that it was time to have a film that says that the north is not just workers’ terrace houses and cobblestones,” Jacques Martel, a councillor and municipal bellringer, said. “We smile and open up easily to people, which is not the case in the South of France.”

Parlez-vous Ch’ti?

Ch’ti - standard French (English)

dracher - pleuvoir (to rain)
à tout rate - a ce soir (see you this evening)
à dé - à demain (tomorrow).
Mi, ch’fais toudis à m’mote - Je fait tout à ma manière (I do everything in my own way)
keuche - chaussette (sock)
Ch’ti qui est mie contint i’a qu’à v’nir ém vir - Celui qui n’est pas content n’a qu’à venir me voir (anyone who is unhappy only has to come and see me)
Bienvenue à s’baraque -bienvenue à la maison (welcome home/to the house)

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• London Film Festival

Editor's choice

• The super cool Vampire Weekend
• Streep and Baldwin get complicated
• Guy Ritchie on Sherlock Holmes