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Edition 2020
Films
Hélène is a Parisian academic specialized in the work of 17th century English playwright Aphra Behn. Facing and addressing the camera, she describes her encounter with a man with whom she fell in love during a party in Oporto. As their relationship turns into an obsession for Hélène, she quickly begins to behave erratically, neglecting responsibility towards both her son and herself. An adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s novel of the same name, filmmaker Danielle Arbid paints a tribute to the amour fou, perennial and treasured subject of French cinema, in this erotic and daring drama.
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Cast:
Laetitia Dosch, Sergei Polunin, Caroline Ducey, Grégoire Colin, Slimane Dazi -
Original Title:
Passion Simple -
Country:
France, Belgium -
Year:
2020 - 96’ Subtitles: Portuguese
Director
Danielle Arbid
Danielle Arbid is a Lebanese filmmaker born in Beirut in 1970. At 17 years of age, at the height of the country’s civil war, Arbid moved to Paris to study literature and began writing for various news outlets before transitioning into cinema in 1997 to make films. Amongst several short films and documentaries, she won the Silver Leopard Video Award at the Locarno Film Festival for her documentary Alone with War (2001) and the Golden Leopard Video Award for her short film Conversation de salon (2004), and had her first two feature-films, Dans les champs de bataille and Un homme perdu screened at the Directors' Fortnight section at Cannes in 2004 and 2007. Her latest film, Passion Simple, screened at LEFFEST’20, adapts Annie Ernaux’s novel of the same name published in 1991.
