TELL HER THAT I LOVE HER

(Dites-lui que je l’aime)

US Premiere | France | 2025 | Documentary, Drama | 92 min | In French with English subtitles

Directed by: Romane Bohringer
Written by: Romane Bohringer, Gábor Rassov
Based on the Book by: Clémentine Autain
Produced by: Sophie Réveil & Denis Carot (Escazal Films)
Cinematography: Bertrand Mouly
Original Score: Emmanuel Jessua, Maurice Marius
Film Editing: Céline Cloarec, Amélie Massoutier
Cast: Romane Bohringer, Clémentine Autain, Eva Yelmani, Josiane Stoléru, Liliane Sandrey-Baud, Raoul Rebbot-Bohringer, Philippe Rebbot, Dominique Frot
International Sales: Kinology

Synopsis

Director Romane Bohringer fearlessly breaks stylistic ground in this autobiographical documentary, delving into generational trauma and wielding a mixed bag of filmmaking tools. The exercise is instigated by Clémentine Autain’s memoir about being abandoned by a mother who died very young. That book conjures up Bohringer’s own childhood, which is a carbon copy of Autain’s experience. Superimposing their parallel story lines and sleuthing scraps of family history, the film follows both women, as they plumb their individual suffering to reach a kind of loving forgiveness, breaking those tenacious abandonment cycles, once and for all.

Director’s Biography

Romane Bohringer made her on-screen debut at 10, alongside her father, actor Richard Bohringer, in Patrick Chaput’s La Bête noire (1983). However, she soon turned to the theater, playing Miranda in Peter Brook’s staging of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  Her breakout film was opposite Cyril Collard in his powerful AIDS drama, Savage Nights (1992), which earned her a Most Promising Actress Award. She has appeared in 91 films, among them Claude Miller’s The Accompanist (1992), Martine Dugowson’s Mina Tannenbaum (1994), Agnieszka Holland’s Total Eclipse (1995), Richard Bohringer’s The City Is Beautiful at Night (2006), and Alain Tasma’s TV movie Le Viol (2017). She wrote and directed her first short, Ti Tengu caru in 2005. In 2018, Bohringer and Philippe Rebbot cowrote, co-directed and co-starred in the feature L’Amour flou, recounting the true story of their real-life romantic breakup, which was nominated for a César Award for Best First Film, and then Uncoupling (TAFFF 2022), the sitcom version of that same story. Tell Her I Love Her premiered in the Special Screenings section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.