Having established himself as a documentary filmmaker, Guillaume Sylvestre makes his fictional feature debut
with this evocative coming of age drama, loosely based on the 1860 novel First Love by the
Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. Transposing the novel to one of the most breathtakingly
beautiful regions of Canada, Sylvestre delivers a film that is both emotionally involving
and visually sumptuous, in which the main characters are both in harmony with and opposition to the
natural world around them. A lyrical and haunting study in desire and identity.
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Film Synopsis
Having just turned 13, Antoine sets out on his summer holidays with his parents, who
have rented a cottage on an island in the St-Lawrence River. Here, Antoine is attracted his
neighbour, a 17-year-old girl named Anna who happens to be the daughter of a woman that
Antoine's father was once acquainted with in his youth. The teenager's fascination with Anna
reveals a terrible family secret...
Continental Films, quality cinema under the Nazi Occupation
At the time of the Nazi Occupation of France during WWII, the German-run company Continental produced some of the finest films made in France in the 1940s.
American film comedy had its heyday in the 1920s and '30s, but it remains an important genre and has given American cinema some of its enduring classics.
It was American film noir and pulp fiction that kick-started the craze for thrillers in 1950s France and made it one of the most popular and enduring genres.