One of our favorite films on the festival circuit the last few years finally has distribution. Axelle Ropert’s tender coming-of-age tale Petite Solange, which we caught at the Locarno Film Festival in 2021, marks the first release of the newly launched distributor Several Futures. Not only will the film be launching at BAM this March 24, but they will also present the first-ever U.S. retrospective of the French critic, actor, writer, and filmmaker. Ahead of the release, we’re delighted to exclusively present the U.S. trailer.
Here’s the synopsis of the film, which was awarded the prestigious Prix Jean Vigo: “Solange is a typical 13-year-old curious and full of life, with perhaps the peculiarity of being overly sentimental and adoring her parents. But when her parents begin to argue, fight and slowly drift apart, the threat of divorce looms near and Solange’s world begins to splinter. To keep her family together, she will worry, act out, suffer. It’s the story of a young and overly tender teen who wants the impossible: for love to never end.”
Rory O’Connor said in his review, “A mood of heightened melodrama gives way to something strangely enchanting in Petite Solange, the story of a 13-year-old girl coming to terms with the shattering notion that her parents’ love (and for that matter anyone’s) might not last. The director is Axelle Ropert, a French critic, actor, writer, and filmmaker whose career has pivoted between the genre films she and her partner, Serge Bozon, have collaborated on (La France, Madame Hyde) and her own body of work behind the camera. That personal side to her oeuvre has always tended more toward the familial and the bittersweet (The Wolberg Family, The Apple of My Eye), just as it has proven Ropert a keen proponent of the Tolstoyan idea that happy families are only intriguing when torn apart.”
See the exclusive trailer and poster below.
Petite Solange opens on March 24 at BAM and will expand.