69th Venice International Film Festival
Director: Alberto Barbera
29th August > 8th September 2012
Venezia 69
APRÈS MAI (SOMETHING IN THE AIR) - OLIVIER ASSAYAS
All sections »
Synopsis
Paris, in the early 1970s. Gilles is a young high school student completely swept up in the political and creative effervescence of the times. Like his schoolmates, he wavers between radical commitment and more personal aspirations. Passing from sexual relations to artistic revelations on a journey through Italy and ending in London, Gilles and his friends have to make crucial choices in order to find themselves in a tumultuous age.
Paris, in the early 1970s. Gilles is a young high school student completely swept up in the political and creative effervescence of the times. Like his schoolmates, he wavers between radical commitment and more personal aspirations. Passing from sexual relations to artistic revelations on a journey through Italy and ending in London, Gilles and his friends have to make crucial choices in order to find themselves in a tumultuous age.
VIDEO (press conference and photocall) >>
VIDEO (red carpet) >>
3 September 19:00 - Sala Grande
3 September 20:00 - PalaBiennale
VENEZIA 69
Après Mai (Something in the Air) by Olivier Assayas
- France, 122'
language: French - s/t English, Italian
Clément Métayer, Lola Créton, Félix Armand
language: French - s/t English, Italian
Clément Métayer, Lola Créton, Félix Armand
Director’s Statement
I don’t really believe in autobiography at the cinema. One always writes about recent and distant memories that are more or less distorted and more or less idealised. This is particularly the case when talking about adolescence, an age when our strongest images are etched almost unbeknownst to us. Instead I believe in youth as a source of inspiration, as an intimate truth that we should constantly measure ourselves against. I grew up during the 1970s. I didn’t choose them and I am returning to them. This violent, confused and contradictory period, overshadowed by the events of May 1968, continues to be the object of misunderstandings. I experienced those years and I am their worst witness, my face to the ground, a tributary of an irreparably falsified perspective. But perhaps that is not the worst point of view for understanding the chaos of those years...
I don’t really believe in autobiography at the cinema. One always writes about recent and distant memories that are more or less distorted and more or less idealised. This is particularly the case when talking about adolescence, an age when our strongest images are etched almost unbeknownst to us. Instead I believe in youth as a source of inspiration, as an intimate truth that we should constantly measure ourselves against. I grew up during the 1970s. I didn’t choose them and I am returning to them. This violent, confused and contradictory period, overshadowed by the events of May 1968, continues to be the object of misunderstandings. I experienced those years and I am their worst witness, my face to the ground, a tributary of an irreparably falsified perspective. But perhaps that is not the worst point of view for understanding the chaos of those years...
