Skip to content
R15

FALCON LAKE

Genre
Comedy and Drama
Running time
100 minutes
Year
2022
Language
French and English
Subtitle
English
Country
Canada and France
Director
Charlotte Le Bon
Bio
Producer
David Gauquié, Nancy Grant, Julien Deris, Sylvain Corbeil, Jalil Lespert, Dany Boon, Jean-Luc Ormières
Cast
Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit, Monia Chokri, Arthur Igual, Karine Gonthier-Hyndman, Thomas Laperrière, Anthony Therrien, Pierre-Luc Lafontaine, Lévi Doré, Jeff Roop
Scriptwriter
Charlotte Le Bon
Two teenagers develop a close bond when thrown together on a family holiday in Quebec, where they are staying in a cabin by an eerily dark lake in the woods. 16-year-old Chloe (Sara Montpetit) gets morbid adolescent thrills from stories of drownings and hauntings that are part of the local lore. The well-behaved Sebastien (Joseph Engel), 13 – but “nearly 14” - is fascinated by this older and seemingly worldly girl, who sneaks wine and cigarettes, gets asked out to parties by older guys and is sleeping – along with his little brother - in a bunk tantalisingly adjacent to his own. Initially reluctant to hang out with a younger boy, Chloe is drawn to Bastien’s humour, sensitivity and dance moves; the two become inseparable. Actress-turned-director Charlotte LeBon manages the mix of sadness, awkwardness and fun of first love with a sure hand while never losing sight of the story’s tonal melancholy.

Other movies

MODI - THREE DAYS ON THE WING OF MADNESS

Director: Johnny Depp

Amedeo Modigliani’s life is in a bohemian state of chaos. It is 1916 and Paris is suffering the deprivations of war; with no money, he and his decadent friends drink, take loads of drugs, make art and fail to sell it, then argue with the landladies who want to evict them. Modi, as his artist friends Utrillo and Soutine like to call him, is offered a lifeline by an American collector (a superb cameo from Al Pacino) but, as usual, he sabotages the opportunity. Sadly, his true status as a leading light of modern art would only be recognised after his premature death. Director Johnny Depp clearly revels in his hero’s excesses, invigorating his story with the spirit of punk rock.

SNOW WHITE

Director: Taghrid Abouelhassan

Both Iman and her younger sister dream of finding true love, within the strict parameters of life. For Iman, there is an obvious obstacle: she is a Little Person, only 119 centimeters tall, which puts her out of the running for an arranged marriage. Instead she goes online, hiding her size and compensating with her big laugh and big personality. Her sister has an offer of marriage, but Khaled’s family has second thoughts when they meet Iman. To put things off, the man’s mother insists on a top-of-the-range refrigerator as a dowry. A light-hearted but fascinating mix of issues around marriage, disability and sisterhood, with a magnetic star performance by Mariam Sherif at its very big heart.

MY FRIEND AN DELIE

Director: Zijian Dong

This remarkable adaptation of Shuang Xuetao’s novel is the debut film from actor-turned-director Dong Zijian that flashes back and forth in time to tell a touching story of friendship and family strife. Following his father’s death, Limo (Liu Haoran) is flying back to his hometown in northeastern China, when he spots his childhood friend An Delie (played by director Zijian) (Dong) on the plane, who fails to recognise him. When their flight is diverted because of heavy snow, the duo go on a journey that brings back long-forgotten memories in which Limo has to deal with the demons from his past. Beautifully photographed by Pema Tsedan across two time periods, the film shows the long-term emotional impact of the traumas of our childhood.

YALLA PARKOUR

Director: Areeb Zuaiter

One of Zuaiter’s strongest memories of her mother is her radiant smile as a young woman on the beach in Gaza on one of the family’s regular holidays to Palestine. Her cousins would mock Areeb’s “outsider” accent, but according to her mother, this was where she belonged. From her current home in the US, Zuaiter combs the web for images that evoke something of her mother and finds teenager Ahmed Matar and his friends, a parkour team who use the ruins of Gaza’s bombed buildings as obstacle courses, laughing for joy against a background of explosions. She tracks Ahmed down online and the two become friends; meanwhile, he is determined that parkour will be his route out of the prison their shared homeland has become.