by
Catherine Breillat
Starring Léa Drucker, Samuel Kircher, Olivier Rabourdin, Clotilde Courau, Serena Hu, Angela Chen, Lila-Rose Gilberti, Karim Achoui, Valérie Schlumberger, Jean Christophe Pilloix /
Written by Catherine Breillat, Pascal Bonitzer /
Cinematography Jeanne Lapoirie /
Editing François Quiqueré /
Sound design Romain Anklewicz, Romain Arnaud, Cyril Holtz, Lucas Le Néouanic, Damien Luquet, Gildas Mercier, Loïc Prian /
Produced by SBS Productions (France), Saïd Ben Saïd (France), Kevin Chneiweiss
France, 2023 – 104′
O.V. sub. ITA
MOVIE CATEGORY
EFEBO LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
30.11.25
16:00
Cinema De Seta
The story of the fateful encounter between a teenager, the son of separated parents, and his father’s second wife, during a summer in the countryside. The two begin a secret affair that threatens the family’s entire stability. Almost in a reversal of 36 Fillette, with the gender dynamics reversed here, Catherine Breillat offers a chilling yet lucid portrait of a relationship dominated by power. Her stories are never abstracted from a social context that echoes those same power dynamics and translates them into the power relations between different social and cultural levels: Last Summer is a sincere and cruel last bastion of this rigorous reading of the world.
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.
