As Louis Garrel’s mother did in real life, Sylvie, luminous Anouk Grinberg in The Innocent, leads theater workshops in prison, and easily falls in love with inmates. To the great despair of her son Abel – Louis Garrel, in eternal anxiety – she marries behind bars with Michel – roschdy Zem – who, once out, will inevitably be tempted to start the carambouilles again.
Supported by her friend Clémence – Noémie Merlant in unpinned mode – Abel overprotects her mother who rediscovers true love. Shot in Lyon, with simple, endearing and very funny characters, The Innocent is a nugget of off-the-wall comedy like French cinema no longer does.
Maksym Nakonechnyi, 31 years old only, worked in 2018 on a documentary which showed Ukrainian female soldiers engaged in Donbass. He found the inspiration for his film there. Lilia, the very impressive Rita Burkovskais an aerial reconnaissance specialist, she pilots drones, a prisoner of the Russians for several months, she is freed thanks to an exchange of detainees and it is her difficult return to civilian life that we follow as closely as possible.
Tortured, raped by the Russians, she is pregnant, and her choices – to keep the child or not, to return or not to Donbass – are all the more complex as she has a terrible time reconnecting with her community, her husband , his mother, his comrades.
Butterfly Vision, cis a physical experience of post-traumatic shocks, carried by a great cinematographic mastery, a striking contrast between reality with raw, gray and khaki tones, and Lilia’s visions, aerial, pixelated, her brain escaping from her body, like a drone. A powerful film that pays vibrant tribute to Ukrainian women in this war.