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MOVIE CATEGORY
Anaïs, 12, feels destined to be a perpetual spectator. The spectacle she watches is that of her sister, the beautiful fifteen-year-old Elena: her love story, or perhaps just sex and manipulation, with Fernando; her idea of being strong, conscious, capable of managing her adolescent sexuality. However, the world is bigger than them.
The theme of losing one’s virginity runs through much of Catherine Breillat’s cinema, and it is the honest filter through which to view the reality of her young protagonists. Breillat strips away that myth and the expectations it carries, demolishing all the sociological stereotypes linked to female sexuality and filtered by an historically male-dominated lens: her young women self-determine, interpret reality, and navigate trauma, with a complex dynamic that victimhood cannot resolve.
DIRECTORY
Director, screenwriter, novelist, and actress, she is one of the most original and courageous voices in contemporary French cinema. Originally from Breissuire, in the French province of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, she wrote her first novel in 1968, at the age of 17: L’homme facile. After several appearances in films such as Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), and while collaborating, between screenplays and editing, with names such as Liliana Cavani, Federico Fellini, Marco Bellocchio and Maurice Pialat, she made her directorial debut with Une vrai jeune fille (1976), which adapted her fourth novel, Le soupirail. After Tapage nocturne (1979) and 36 fillette (1988), the director’s interest in the exploration of sexuality and the relationship between generations is more than clear. This is confirmed by her subsequent films, including Romance (1999), Fat Girl (2000), and Anatomy of Hell(2003), titles presented (and awarded) at festivals such as Rotterdam, Edinburgh, Berlin, and Cannes. Her films have featured important actresses such as Isabelle Huppert, Asia Argento, Yolande Moureau and Amira Casar. In 2012, director Luc Moullet dedicated a documentary to her, Catherine Breillat, la première fois. A multiple nominee for the Palme d’Or at Cannes (with The Last Mistress in 2007 and Last Summer in 2023), she presided over the Locarno jury in 2019.
