22/09/2025 - Joachim Lafosse presents his 11th feature film, a sensitive drama which highlights the reality of the return to square one in terms of social mobility when love comes to an end

Jules Waringo, Leonis Pinero Müller, Teodor Pinero Müller and Eye Haïdara in Six Days in Spring

Joachim Lafosse’s new film, Six Days in Spring, sees the Belgian director returning to compete in the San Sebastian International Film Festival three years after presenting A Silence [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Lafosse
film profile] at the gathering.

Sana (Eye Haïdara) does one job after another, she’s always on the go, sat in front of a computer screen by day and behind a counter by night, when she’s not in her kitchen overseeing domestic logistics as a single mum. When her new boyfriend Jules (Jules Waringo) suggests she and her young twins (Leonis and Teodor Pinero Müller) join him during the holidays, she accepts. But the young man’s offer falls through at the last minute. Gutted at the idea of depriving her children of their holiday, she allows herself to be convinced by their shaky idea of holidaying in their paternal grandparents’ second home on the French Riviera, without telling the latter. The alarm they trigger on entering the house is just the first of many signs that a stressful week lies ahead.

"We’re not allowed to be here," Sana insists, banning them from using electricity and water and from trips to the beach and in Citroen Meharis. Their presence there is a secret, much like Sana’s relationship with Jules. But it’s hard to hide ten-year-old children who are full of vim and vigour. The complications come thick and fast, and all contact with the outside world becomes a potential risk. The children don’t seem to question whether they belong in this place and their father’s family, but Sana feels a sense of illegitimacy resurfacing, a feeling of not being a part of that world, and of being more of an intruder than ever, as if the time she and her partner spent together as a couple was a mere delusional interlude.

Six Days in Spring boasts many strong markers of Joachim Lafosse’s particular brand of cinema (the family unit as a potential context for alienation, power relations within couples, a taste for car scenes, an enclosed space conducive to outpourings) but what’s surprising is its tendency to avoid crisis point, despite it always seeming just around the corner. The tension is real, but the story plays with our expectations and with the drama created by the risk Sana is taking. Eye Haïdara treads along this razor edge with confidence. It’s a film about small nothings, avoided acts, faces turned away, for which she strikes just the right balance. This intentionally tense plot allows room for questions over the assignment of social class, the illusion of social mobility and of changing social class, and the universal right to beauty. And the dogged determination to not allow the joy of gazing at the sea to be taken away.

Six Days in Spring was produced by Stenola Productions (Belgium), in co-production with Les Films du Losange (France), Samsa Film (Luxembourg) and Menuetto (Belgium). World sales are entrusted to Les Films du Losange, who are also overseeing the film’s distribution in France, scheduled for 12 November. The movie will be released a few weeks later in Belgium, on 10 December, under the aegis of Cinéart.

(Translated from French)