Living in a small Parisian apartment, Sandra (Léa Seydoux) is barely able to support herself and her eight-year-old daughter Linn as a freelance translator. As her father Georg (Pascal Greggory) continues to lose his sight and memory from Benson’s syndrome, Sandra must navigate the labyrinthine system of national care homes, with all their financial burdens and logistical nightmares.
As her entire life begins to revolve around her banal obligations, Sandra has a chance encounter with an old friend, Clément (Melvil Poupaud), which blossoms into a passionate affair. After experiencing her daily life for so long as a series of duties and responsibilities towards others, Sandra attempts to reconcile her role as mother and caretaker to her nascent love affair with Clément, feeling almost guilty at the sudden, unexpected burst of love and happiness as her father’s condition worsens. In her intimate, thoughtful exploration through the fragile vagaries of love—romantic, filial, domestic—Mia Hansen-Løve (Things to Come, Bergman Island), delivers another poignant, personal film that resonates long after it ends.
Seydoux’s performance anchors the film, ultimately rendering it a love letter to the present, and to the ways heartbreak and hope intertwine.”—Alissa Wilkinson, Vox
Supported by
Mia Hansen-Løve
Léa Seydoux, Pascal Greggory, Melvil Poupaud, Nicole Garcia, Camille Leban Martins
France/Germany
2022
In French with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
All the Lovers in the Night
A lonely proofreader's isolated world begins to open through an unlikely friendship with a gentle physics teacher. Based on Mieko Kawakami's acclaimed novel, this luminous drama is a delicate meditation on loneliness, intimacy, and self-discovery.
Clarissa
Arie and Chuko Esiri’s Clarissa brings Mrs. Dalloway to present-day Lagos, with Sophie Okonedo playing the titular society hostess opposite David Oyelowo, Ayo Edebiri, and India Amarteifio in a Nigerian vision of class, privilege, and past lives.
Image: © Courtesy of Elevation Pictures
Opening Gala: The Debut
VIFF is honoured to open the festival with this special by-invitation screening of Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut. When meek Mona (Julianne Moore) lands a part in a musical, she fully inhabits her character, but grows increasingly untethered from reality.
Árru
Set against the mountains and fjords of northern Norway, Árru follows reindeer herder Maia as a proposed copper mine threatens her Sámi community, forcing her to fight to protect both her community and the land that sustains it.
The Beloved
When Esteban Martínez, an acclaimed director with violent tendences, invites his estranged daughter to star in his latest project, the stage is set for a familial reconnection. But as tensions flare, questions about his intentions rise to the surface.
MODES 1
Archive and the land reveal other ways of seeing, ensuring that what is meant to endure cannot be erased.
Credits
Producer
David Thion, Philippe Martin
Screenwriter
Mia Hansen-Løve
Cinematography
Denis Lenoir
Editor
Marion Monnier
Production Design
Mila Preli
