Audrey Diwan’s outstanding Venice Golden Lion winner could not be more timely or urgent. Based on Anne Ernaux’s memoir, it stars Anamaria Vartolomei as Anne, a French literature student at Angouleme University in the early 1960s.
When Anne falls pregnant, her plans and hopes for the future are thrown into disarray. Abortion is illegal in France, and Anne considers pregnancy “that illness that turns French women into housewives”. Family and close friends are of little help and as the weeks pass Anne is faced with the awful prospect of having to take drastic action of her own.