Pour exister (What it Takes)

CompetitionShort

One afternoon, three high school students sneak out of their all-girls Catholic boarding school. Sunny, the new girl, has gone for a swim in the river. Sarah is eager to join her, even though Clémence disapproves.

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From the tormented little mermaid to the fulfilled woman she is today, Gigi tells us about her gender transition with humor and sensitivity.

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This morning, Marina has an appointment with Charlie to sell her a mattress. This evening, she will cancel her plane for Reunion. But they don't know that yet.

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An African musician meets a charming courtesan in a small French seaside town for a rare and secret moment of intimacy.

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During the summer, three friends meet on a wild Mediterranean island. Maxime is madly in love with Yann. Carried by this consuming desire, Maxime throws himself in an intense romantic quest, swaying between dream and reality, at the risk of losing himself.

CompetitionShort

One afternoon, three high school students sneak out of their all-girls Catholic boarding school. Sunny, the new girl, has gone for a swim in the river. Sarah is eager to join her, even though Clémence disapproves.

DocumentaryVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

Is intimacy coordination censorship? Does it kill the magic? In France, where having an intimacy coordinator is the exception, Paloma Garcia Martens is helping creators to privilege process as much as results. Together, striving for feminist content where “bodies, breath, touch” lead to connection, not exploitation. Scenes of intimacy are a stunt like any other, capable of great danger and lasting harm. But intimacy coordination requires precious hours, and even those on board can feel tested by the process. Edith Chapin’s documentary is a searching portrait of the profession, featuring a wide array of women in the TV/film industry—everyone from the director and actresses of the queer TV show Split in Paris, which features a particularly novel squirt scene, to the intimacy coordinators of Sex Education and Bridgerton in London. These women listen to and debate with one another about what’s being transformed because of their influence and what’s changing far too slowly. Leading the push for an industry with fewer “weird stratagems” and outright lies, and more modesty garments, more consensus. Hoping to shape not only how bodies are filmed, but how we, as a society, see them. Also in this programme : SPLIT/ ÉPISODES 1 + 2 IRIS BREY | FRANCE | 2023 | 37 MIN | FRENCH EST On the set of a film, Anna, a 30-year-old stuntwoman, falls in love with the star she is body double for. Will Ana—who thought she was happy in her relationship—have the courage to come out of her heterosexual shell to confront this overwhelming desire?

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An African musician meets a charming courtesan in a small French seaside town for a rare and secret moment of intimacy.

FeatureVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

Émilie lives in a world of surveillance: her camgirl work; the camera phone lingering on a crush from afar; the headset affording her a drone’s perspective. The same drone that stalks each move she makes, offering inspiration, noting rivals. An unsolicited companion conspiring with or against her. A financially strapped transplant now living in the Paris suburbs, Émilie (ballerina Marion Barbeau) is thrust into a high-powered world when she is chosen for a renovation workshop with a prestigious architect (Cédric Kahn). Her classmates come mostly from “filthy rich” backgrounds, like cocky Olivier (Stefan Crepon), who wants Émilie as his conquest. But Émilie has shy eyes only for self-sufficient Mina (Eugénie Derouand), whose music builds like a “helicoid.” All along, a drone—unlike any known model—is watching her. Waiting for her next move and paying handily for the privilege. Taking the “killer’s point of view” made famous by films like Psycho and Friday the 13th to new heights, visionary director Simon Bouisson’s kinetic debut feature is a morality puzzle wrapped in a cutting-edge, goosebump-raising tech thriller. Getting us to consider: how complicit are we—as individuals, as a society—in our own undoing?

CompetitionShort

This morning, Marina has an appointment with Charlie to sell her a mattress. This evening, she will cancel her plane for Reunion. But they don't know that yet.

Short

Fanny is a bookseller by day and a soft-hearted person the rest of the time. In love with her friend Louise and to repress the sadness of this impossible love, she has a series of one-night stands with uninteresting men. One evening, she invites Louise to a literary gathering she's hosting. Fanny may be about to have a bingo.

Feature

Welcome to the French commune of Saint-Martial, where nightmares or sprouting mushrooms may spill your secrets. Returning for a funeral, Jérémie is greeted with the rough touches of a childhood companion and accused of exploiting a widow’s grief, sending him down an ever-contorting path of pansexual frenzy and escalating dread. At first, Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) is friendly and inquisitive, avoiding the increasingly unhinged Vincent (Jean-Baptiste Durand) but bonding over an alluring photo of the deceased with the widow (the legendary Catherine Frot) and cozying up to a local loner (David Ayala), pastis flowing. Soon, however, a disappearance sets him on edge, invasive police and a perceptive abbot (Jacques Develay) ratcheting up his paranoia. Allies appearing where he least expects them. So that, increasingly, it is unclear whether the village wants him excised or enmeshed there indefinitely. Sprung from the singular genius of Alain Guiraudie, known for his modern-day fairy tales with wicked senses of humour, Miséricorde is as genre-hopping as it is morally ambiguous—it’s Ripley meets The End of Eddy with the psychodrama of Saltburn. A riveting tale of the lengths we go to for love.

Short

During the summer, three friends meet on a wild Mediterranean island. Maxime is madly in love with Yann. Carried by this consuming desire, Maxime throws himself in an intense romantic quest, swaying between dream and reality, at the risk of losing himself.

Feature

Alexis Langlois’s ambitious debut feature is a phantasmagoric musical drama. A tale of how fame twists and transmutes, following a Britney-like pop icon, her secret punk lover, and an invasive stan through 2000s stardom and its messy aftermath. When the pop industry gives Mimi Madamour (Louiza Aura) a straight-edged polish after her Starlettes en herbe win, underground sensation Billie Kohler (Gio Ventura) feels pushed aside by her girlfriend. In the words of the crazed leader of the Mimi Army fanclub, Steevyshady (influencer Bilal Hassani channeling Perez Hilton on acid), this is “the love story that shook French pop.” A spiraling controversy that pits pop against punk, glittery industry darlings against “pumped up chicks.” Les reines du drame has the thrust of classic musicals with the irreverent edge of Hedwig and the dazzling, exuberant romanticism and tragedy of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, and runs gleefully riotous with pop culture easter eggs. Madonna-level physical transformations, Batman Returns-era Catwoman, Drag Race shenanigans, and many nods to the legendary Miss Britney Spears—they’re all here, along with lovingly crafted earworms from the likes of Yelle. A bonafide cult classic in the making.

FeatureVIRTUAL EXCLUSIVE

The central comma rivening the title signifies the split down the middle of this concise, incisive diptych. And reflects how Rome-based musician Ondina, like the legendary hero Orpheus, is gripped by a need to look back at her lost love—sad, beautiful Alexia—across the gap of time. Euridice, Euridice is a realist tale told in a mythic mode, its mirrored love stories woven through with imagery of ceaseless ocean waves and an inauspicious snake slithering, of bathing women winding among one another like water nymphs. And of Alexia (Sarantopoulou) reaching towards Ondina (Quadri) from beyond the divide, coaxing Ondina closer to or away from Daria (Menichetti), who wishes to dance away with her arrested heart. Also in this prgoramme : LA RIVIÈRE ÉLISE LEVY | FRANCE | 2024 | 15 MIN | FRENCH EST One afternoon, three high school students sneak out of their all-girls Catholic boarding school. Sunny, the new girl, has gone for a swim in the river. Sarah is eager to join her, even though Clémence disapproves.