Farewell to the Night

Muriel runs a farm in France. Her grandson Alex comes to stay a few days before, he says, moving to Canada for work. She is delighted at first, then something in how he behaves starts to bother her, and she finds out what is actually happening: Alex has converted to Islam, has been radicalised, and is planning to leave for Syria. Canada is a cover story. André Téchiné tells this from a grandmother's kitchen table rather than in the language of the news. The question it sits on is not what Alex will do but what Muriel should do. Téchiné wrote it with Léa Mysius. Catherine Deneuve plays Muriel and Kacey Mottet Klein plays Alex; it premiered at the Berlinale in 2019.