Petite Maman

Wednesday 9 April at 7.30pm

Céline Sciamma | France | 2021 | 72 mins | PG cert

A young girl makes a mysterious new friend while staying over at her late grandmother’s country home in Céline Sciamma’s exquisitely crafted and spellbinding modern fairytale.

“Movies tend to paint childhood in primary colours, mistaking small people for small interior worlds. But French auteur Céline Sciamma—who for years has centred her stories on young girls awakening to themselves in arthouse hits including Water Lilies, Tomboy, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire—doesn’t do them that disservice in Petite Maman, a tiny thunderbolt of a film… Dragged along by her distracted, grieving mother (Nina Meurisse) to clear out the remote country house of her recently deceased grandmother, eight-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) eventually goes looking for her own entertainment outside. In the woods one day she meets Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), also eager to play—maybe because she looks, from the curls in her hair to the tip of her nose, like Nelly’s mirror image… Sciamma’s elegant, melancholy fable captures something lovely and ineffable: a brief glimpse into life’s great mystery.”—Leah Blatt, Entertainment Weekly