Each year, The European Film Festival is one of the movie highlights of the year – and this time is no different running between October 13 and 23. Here is a short review by DIANE DE BEER on one of the films:
PETITE MAMAN
FRANCE
Director: Céline Sciamma
Cast: Gabrielle Sanz, Joséphine Sanz, Nina Meurisse, Margot Abascal, Stéphane Varupenne
Genre: Drama, Coming-of-age
Time: 72 minutes
French with English subtitles – 2021
Children feature strongly in this haunting, beautifully told story about a child’s perception of loss. Nelly has lost her beloved grandmother and is helping her parents clear out her mother’s childhood home. She explores and discovers both the house and the surrounding woods where her mom, Marion, used to play and built a treehouse Nelly has often heard about.
Then suddenly, out of the blue, her mother leaves and that is when Nelly meets a girl her own age building her own treehouse and named Marion.
It’s a film that explores specifically the world of children, how they are affected by what is happening in the world around them, how adults deal with them and how they cope with feelings that are way beyond their tender years.
The two young actresses are superb and add another dimension to the film, which is tenderly made and sensitively unfolds.
It is not a children’s movie, but it is very much about their lives, they way they digest what is given to them by the adults who run their little lives and how they make sense of things they don’t understand.
This is a fantastic opportunity to catch up on many of the best movies from Europe of the past year. For details on all the films and how to watch visit www.eurofilmfest.co.za
De Beer Necessities 