Film Movement is pleased to announce that A RADIANT GIRL, beloved French actress Sandrine Kiberlain's highly personal directorial debut, a selection of the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics Week, will open exclusively in theaters in New York (Quad Cinema) on Friday, February 17th, 2023 followed by a national release.
Paris, summer 1942. Irene (Rebecca Marder, nominated for a 2023 César for Best Female Newcomer for her performance), is a vibrant 19-year-old aspiring actress without a care in the world. She is honing her passion for the theater, rehearsing for the entrance exam to the coveted Conservatory, making new friends and discovering love, without realizing that time is running out in Nazi-occupied France, as her close-knit family is watching.
In turns enchanting and devastating, Ms. Kiberlain’s drama, which she also wrote, is not a traditional Holocaust narrative, but a unique coming-of-age tale about the freedoms of youth amidst a changing world, anchored by a star-making performance by Ms. Marder "which more than delivers on the luminous promise of the English title" (Screen Daily). Partly inspired by Ms. Kiberlain’s own family story, the film shows the dangers of complacency in the face of fascism, as well as moments of beauty that are possible even under the hardest of circumstances.
One of France’s most prolific and versatile French stars, Sandrine Kiberlain came to prominence with her Most Promising Actress César-winning performance in Laetitia Masson’s To Have or Not, and has since worked with many of France’s top directors including Alain Resnais (Life of Riley), Jacques Audiard (A Self-Made Hero), Benoît Jacquot (Seventh Heaven), André Téchiné (Being 17), Claude Miller (Betty Fisher and Other Stories), Stéphane Brizé (Mademoiselle Chambon, Another World), Maïwen (Polisse) and Cédric Jimenez (November). She has received nine César nominations and won two César Awards. A RADIANT GIRL marks her feature debut as a writer-director.
Rebecca Marder is a former member of France’s legendary classical theater troupe La Comédie Française where she was admitted at the age of 20. Ms. Marder was selected for the César Academy’s annual "Revelations" list of rising stars leading up to the nomination. She will next be seen as one of the leads in François Ozon’s new film The Crime is Mine opposite Isabelle Huppert.
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