Aftersun
Pools, boats, lounges, arcade games, a summer resort. A young girl bonds with her father.
98'
United States
IFFR 2023
Rose, a fiercely independent single mother, has moved to Paris from the Ivory Coast with her two sons. When a relative tries to hook her up with an acquaintance, the young woman replies that she chooses her own men. Despite the heartbreaks, her dead-end job and her subpar living conditions, Rose is a reservoir of energy and attention for her boys, Jean and Ernest, whom she urges to achieve academic and behavioural excellence. Yet she disappears from their lives at regular intervals.
Léonor Serraille’s sophomore feature Un petit frère is an intimately recounted saga of this small family, spread over three decades. With deceptive simplicity, the film’s three chapters relay the narrative from one protagonist to another at different stages of their lives. The result is a composite picture of family life in which the values and choices of one character profoundly shape those of the others.
Over the course of the film, Rose, Jean and Ernest come to represent various facets of the immigrant experience in France. Serraille, however, refuses to reduce them to their identities, giving them an emotional and social life that creates room for mystery and complexity. We are given privileged information that the characters themselves don’t have, but the pieces of this puzzle may never fit.
– Srikanth Srinivasan
IFFR 2023
Programme IFFR 2023
Avant-premieres and cinematic highlights of this year’s festival circuit: eagerly anticipated audience favourites and international award-winners.
Read more about this programmePools, boats, lounges, arcade games, a summer resort. A young girl bonds with her father.
98'
United States
IFFR 2023
Marital frustration, a mid-life crisis and a Nietzsche-quoting frog in an animated adaptation of Haruki Murakami.
108'
France
IFFR 2023
An alluringly shot tale of repressed desire and unspoken longing set in Salé, Morocco.
118'
Morocco
IFFR 2023