Paris-based company Totem has boarded sales on Directors’ Fortnight documentary The Super 8 Years, the feature directorial debut of veteran French literary star Annie Ernaux with her son David Ernaux-Briot.
Ernaux, 81, is one of France’s most respected contemporary writers for her body of work capturing life for women and social change in the country from the 1960s onwards.
A number of her novels have been adapted to the big screen in recent years including Passion Simple by Danielle Arbid in 2020 and Happening by Audrey Diwan, which went on to win Venice’s Golden Lion in 2021.
The latter novella, published in 2019, recounted Ernaux’s struggle as a brilliant, ambitious, working-class student at Rouen University in the early 1960s, to get an abortion when she fell pregnant ahead of key exams.
The Super 8 Years revolves around home videos shot by Ernaux and her family from 1972 to 1981 and feeds into the themes of her work over the past 60 years.
“Re-watching our super eight films, shot between 1972 and 1981, it occurred to me that they comprised not only a family archive but a testimony to the pastimes, lifestyle and aspirations of a social class in the decade after 1968,” explains Ernaux.
“I wanted to incorporate these silent images into a story which combined the intimate with the social and with history, to convey the taste and colour of those years.”
The film is lead produced by David Thion and Philippe Martin at French production company Les Films Pelleas, which produced Arbid’s Passion Simple and is also the lead producer on a second Directors’ Fortnight title, Mia Hansen Løve’s One Fine Morning.
“We’re very happy and proud to accompany Annie and David on this directorial debut. In just over an hour, this film manages to bring back to life the 1970s, in a masterful way that touches on the intimate, social change and history,” said Thion.
“Those who lived through this period will find themselves back there (not without a certain nostalgia) while younger generations will also be fascinated by this evocative portrait of a bygone era.”
Totem enjoyed a high-profile Cannes in 2021 as the international sales agent on Juho Kuosmanen’s Grand Prize winner Compartment No. 6.
This year is gearing up to be equally busy, with the company’s slate also featuring Finnish director Mikko Myllylahti’s The Woodcutter Story which was announced as having been selected for the Cannes Critics Week competition this morning.
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