Will It Snow for Christmas?

A woman and her seven children live on a farm in the south of France. The work is heavy, the house is inadequate, there is no money; and yet there is warmth among them. The problem is one person: the owner of the farm, who is both the woman's lover and the father of all the children. He treats them as property, uses them as cheap labour in the fields, and does not let them leave. Sandrine Veysset's first film tells poverty and coercion without ever raising its voice; no shouting, no set piece, just the weight of a day that repeats. The woman's love for her children is the only thing making the arrangement bearable, and even that begins to run out. The question the film puts is not whether it will snow at Christmas but whether there is a way out. It won the Louis Delluc Prize in 1996 and the César for best first film.