Judith Godrèche, France / Belgium, 117 min., feature film, Original version with English subtitles
Annie Ernaux is invited to her hometown of Rouen to present her latest book. On the trip there, she is overcome by a sense of dizziness and finds herself transported back to the summer of 1958. Back then, as an 18-year-old, she was working at a summer camp, where she had her first sexual encounter with a man. What at first seems like a rite of passage turns into an experience whose consequences she is unable to make sense of for a long time. Caught between desire, shame, and the gaze of others, she embarks on a search for the young woman she once was. Judith Godrèche adapts Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical bestseller with great sensitivity to its personal and social dimensions. As an actress and director who, through her film MOI AUSSI, takes a stand against sexual violence, she lends Ernaux’s story a further contemporary perspective. A GIRL’S STORY premiered in Cannes in 2026.
