Schedule:

1:30 PM - Cross Away
Q&A with Gilles Bourdos and Vincent Lindon
Rounding out strong ensemble casts in this year’s Rendez-Vous selections The Quiet Son and The Second Act, the great Vincent Lindon is virtually the entire show in Cross Away. In this Gallic take on Steven Knight’s acclaimed 2013 drama Locke, Lindon is Joseph Cross, a construction foreman who supervises concrete pours. The night before a particularly big job, he’s compelled to leave the worksite in a hurry and set out, for obscure reasons, to an undisclosed destination. As Cross, driving deep into the night while struggling—one phone call at a time—to keep his life and work from falling apart, Lindon crafts a wholly original take on the character indelibly played by Tom Hardy in the original film, resulting in a riveting one-man show that starkly externalizes a long, dark night of the soul.

3:30 PM - Wild Diamond
Q&A with Agathe Riedinger
Nineteen-year-old Liane (Malou Khebizi) lives with her mother and sister in a small southern town and harbors dreams of achieving fame as a reality TV contestant. When she auditions for Miracle Island, her breakout moment seems imminent—but anticipation soon curdles into disillusionment, and Liane’s hopes start crashing as she spirals into self-doubt. Scouting nonprofessional performers for her feature debut (the only first film selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival), writer-director Agathe Riedinger treats potentially sensationalistic material with an authentic and refreshingly non-judgmental gaze, bringing a complex perspective to a subject often reduced to well-worn sound bites, and introducing viewers to the lesser-known rhythms of life in the workaday small cities of the Côte d’Azur region. A Strand Releasing release.

6:00 PM - This Life of Mine
Introduction by producer Julie Salvador
A beloved performer, the late Sophie Fillières was also an influential writer-director, cited as a key influence by filmmakers including Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Triet. For her final feature—which she finished shooting shortly before her death—Fillières cast another important French actress-writer-director to inhabit a leading role inspired by Fillière’s own experience. Agnès Jaoui (The Taste of Others, Look at Me) stars as Barbie, a middle-aged writer whose mental health is unraveling. Alienated from her grown children, the single woman is forced to confront her problems when an uncanny encounter with a man who claims to know Barbie lands her in the hospital. Simultaneously fearless, exasperating, and endearing, Jaoui’s performance probes the obscure inner life of a woman whose complexities and contradictions ultimately lead her on a journey of discovery, growth, and rebuilding; the resulting film is as hilarious as it is poignant—a fitting last work from a great filmmaker.

8:30 PM - Visiting Hours
Q&A with Patricia Mazuy
Two of France’s greatest working actresses—the legendary Isabelle Huppert and The Secret of the Grain star Hafsia Herzi—are paired in this moving drama from Patricia Mazuy. Affluent Alma (Huppert) meets working-class Mina (Herzi) during visits to the prison facility where both of their husbands are serving time. Despite their different backgrounds, the two women quickly form a close connection—but can their bond survive the conflicting pressures of their respective circumstances? Revered at home but sadly under-celebrated here, co-writer and director Patricia Mazuy has proven exceptionally adept at repurposing conventions of tone and genre to her own ends in films like the offbeat police-comedy-thriller Paul Sanchez Is Back! (Rendez-Vous 2019) and the grim neo-noir Saturn Bowling. With her new film, Mazuy once again demonstrates her mastery of tonal shifts and her steadfast refusal to be pigeonholed in this trenchant depiction of the French carceral system and the shaky relationships it engenders