Rgirls and boys reading, discussing, questioning and questioning themselves. Claire Simon’s video camera films them, without affectation or artifice: it’s the documentary Writing life – Annie Ernaux told by students filmed in eight high schools spread across the French territories, and presented in 2025 at the Venice Film Festival. A film that shows, in the most direct way possible, how current the themes and writings of the Nobel Prize winner for Literature are. A film that today is proposed as a resource for our schools. From great literature to cinema, to the daily reality of our children. The result is surprising.
Cinema at school, in the Netflix era
As he explains Mary Teresa Pepe, del Daniele Novara Psychopedagogical Centerwho is following the project for The Wonder Schools, «cinema at school it’s an amazing tool to hook young people: it offers them an opportunity to self-narrate, therefore to grow, to be able to compare, to mature.”
In the era of platforms, it represents the possibility of recover the dimension of watching a film like at the cinema: a meeting opportunitydebate and socialization.
What does Annie Ernaux have to say to today’s youth?
Of course, some films can be enlightening for young people and particularly resonate with them. Claire Simon’s is among these, because it brings kids (more or less) like them to the screen.
It must be said that, before being a writer, the Nobel Prize winner taught for a long time in French high schools. AND she often admitted that she was very curious about students’ reactions to her texts. Not only that, in France his books are in ministerial programmes. «Starting from these elements», explains Pepe, «it is clear that the classes of students who participate in the readings shared on the screen are not comparable to those to which the film can be offered in Italy».
But that’s not a bad thing: “The differences can generate interesting questions.” Generating questions: this, in short, is the purpose of the work that Pepe invites us to do when he suggests teachers bring a film to class. “Some will be more informative, others decidedly generative.”
Writing life in our schools: what questions are generated?
And it is from this second type of question that teachers can work, helping children to explore them. «It’s the maieutic method, developed by Daniele Novara’s CPP. For example? What impact does the presence of a camera have on kids reading and speaking? Are they influenced by it when they express their thoughts?”. In the era of social media, and the continuous exposure of private individuals online, this is an interesting question.
After the film you can do workshopsin which no pre-written path is followed but students are invited to express themselves, deciding, with their debate, where to go. «In this sense, our method is different from that of the teachers in the film, whose questions are often invasive, and make the kids feel a bit pushed against the wall».
For example, on sensitive issues, such as abortion. But it is clear that these themes, experienced by the author and addressed in a vivid and raw way in the books, deeply touch young readers. What it concerns the stages of a woman’s life It’s a very interesting thread. As well as the one linked to Annie Ernaux’s kind of writing, so direct and brutaland: do they feel comfortable or not? Do they feel involved or not? What causes this type of writing?
Annie Ernaux (I Wonder Pictures press office)
Between literature, cinema and life
What happens is therefore a virtuous circle that is triggered between literature, cinema and life. «Reading aloud helps, much more than silent reading, to live in the stories of others, to share the strong emotions of others». Through reading and listening, texts find meaning, and acquire an important value even beyond the opinions of the reader and the listener. «The goal is not to agree but to learn to stop in the conflict»to compare from different points of view without judging the opinions of others.
«The topic of conflicts is so important to us», explains Pepe, «that in our workshops we expressly ask children to take a position on certain issues, or to abstain if they don’t have a clear position». The debate can lead someone to change their mind, others to remain firm on theirs. The aim of this type of work is not to conform but to “work on emotional relaxation, critical skills and the possibility of expressing oneself”. The teacher does not guide towards a defined goal but accompanies in the experience of listening, narration and vision.
Try giving a book by Annie Ernaux to your daughter
Finally, how much Annie Ernaux’s writing can transcend eras and speak to our children, each of us can understand by giving one of her books as a gift. «My advice? A woman»in which the author, in the aftermath of her mother’s death, wants to rediscover the “real woman” who existed outside their relationship as mother and daughter. Pepe explains: «I imagine it given as a gift by the mother to a seventeen-year-old or older girl. A book to be understood as a passing of the baton, with the wish for the daughter to go her own way free from models and debts. Without having to be a copy of those who preceded her.”
