“Sick of being passed over at casting calls, best friends Margot and Alma decide to make an impression by faking a fight during an audition. The stunt works: Alma gets the lead, and Margot is hired as her understudy. Life finally seems to be fulfilling the two young women’s boundless appetite for art, friendship, and all-nighters spent crashing parties and pranking loser exes. But when Alma collapses in rehearsal, Margot discovers her awful secret: she has terminal cancer. With her extraordinary second feature, writer-director Anaïs Volpé successfully tackles the perilous trope of the dying young woman, never shying away from the tragedy of her subject, but emphasizing the way life goes on through a dizzying juxtaposition of great joy and tremendous sadness. Aided by the intimate camera work of cult American cinematographer Sean Price Williams (Good Time) and ebullient performances by two of French cinema’s most engaging young actresses, Souheila Yacoub (The Salt of Tears, Climax) and Déborah Lukumuena (Divines, Robust), Volpé gives us a story of death that is bursting with life, a fresh take on the restless nights of Paris, and an ode to the power of female friendship. ” -Young French Cinema
The Braves is part of Young French Cinema, a program of Unifrance and Villa Albertine.
