30/12/2025 - Anton Balekdjian, Léo Couture and Mattéo Eustachon sign a singular second feature, at once atmospheric, tender and poignant, about loneliness in the modern world

“I feel like I’ve only made bad decisions in my life, I never went the right direction, I never did anything that I really liked.” It’s in the disoriented footsteps of a 29-year-old passing through a mountain resort out of season and on a hazardous quest for love in order to give his life meaning that the trio made up of Anton Balekdjian, Léo Couture and Mattéo Eustachon has set the elastic and touching plot of the atypical Drifting Laurent [+see also:
trailer
film profile], unveiled in the ACID programme in Cannes, nominated for the Louis Delluc prize for Best French Film of the Year and released in French cinemas on 31 December by Arizona Distribution. This charming, free and very delicate film resonates like a very accurate generational portrait of a difficult era, in which a big segment of the youth often doesn’t know which way to turn.

“The goal is to stay calm”. Completely stuck in his life and landing in a small apartment lent to him in the Orres, in the Southern Alps, Laurent (the revelation Baptiste Pérusat) dives into the unknown. On a walk off the beaten tracks down to the valley and the deserted hamlets, his path crosses that of other lonely souls: an elderly woman wishing only for death (Monique Crespin), amateur photographer Farès (Djanis Bouzyani) with whom he has a fling, herborist Sophia (Béatrice Dalle) and her son Santiago (Thomas Daloz) who’s crazy about Vikings… All relatively marginalised individuals who recreate a kind of circumstantial micro-community and who Laurent holds on to in his dream of “loving and being loved”, of filling that depressing void (“I don’t have a home of my own, a place to go”) and the internal rebellion that have been oppressing him for years. But nothing’s ever easy when it comes to utopias, and the beauties of the mountain also have their rough faces. For one needs to find the right posture in the world…

Noticed in 2022 for Dying in Ibiza (A film in three summers) [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the directing trio is clearly stepping up in their mastery of a subtle originality (in a highly personal style that sharply stands out from current young French cinema), bringing together an almost documentary-like realism, a touch of modern legend, a relaxed narration and a quiet rhythm where the many silences give way to the irruption of long confidences. This sense for intimacy, for the fragility of humans and the potential depth of small, seemingly banal events flourishes in spectacular natural settings, like a small cinematic island escaping with agility yet without radicalism from the immensity of conformity.

Drifting Laurent was produced by Mabel Films and co-produced by Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma. Best Friend Forever is handling international sales.

(Translated from French)