© JULIEN POUPARD / PORT AU PRINCE PICTURES
LANGUE ÉTRANGÈRE
Director—Claire Burger
Feature, FRA / DE / BEL 2024—105min—18+
French and German original version with English subtitles
COMPETITION
FILM SPONSORSHIP
Multi-layered drama about two exchange partners who are confronted with their own desires and political situations of their time.
17-year-old Fanny is a reserved girl and her classmates make life difficult for her. Her first contact with her exchange partner when she arrives in Leipzig is also difficult: the self-confident and politically engaged Lena is initially distant towards her. The distance becomes unsettling when Fanny begins to talk and the conversation between the two young people enters that dangerous bottleneck between truth and fiction, where perhaps every acquaintance takes place: a zone of indeterminacy where desire takes root and threatens to suffocate in its own snares…
In intimate images and carried by a quartet of multilayered female characters (including Nina Hoss and Chiara Mastroianni), Claire Burger‘s Langue Étrangère speaks of emerging desire, of its tenderness and its force – and of the wounds it can inflict.
© JULIEN POUPARD / PORT AU PRINCE PICTURES