02/09/2025 - VENICE 2025: Lila Gueneau is impressive in Marie-Elsa Sgualdo's debut feature film, playing a young woman fighting for her independence in the hypocritical Switzerland of the World War II

“I want to disappear, but I don't even have the courage to do so. I can't go on like this – You don't realise how strong you are.” Swiss filmmaker Marie-Elsa Sgualdo has dedicated her first feature film, Silent Rebellion [+see also:
trailer
film profile], to a beautiful portrait of a woman building herself up in the face of adversity. This period film, which nevertheless has modern resonances, was presented in the new Venezia Spotlight section at the 82nd Venice Film Festival.

“My mother? She's a bad woman.” It's 1943, in a small village on the Swiss border, and 17-year-old Emma (an excellent Lila Gueneau) is being questioned by a jury of notables. She hopes to win the “prize for virtue,” which comes with a sum of money that would help her achieve her goal of attending nursing school with her friend, the pastor's daughter (Grégoire Colin), for whom she works as a domestic servant (and is considered almost like a member of the family). This is the “opportunity of a lifetime” for the young woman, who lives very modestly with her father and two little sisters since their mother (Sandrine Blancke) abandoned them for a romantic adventure that caused a stir throughout the village.

Emma soon secretly shares this shame when she finds herself pregnant after being abused by a careless young bourgeois passing through. What to do? Find the father? Tell her family? Have an abortion? Marry someone else? Desperate but determined, Emma's misadventures are far from over in a climate of cowardice and hypocrisy, with Swiss border patrols intercepting Jews in the forest to hand them over to the Nazis on the French side...

Very well constructed by the director and Nadine Lamari (with, among other things, a remarkable temporal ellipsis), the script covers much more ground than it appears at first glance and always manages to bounce back where you least expect it. A narrative finesse goes hand in hand with simple but highly sensitive staging (notably the close-ups on faces) beneath its classic patina. The result is both a very endearing portrait of a poor young woman fighting bravely (and dramatically) for her independence and against predetermination at a time when rigid social classes, morals and male domination were at their height (elements that are still relevant today in another dimension), and a historical film that accurately evokes how human dignity could (and still can) be trampled on by sheltering in individual comfort at the expense of others' existence.

Silent Rebellion was produced by French companies Box Productions and co-produced by RTS, Belgian company Hélicotronc and French company Offshore. Salaud Morisset handles international sales.