“It was as if you were seeing everything and looked at nothing.” Growing up in a major capital city, discovering the sometimes less-than-exciting world of work, trying to find a soulmate in the midst of the crowds, keeping up with old friends and returning from time to time for a meal with the family: the passage to adulthood is often far from self-evident in a contemporary world where it's not so easy to communicate intimately with others.

All these themes and more are explored in Nino [+lee también:
tráiler
entrevista: Pauline Loquès
ficha de la película], the first feature film by Pauline Loquès, presented in competition in Critics' Week of the 78th Cannes Film Festival. But rather than make a thesis of it, the French filmmaker cleverly chooses the path of impressionism and the human, focusing on three violently revolutionary days in the life of an introverted young man whose head is suddenly turned upside down.

“We're not going to pretend that everything's fine?” In fact, for Nino (the excellent Théodore Pellerin), about to celebrate his 29th birthday, the news is staggering. He has come to the hospital for a check-up because he is tired, and suddenly learns the results of additional tests: he has contracted HPV that has triggered throat cancer. Stunned, Nino learns of the protocol that awaits him from the following Monday: six sessions of chemotherapy followed by 12 of radiotherapy, with someone he trusts to accompany him if possible. As a side effect, he risks losing his ability to reproduce, so he is asked to collect sperm and freeze them. “Now?” he asks. And yes, it is now, because nothing in Nino's life can wait any longer: he finds himself in a present of rare interiorised intensity, which is about to get even more complicated as he soon realises that he has lost the keys to his flat. It's Friday, Nino is homeless, and he has three days to find someone to accompany him, to provide sperm and, above all, to talk about what's happening to him while the world around him continues on its way...

Launched by a powerful opening sequence, Nino recounts the wanderings of its groggy and uncertain protagonist, wandering through the city from one encounter to the next, from his mother (Jeanne Balibar) to his best friend (William Lebghil), from an ex-girlfriend (Camille Rutherford) to an old college acquaintance (Salomé Dewaels) bumped into by chance, from a party to the streets of Paris by night and day. Naturally moving, the film nevertheless successfully combines lightness, tenderness and humour with the dramatic heart of its subject, allowing the director to explore in small ways the difficulties (inherent in the modern world) of expressing, feeling, really looking at others, opening the window to free one's emotions and share them.

Nino was produced by Blue Monday Productions and co-produced by France 2 Cinéma. The Party Film Sales handles international sales.