Direction Sud-Est follows L'Anniversaire de Bambou, the previous installment in Gérard Courant's Carnets filmés. It revisits some of the themes that made the earlier parts so charming: a passion for small towns and villages teeming with life (a market day in Saint-Marcellin) or deserted (Visan, Brignon), the importance of nature, an interest in the most mundane things (the sequence of magazine covers in a Saint-Marcellin newsstand), a love of animals (cats, dogs, horses), and interactions with artists (the actress Rosette, the journalist Frédéric Chaleil) through their daily lives.