Filmmaker Katell Quillévéré adapts Maylis de Kerangal’s Booker Prize–longlisted novel, The Heart, for this elegant and affecting film which draws three seemingly unrelated stories together into a tale about the moment when tragedy meets hope. Film shown in French with English subtitles.
It all starts at daybreak, three young surfers on the raging seas. A few hours later, on the way home, an accident occurs. Now entirely hooked up to life-support in a hospital in Le Havre, Simon’s existence is little more than an illusion. He is kept alive by machines and his parents must quickly make a difficult decision about possible organ donation. Meanwhile, in Paris, a woman awaits the organ transplant that will give her a new lease on life.
Katell Quillévéré is an Ivory Coast-born French film director and screenwriter, known for directing the films Love Like Poison (2010) and Suzanne (2013). In 2015, she was selected to be a member of the jury for the International Critics' Week section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and in July of that year was appointed by France to the rank of Knight in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of the Arts and Letters).
Special thanks to Unifrance and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. This screening is held in connection with "Rendez-Vous with French Cinema," taking place at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, March 1-12.