NINO

US Premiere | France | 2025 | Drama | 96 min | In French with English subtitles

Directed by: Pauline Loquès
Written by: Pauline Loquès, Maud Ameline
Produced by: Sandra Da Fonseca, Bertrand Gore & Nathalie Mesuret (Blue Monday Productions), Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, France 2 Cinéma
Cinematography: Lucie Baudinaud
Film Editing: Clémence Diard
Cast: Théodore Pellerin (Nino), William Lebghil (Sofian), Salomé Dewaels (Zoé), Jeanne Balibar (the mother), Camille Rutherford (Camille), Estelle Meyer (Lina), Mathieu Amalric (the man in public baths), Balthazar Billaud (Solal)
International Sales: The Party Film Sales 

Synopsis

Diagnosed with throat cancer on the eve of his 29th birthday, then inadvertently locked out of his apartment, Nino spends three days walking the streets of Paris, processing the ramifications of that seismic revelation, and struggling with how to even share that news with his loved ones. Pauline Loquès‘s quiet, elegantly restrained first feature packs an unexpected emotional punch, and boasts a remarkably rich, nuanced performance by Canadian actor Théodore Pellerin, who deservedly walked off with the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Director’s Biography

Pauline Loquès wrote and directed her first short film, La vie de jeune fille, in 2018. She has since worked as a writer on TV talk shows 6 à la maison (2020) and Quelle époque ! (2024). Nino, her first feature, premiered in the Critics’ Week section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It was awarded the D’Ornano-Valenti Prize, honoring the best French first film of the year, with the support of the Franco-American Cultural Fund, by a jury of Anglo-Saxon journalists at the 2025 Deauville American Film Festival.