| 2024  –  98′  – Drama, LGBTQ+
Written by: Olivier Peyon, Vincent Poymiro, Cécilia Rouaud, Arthur Cahn.
Based on the Book by: Philippe Besson.
Directed by: Olivier Peyon.
Starring: Guillaume de Tonquédec, Victor Belmondo, Doriane Chastanet, Julien de Saint Jean, Jérémy Gillet, Guilaine Londez.
Official Competition, North American Premiere at TAFFF 2022.
In French with English subtitles.
A Cinephobia Releasing film. |

Celebrated novelist Stéphane Belcourt is invited back to his native Cognac as guest of honor at the bicentennial celebration for a local cognac producer.  At first, a bit unsettled at being thrust back into the childhood stomping-ground he abandoned 35 years earlier, he quickly changes his tune when he unexpectedly meets Lucas. The young man turns out to be the son of Stéphane’s first love, his great love, Thomas Andrieu. The very “Thomas” who appears in every one of his novels. Suddenly, all those distant memories come flooding back to him. Olivier Peyon‘s moving adaptation of Philippe Besson’s award-winning autobiographical novel of the same name jumps back and forth between 1984 and the present. It is, of course, a story of sexual awakening, and a plaintive memoir on the bittersweet heartbreak of lost love.  It’s also about how shame, hiding, and denying one’s true self can be a slow-burning death of the soul.  And how truth has the power to heal — maybe not all wounds, but at least a few of the bumps and bruises we accumulate along the way.

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