White Material

Director: Claire Denis

2009 / 106min / 35mm

Raised in colonial French Africa until the age of 13, Denis would return to the continent in her cinema time and again, making it the scene of some of her richest and most redolent works. Here, Isabelle Huppert plays the manager of a coffee plantation in an unnamed country on the verge of civil war, trying to hang on until harvest time as the auguries of impending chaos gather on every side, and soldiers—many of them children, hence the film’s dedication “Aux intrepides petites marmailles”—roam the landscape. “Simultaneously poetic, dramatic, and realistic… Altogether stunning.”—Los Angeles Times

Distributor: The Festival Agency

Part of Maybe If You Smile They Will One Day All Return