Following her bow at 2022 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Charlotte Le Bon makes a VIFF debut with this thrilling and lush coming-of-age tale of first crushes, heartbreaks, and loss.
The film follows 13-year-old Bastien, who gets paired up with a reluctant Chloé (16) when their families come together for a summer holiday in a cabin by the lake. Wary of each other at first, the two slowly find their footing and establish an easy, exhilarating camaraderie. But with teenage hormones and ghost stories in the mix, lines get crossed and a darkness eventually envelops the summer bacchanals.
Sara Montpetit and Joseph Engel are mesmerizing as a pair of moody teenagers lowering each other’s defenses in an intimate summer dance. Their easy chemistry is contagious and bittersweet, capturing a spectrum of adolescent angst with astounding naturalistic precision.
Everything in this immensely promising, superbly crafted debut, is haunted, and every bright, happy beginning anticipates a darker, melancholy end.”—Jessica Kiang, Variety
Media Partner
Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit, Monia Chokri, Arthur Igual, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman, Anthony Therrien
Canada/France
2022
In French and English with English subtitles
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Image: © Mika Cotellon
Credits
Executive Producer
Tim Headington, Theresa Steele Page, Charlotte Le Bon, Émilie Georges, Naima Abed, Whitaker Lader
Producer
David Gauquié, Julien Deris, Sylvain Corbeil, Nancy Grant, Jalil Lespert, Dany Boon, Jean-Luc Ormières
Screenwriter
Charlotte Le Bon, François Choquet
Cinematography
Kristof Brandl
Editor
Julie Léna
Original Music
Shida Shahabi
Art Director
Alex Hercules Desjardins
Director
Photo by Fred Gervais
Charlotte Le Bon
Charlotte Le Bon grew up in Quebec before moving to Paris. She worked as an actress with French directors such as Michel Gondry and Jalil Lespert. In the US, she shot films with Lasse Hallström, Robert Zemeckis, and Sean Ellis. Le Bon is an artist exploring her taste for strangeness through paintings, drawings, and lithographs. Her passion for genre films led her to write and direct Judith Hotel, a short film presented at Cannes in 2018. Falcon Lake is her first feature film.