Winner of the Grand Prize at Cannes’ Critics’ Week, La Gradiva is an incisive, intricately composed feature debut that follows a class of French high school students on a trip to Naples, Italy. While learning about the ruins of Pompeii by day, a different kind of education takes place at the dorms, on the bus, and at group dinners, where heightened emotions, hormones, and matters of class and social hierarchy add some notable life lessons to the curriculum. But with some being more sensitive than others, the trip takes a devastating turn as one of the student’s inner turmoil takes root.
Marine Atlan stuns with her mastery of cinematic vocabulary, sculpting a remarkably perceptive, elegant, and formally complex film, with no shot or moment wasted in its study of adolescence. Atlan draws from this microcosm of supercharged circumstances with great precision, mining key moments of individual and group interactions — from students, teachers, even drivers and service staff — delivering in the process a modern classic.
Please note that this film has descriptive video in French only for the Oct 3 & 9 screenings.
AMI Paris Grand Prize: Critics’ Week, Cannes 2026
Supported by
Marine Atlan
Colas Quignard, Suzanne Gerin, Mitia Capellier-Audat, Antonia Buresi
France/Italy
2026
In Italian and French with English subtitles
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Credits
Producer
Inès Daïen Dasi
Screenwriter
Marine Atlan, Anne Brouillet
Cinematography
Pierre Mazoyer, Marine Atlan
Editor
Guillaume Lillo
Art Director
Anna Le Mouël
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