Among the ancient ruins of Pompeii, a group of French teenagers on a school trip grapples with the anxiety and excitement of impending life after secondary school. La Gradiva, the perceptive and deeply affecting winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at Cannes, deploys a singular language that straddles the real and the poetic to capture the transience of that moment in life when one is no longer a child, yet not quite an adult. French director Marine Atlan takes the title of her acclaimed debut feature from the novel by Wilhelm Jensen, which also served as the basis for Freud’s 1907 essay on psychoanalysis, ushering audiences into the rich inner world of adolescents pulled between their own desires and fears.

Language: FR, IT, EN
Subtitles: HR