The Restless

• Joachim Lafosse
• 117 min
• France, Belgium, Luxembourg
• 2021
• Fiction

Festival favourite Joachim Lafosse delivers an intensive and intimate family drama where mental illness increasingly takes over the leading role.

Leila and Damien live in a passionate marriage. He is an artist and she renovates antique furniture, in the beautiful house in the countryside, where they live with their little son Amine. But the fact is that no one knows when Damien’s enthusiasm, playfulness, and ingenuity will suddenly pass into a skittish, manic episode, followed by hospital visits and depression, making life increasingly difficult. When Leila becomes so tense that she can no longer handle being a wife, lover, mother, and caretaker, things come to a head. As usual, Lafosse (Keep Going, GFF 2019; The White Knights, GFF 2016) is formidable at portraying complicated relationships and Damien Bonnard (Les Misérables) and Leïla Bekhti (The Eddy) give 200% as their namesakes. And Gabriel Merz Chammah, who plays Amine, is the grandchild of Isabelle Huppert.

- Camilla Larsson

• Drama
• Relationer
• Uppbrott