Softie

Samuel Theis's first solo feature premiered in Critics' Week at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Johnny is ten years old, sensitive, bright and curious well beyond his years. After his mother escapes an abusive relationship, the family moves into a housing project in Forbach, in northeastern France. His new teacher, Jean Adamski, arrived from the big city and recognizes the boy's intelligence, opening a door onto another kind of life, but tension at home pushes Johnny to run away and turn up at his teacher's door. The film centers on the boy's awakening sexuality and on feelings for his teacher that blur the boundaries of that relationship, and it chooses to sit in that uncomfortable grey zone rather than resolve it. Theis has said the film is largely autobiographical, that he wanted to capture the moment he understood he would leave the place he was born, and that he deliberately shot from the child's point of view rather than an adult's. He previously co directed Party Girl, which won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes and drew on his own mother's life, with her playing herself. This film won both the Golden Alexander top prize at the Thessaloniki Film Festival and Best Actor there for Aliocha Reinert. Who it's for: Admirers of French social realist drama told from a child's perspective. Who it's not for: Not for viewers who need discomfort resolved, since the film deliberately leaves the teacher student boundary ambiguous.