Beyond the Horizon

Earnest, visually impressive, tactile growing-up drama where a struggling farm family faces ruin from the summer drought of 1976.

Due to an ongoing drought, the animals in the area are just keeling over in Delphine Lehericy’s well-played follow-up to Puppy Love (GFF 2014). The father (Thibaut Evrard) is drowning in his inconsolable struggle to keep the family farm running. The mother (Laetitia Casta) finds respite in a love affair with Cécile (Clémence Poesy), who is the complete opposite of her macho husband. But the film’s main character is the 13-year-old sun Gus, who is forced to deal with the parental crisis while he, like any teenager, seeks to find his own identity. Well-acted and with beautiful cinematography that conveys the heat, the mother’s passionate quandary, the father’s frustrating sorrow and Gus’s increasing hard-set confusion.

• Maja Kekonius