AN EINEM SCHÖNEN MORGEN

Sandra (Léa Seydoux) is 35, a translator, and lives with her eight-year-old daughter Linn in a small Paris flat; her husband died five years ago. Her father Georg (Pascal Greggory), a former professor, suffers from a neurodegenerative disease that first takes his sight, then his thinking. While Sandra and her mother (Nicole Garcia) search for a care place, she meets Clément (Melvil Poupaud), an old family friend. He is married, and yet something begins between them that Sandra had long since stopped expecting. “An einem schönen Morgen” by Mia Hansen-Løve (France, 2022) holds both movements side by side: the slow farewell and the new desire.

French director Mia Hansen-Løve draws on her own experience without turning it into melodrama: the editing flows without fades to black or explanatory wide shots, conference rooms, hospital corridors and care homes follow one another like an ordinary daily life that is simply too much. The illness has a name, Benson’s syndrome, but no special dramatic role. It premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in 2022, where it received the Europa Cinemas Label; France submitted it for the Oscar race. “An einem schönen Morgen” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2022 in the Opening Night section.

Shown at the 2022 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2022 · Film Archive