Proxima

Sarah (Eva Green) is trying to balance her career and role as a mother in Alice Winocour’s precise and down-to-earth astronaut drama. A prized and critically acclaimed gem.

With the script for the Oscar-nominated Mustang as well as their distinctive and headstrong films Augustine and Maryland, Winocour has established themself as one of Europe’s most exciting filmmakers. Now she is back with a potent depiction of a mother-daughter relationship, and a woman’s hard struggle to match the physical and psychological exertions of her male colleagues during the rigorous preparations ahead of a year on the space station ISS. The brilliant Eva Green is backed up by Matt Dillon, Lars Eidinger, Sandra Hüller, and not least the child actor Zélie Boulant-Lemesle (what a find!), in this authentic, captivating and razor-sharp drama about dreams, family ties and impossible compromises.

• Johan Blomqvist