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The long-awaited new film by the Academy Award nominated French animation director Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville, The Illusionist) is a wonderful biographical animated drama that delves into the life of legendary playwright and director Marcel Pagnol. In 1955, Pagnol is going through a crisis of self-confidence, while simultaneously his memory starts to betray him. Tasked with writing a weekly column about his childhood for Elle magazine, he is tormented by doubts in the wake of his most recent plays’ failure. In this moment of complete vulnerability, the young man he once was, emerges from the depths of his memory – Little Marcel Pagnol. Together, they relive the most significant chapters of their life: from his first steps as a teacher in Provence to his groundbreaking cinematic work with sound, from the construction of his own film studios to the conflicts of World War II. A film that depicts the timeless vitality of a man who was, above all, a bon vivant.

Α deeply charged story about identity, motherhood, and the fight for autonomy, delivered by french filmmaker Anna Cazenave Cambet, in an adaptation of Constance Debré’s 2020 novel. At summer’s end, Clémence (Vicky Krieps) shocks her ex-husband by revealing she has relationships with women. In response, he seeks to strip her of custody of their son, setting off a years-long legal and emotional struggle as Clémence fights to be both mother and woman, free to live openly. Cambet balances intimate realism with emotional lyricism, allowing small silences and private moments to carry weight. Love Me Tender premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 78th Cannes Film Festival (2025), where it was also nominated for the Queer Palm Award. Anchored by Krieps’s quietly powerful lead performance, the film draws strength from its vulnerability and moral insistence.

To what extent do the words of the author of 1984 continue to resonate in today’s society? For a long time, we mistakenly figured that George Orwell’s dystopian prophecy had been proven wrong by the West’s transition to a meta-ideological world of reduced authority, where seemingly nothing appeared to be prohibited, and where totalitarianism (which inspired the great writer’s foresight) seemed like a thing of the past once and for all. But Orwell doesn’t settle for a painfully accurate ideological dissection of his own world – unexpectedly, we realize that his work ultimately unveils the hidden truths of our own. And Raoul Peck, one of the most acclaimed documentary filmmakers of our time, demonstrates – with directorial finesse – that our era is much more Orwellian than we thought, or than what we’d like to think. A masterful documentary about the disturbing relevance of a terrifyingly timeless work of art. ON-SITE 8/3 Olympion 22:45