When Maxence Voiseux first films Gabin Jourdel, he is eight years old — the youngest child in a farming family in rural northern France. Over the next decade, we witness Gabin’s growth and the animals, schoolwork, chores, and imagined futures that define his youth. His father wants him to inherit the butcher shop, but Gabin is more concerned with living animals — and in helping save his mother’s cattle farm from financial ruin.
Voiseux’s feature documentary debut has the patience to let its conflict unfold without wringing it for drama. Her access is extraordinary precisely for its ordinariness: time moves without declaring itself, and the camera joins its subjects for family arguments, quiet work, and the small changes that mark the passage of adolescence. Premiering in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Gabin turns coming of age into a question of inheritance, following a child’s tenderness toward animals as it becomes a young man’s fight for a life of his own choosing.
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Gabin Jourdel, Patricia Jourdel, Dominique Jourdel, Lilou Duflos-Lamotte, Catherine Ranson
France/Germany/
Switzerland
2026
In French with English subtitles
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Credits & Director
Producer
Cécile Lestrade, Elise Hug
Screenwriter
Maxence Voiseux
Cinematography
François Chambe, Martin Roux
Editor
Pascale Hannoyer, Natali Barrey
Original Music
Nicolas Rabaeus
Maxence Voiseux
Maxence Voiseux was born in the Ardennes in 1988. He studied science before switching paths to join the Documentary Cinema programme at Paris VII University, where he trained in directing and editing. Gabin (2026) is his first feature film.
Photo by Alter Ego Production
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