Olivier Assayas: Out of Time

Is there a contemporary filmmaker whose work deals more thoroughly, and more thoughtfully, with the question of what it means to belong to a generation, and how that meaning changes over time, than Assayas? Such matters act as a through line in Assayas’s nearly 40 year career, running through films like his sensitive ensemble drama Late August, Early September, a study in the quandaries of encroaching middle-age, the multi-generational group portrait of Summer Hours, and his latest, Suspended Time, a semi-autobiographical work which draws on the filmmaker’s pandemic experience and his separation from his former partner, Mia Hansen-Løve, which will play as a special preview to accompany this series. From Young Turk to graying eminence of French cinema, Assayas has remained nothing if not consistent in his commitment to talkin’ ’bout our generation(s).