Petite Maman

Eight-year-old Nelly goes with her parents to the house where her mother grew up, after her grandmother's death. While the house is being emptied she meets a girl playing in the woods. The girl is called Marion, she is Nelly's age, and she is her mother as a child. So Nelly comes to know both her mother and her grandmother as children. Celine Sciamma wrote and directed. The twin sisters Josephine and Gabrielle Sanz play Nelly and the young Marion, with Nina Meurisse as the adult mother and Margo Abascal as the grandmother. It runs 72 minutes. It premiered at the 71st Berlin International Film Festival on 3 March 2021 and opened in France on 2 June. The box office came to 2 million dollars. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 97 percent with an 8.7 average, and Metacritic at 93. The critic Mark Kermode named it his favourite film of 2021, writing that it will pierce your heart, broaden your mind and gladden your soul. It won Best Foreign Language Film from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Audience Award at San Sebastian. Who it is for: viewers who like small, quiet films that speak through grief, especially anyone interested in children who are mourning. Who it is not for: anyone who needs the fantastical element explained. The film never asks how or why; it simply steps inside.