Films
La Gradiva
Critics’ Week Ami Paris Grand Prize Winner, Cannes Film Festival
The eternal and the temporary collide on a high school trip to Pompeii, where a barrage of students, including the struggling Toni, break down emotional barriers, explore their sexualities, debate class and politics, and examine their own personal histories in this stunningly sensitive directorial debut from Mariane Atlan.
La Gradiva resists familiar coming-of-age tropes, instead interrogating the nature of time and tragedy in a gorgeously photographed, achingly realistic manner. It’s a transportive glimpse into the inner lives of students whose attempts to grapple with the world they’re inheriting and the way the stories they’re told–about history, about family, about each other–may be darker than they first appear.