09/01/2025 - The feature, which was shot in French, with one part in black and white and another in colour, stars Aminthe Audiard, Samuel Kircher, Mélanie Thierry and Álex Brendemühl

Actors Aminthe Audiard and Samuel Kircher alongside director Jaime Rosales on the set of Morlaix (© Quim Vives)

The 54th edition of IFFR – International Film Festival Rotterdam (30 January-9 February) will host the international premiere of Morlaix, the eighth feature by Jaime Rosales, in its Harbour section. It tells the story of a first teenage love between Gwen and Jean-Luc, respectively played by Aminthe Audiard (Peter Von Kant [+see also:
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trailer
film profile]) and Samuel Kircher (Last Summer [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Catherine Breillat
film profile]). The adult versions of these same characters are played by Mélanie Thierry (thrice nominated for the César Award, and seen recently in Party of Fools [+see also:
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film profile] and Suddenly [+see also:
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interview: Thomas Bidegain
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interview: Elena Martín Gimeno
film profile] and glimpsed in the series I, Addict [+see also:
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series profile], and with whom Rosales previously worked on his feature debut, The Hours of the Day, before teaming up with him again 15 years later with Petra [+see also:
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interview: Jaime Rosales
film profile]).

According to the screenplay, written by the director together with Fanny Burdino, Samuel Doux and Delphine Gleize, Gwen is in her final year of secondary school and her mother has just passed away. She lives in Morlaix, a small town in Brittany, France. Halfway through the school year, a sophisticated, well-read and alluring Parisian boy called Jean-Luc makes an appearance. Intrigued by his personality, the girl can’t help but feel attracted to him. In a moment of intimacy, the lad confesses to her that his brother died abruptly a few years ago.

The film is named after the town in Brittany where it was shot, both in black and white on 35 mm, and in colour on 16 mm. “The movie is about life perceived as a poetic and transcendental experience. A life-changing experience understood as a path that must be trodden,” explains the Catalonian filmmaker, who has combined professional and non-professional actors in this work. “It’s also an ontological film in which the form is more important than the story being told because in art, the form matters more than the content of the discourse. Artists express themselves through the form, and new ideas can spring forth when you use novel ones,” he sums up.

Rosales has previously taken part in the Cannes Film Festival, in the Un Certain Regard section (with Solitary Fragments [+see also:
trailer
film profile] in 2007, for which he received the Goya Awards for Best Film and Best Director, and with Beautiful Youth [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jaime Rosales
film profile] in 2014) and in the Directors’ Fortnight (with The Hours of the Day in 2003, Dream and Silence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jaime Rosales
film profile] in 2012 and Petra in 2018). He has also been in competition at the San Sebastián Film Festival, with Bullet in the Head [+see also:
film review
film profile] in 2008 and Wild Flowers [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jaime Rosales
film profile] in 2022.

Morlaix is a production by French companies Iwaso and Les Productions Balthazar in conjunction with Spain’s Fresdeval Films. It boasts support from the CNC, the Nouvelle Aquitaine region, the Brittany region and Ciné+ in France, and from the ICAA, RTVE, 3Cat, Movistar Plus+, the ICEC, the Mauricio and Carlota Botton Foundation, and the Institut Ramon Llull in Spain. A Contracorriente Films will distribute it in Spanish theatres from 14 March, and Condor Distribution will soon do likewise in France. The movie does not yet have an international sales agent attached.

(Translated from Spanish)