Review: One Minute to Midnight
- VENICE 2026: Nicolas Pariser devises a charming, politically tinged ramble centred on a man in the mirror who wakes up to his past
"What life have you lived?". A strange and fascinating foggy period of time that a man just shy of fifty uses to revisit old acquaintances who have been out of his life for over twenty years, is the focus of Nicolas Pariser’s singular and captivating movie One Minute to Midnight, which is screening in competition in the 83rd Venice Film Festival. It offers up a week of wandering and conversation on the streets in Paris which gradually morphs into an inquiry into the self, notably through the evolution of romantic relations between women and men, and the trajectory of "precarious intellectuals" in a society with a noxious political climate.
"Back then it wasn’t feminism that was suffocating you: we were fresh meat, and everyone thought that was normal." Stuck in Paris for a week, waiting for an appointment postponed by an Italian notary to finalise his father’s estate (a father he never knew), Léo (a pitch-perfect Melvil Poupaud in a tricky "passive" role) has time to kill. He reconnects with his daughter Emma (Clara Pacini), a young woman in her twenties whom he barely knows, who proves deeply committed to the fight against the patriarchy ("I want to do something serious with my life") and who’s in the thick of the social unrest which is setting the capital ablaze (under tight police control). It’s also a chance to catch up with former comrades from a cultural magazine to which Léo contributed actively around the turn of the 2000s - a small group dubbed La Horde whose behaviour towards women left a great deal to be desired back then, according to lawyer Éléonore (Léonie Simaga) and MP Armelle (Anaïs Demoustier). Nonplussed and somewhat destabilised by perspectives which just don’t tally with his own image of his love life, Léo - who admits he hasn’t done much with his life - continues probing the past, primarily looking for Tina (Golshifteh Farahani)…
"I won’t tell you anything; you’ll see for yourself." Taking the exact opposite tack from tightly engineered narratives and formulas so classical they often become predictable, the film wanders with its protagonist through a version of Paris which is as real as it gets, moving along courtesy of long walks and big conversations which lead to fresh encounters, allowing us to glean a little more and, first and foremost, ensuring Léo learns a little more about himself. What emerges is a fragmented portrait which also subtly depicts a generation and a society caught between the end of a cycle and a leap into the void. It’s an existentialist feature film about the passage of time, which is awash with modern-day issues and Joseph Roth undertones, and whose unusual style exerts a powerful force.
One Minute to Midnight was produced by Bizibi and Dimanche Soir. Pyramide International are handling international sales.
(Translated from French)
Photogallery 10/09/2026: Venice 2026 - One Minute to Midnight
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© 2026 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it
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