A surprise smash hit in France last year, first-time director Edouard Bergeon’s very timely and very topical drama draws from the story of his own father to turn out a moving and beautifully acted tale of a modern farming clan trying to keep their heads above water in desperate times. Guillaume Canet (last seen in VIFF 19’s La Belle Époque) is Pierre Jarjeau, the son of a farmer who, having returned from a stint in Wyoming, buys the family holding from his gruff and hardened father (Rufus). Steeped in the terroir and full of bright hopes for the future, Pierre marries Claire (the excellent Veerle Baetens, from The Broken Circle Breakdown) and they have children. What follows is a downward spiral, as bank decisions and corporate-led farming practices steadily supplant old methods, slowly grinding down Jarjeau and his family in the process… The crisis in French farming is very real, and Bergeon has fashioned an impassioned drama about how things have come to this awful point.