Trailer for Memory of a Girl, the new film by Judith Godrèche
The adaptation of the autobiographical story of the novel by Annie Ernaux, carried in particular by her own daughter Tess Barthélemy.
Judith Godrèche is back to directing with Girl’s memory.
Sixteen years after his first feature film, All the girls cryreleased in 2010, the actress and filmmaker adapts the eponymous autobiographical novel by Annie Ernaux, published in 2016. The French writer, Nobel Prize winner for literature in 2022, returned to a founding episode of her youth and the consequences it had on her entire existence.
The trailer thus reveals the first romantic and sexual emotions of young Annie, in a summer camp where this experience will profoundly upset her relationship with herself and others.
Tess Barthélemy, the daughter of Judith Godrèche, born from the union of the director with the former Robin Hood Maurice Barthélemy, plays the young Annie Ernaux in this initiatory chronicle which takes us back to France in the 1950s. The 21-year-old actress thus gives her features to the future writer after having been seen in the series Icon of French Cinema (already signed by his mother).
Synopsis: “Annie Ernaux is asked to sign her latest work in the town of her childhood, Rouen. As she goes there, she becomes dizzy and plunges back into the memory of the summer of 1958, that of her first night with a man. A night whose shock wave spread violently through her body and throughout the rest of her existence.”
The casting also brings together Maïwène Barthélemy – no relation to Tess – Valérie Dréville, Victor Bonnel, Ariane Labed and Anja Verderosa.
Presented in Official Selection, Un Certain Regard section, at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, Girl’s memory will be released in cinemas on September 30, 2026 in France.
