MOTHER AND SON
(UN PETIT FRÈRE)
Friday, october 14 – Truffaut Theatre – 6:00 pm
(Screening ends at 8:00 pm)
FICTION / DRAMA
FRENCH NEWAVE 2.0
Presented in Association with:
MK2 Films
Women in Film
Los Angeles Premiere | France | 2022 | Drama | 116 min | In French with English subtitles
Directed by: Léonor Serraille
Written by: Léonor Serraille
Produced by: Sandra Da Fonseca, Nathalie Mesuret, Bertrand Gore (Blue Monday Productions), France 3 Cinéma
Cinematography: Hélène Louvart
Film Editing: Clémence Carré
Cast: Annabelle Lengronne (Rose), Stéphane Bak (Jean, 19-year-old), Ahmed Sylla (Ernest Adult), Kenzo Sambin (Ernest, 13-year-old), Laetitia Dosch, Sidi Fofana (Jean, 10-year-old), Milan Doucansi (Ernest, 5-year-old), Audrey Kouakou (Eugénie)
International Sales: MK2 Films
Much like her highly-lauded first film, Montparnasse Bienvenüe, Léonor Serraille‘s complex, sensitive second feature boasts tour-de-force, rich performances from each of her lead actors. Mother and Son is an up-close-and-personal study of a family of immigrants from the Ivory Coast settling in France in the 1980s. Poetically told and spanning two decades of their assimilation, we follow each character in turn — first and foremost Rose, a headstrong mother eager to live life on her own terms and intent on her children succeeding in this new world; then her responsible, over-achieving older son, Jean; and finally, her youngest son, Ernest, who has even more time and opportunities to adapt to their new culture. Their journey is never an easy one. Much as she tries, Rose doesn’t always make the wisest choices and debilitating behavioral patterns are, at times, passed down. But as philosopher Blaise Pascal tells us, “The past and the present are our means. The future alone is our end.” And Rose and her sons just keep moving forward, as best they can.
Writer/director Léonor Serraille was a literature student before majoring in screenwriting at La Fémis film school in Paris. Upon graduating, she directed the 42-minute film Body (2016), which was screened at several festivals. Her debut feature, Montparnasse Bienvenüe (COLCOA 2018), was based on her thesis screenplay and snagged the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. Mother and Son, her second feature premiered, in competition, at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
