GRAND CIEL
Type: Drama, thriller
Vote: ✦✦✦
Direction: Akihiro Hata, with Damien Bonnard, Samir Guesmi, Mouna Soualem
Vincent works in Grandciel, an eco-sustainable and very modern neighborhood that is being created on the border of a big city. Temporary worker, he hopes for confirmation to improve his condition and start a family. Akihiro Hata, a Japanese resident in Paris, mixes atmospheres with a certain skill very French social drama with the anguish of a psychological thriller (of which his compatriot Kiyoshi Kurosawa is the master).
When a worker disappears in the foundations of the construction site where Vincent’s team has the task of curing a mysterious cement “disease”, two visions of the world collide: the individualism of the proletarian who dreams of moving up the class and that of comrade Saïd who preaches insubordination.
A scene from Grand Ciel, by Akihiro Hata. (Photo: Biennale Cinema 2025)
Passed to the Venetian Orizzonti.
PEACHES GOES BANANAS
Type: Documentary
Vote: ✦✦✦ 1/2
Direction: by Marie Losier, with Peaches
Peaches Goes Bananas at Authors’ Days.
Marie Losier — who we met thanks to the retrospective that the Filmmaker festival dedicated to her, specializing in 16 mm artist portraits (Genesis P-Orridge, Felix Kubin, Alan Vega, Guy Maddin, among others) — follows the Canadian singer, performer, queen of electro-punk, queer feminist icon Peaches for 17 years.
The result is an intimate portrait that records the birth of a friendship alongside the story of the artist’s musical trajectorythe body (often celebrated in unpredictable ways, from glamor to punk) always at the center of the performances.
And there is time that passes, the fatigue of the tour, the pain of the loss. It’s impossible not to be seduced by such a hymn to life.