Julien

A small French village somewhere below Orléans. Julien and most of his friends have just turned 18 and live in the phase between childhood and adulthood. For a whole summer, time seems to stand still. Where will they go when the new school year starts? What will they do?
Gaël Lépingle set this documentary in that ‘dissonant period’ of youth, the interval when other rules apply, in which everything is still possible – if only in theory. The style in which Lépingle records this last summer is completely idiosyncratic. The youths, who in a certain sense are all called Julien, are hardly heard, but show themselves in casual moments.
The camera sees and serenades the bravura and insecurity of their adolescence, the stubbornness and hunger for the unknown. Beneath all their brashness, they realise that the world is not waiting for them. And yet the summer will come to an end.