The Super 8 Years

Annie Ernaux and David Ernaux-Briot's 2022 French documentary is made from family films shot between 1972 and 1981. The footage is silent; Ernaux reads a text written afterwards as narration and looks at her own past from outside. The idea is that a private archive is a document of a class. Holidays, birthdays and journeys are not only family memories; they show the habits and expectations of a particular social layer in the years after 1968. Ernaux also tells the breakdown of her marriage through these images. The relationship between the person holding the camera and the person in the frame is the text's real subject; who recorded what is at the centre. Who it's for: readers of Ernaux and those who like archive-based documentary. Who it's not for: viewers waiting for event; the film consists entirely of home footage and a read text.