Angoulême 2026 – day 5: The Corset, It’s up to you, Camembert and Hafsia Herzi
Every day, a look back at the highlights of the 19th edition of the French-speaking film festival
Film of the day: The Corset by Louis Clichy
It’s been exactly ten years, My Zucchini Lifethe animated film by Claude Barras won the Valois de Diamant for best film in Angoulême. And there is no doubt that if he had participated in the competition this year, the first solo feature film by Louis Clichy (who we know for his two Asterix with Alexandre Astier) would have had a good chance of succeeding him. Presented as part of the panorama devoted to its distributor KMBO, review The Corset after his visits to Cannes and Annecy (from where he left with multiple awards) only reinforces the enthusiasm felt at his discovery.
We follow a young boy, from a farming family in Beauce in the 80s, who begins to suffer from a strange syndrome preventing him from standing up straight and forcing him to wear a metal corset to avoid falling. An extremely graphic idea that Clichy translates wonderfully through the simple and poetic purity of his animation where watercolor plays a central role. But beyond its beauty, this film succeeds in being both an initiatory story, the portrait of a complex father-son relationship because it is paralyzed by what is left unsaid and the inability to say or show one’s love, and a chronicle of an agricultural world (already) in suffering.
This film breaks your heart as much as it soothes it. An emotional epic as deep as it is playful that speaks to all ages, without ever trying to target any one of them.
Released October 14
Today’s documentary: Up to you by Yves Jeuland
Yves Jeuland is not the first to make a documentary immersed in acting schools. Recently, Valérie Donzelli and Ambroise Sabbagh worked hard at it with respectively Rue du Conservatoire And Free class (who was interested in the Cours Florent and was presented in Angoulême last year). But his Up to you finds its singularity in the long time and the way in which this project modified and took shape as he filmed it.
Initially, in 2014, Jeuland was supposed to film a promotion during their three years of study. Then, as he nicely puts it, he decided to “add sand to the hourglass” and the adventure spanned twelve years. And instead of just capturing the snapshot, Up to you has become a reunion film where 18 of these former students, now in their thirties, watch and comment today on these images from yesterday.
In twelve years, water has flowed under the bridges. The friendships and loves that had developed there sometimes ended in sweetness, pain or resentment. For some, dreams of grandeur have been shattered by the harsh reality of this profession while others, on the contrary, are experiencing a journey that they had never dared to imagine, chosen to join the Comédie Française. Jeuland, the man of Paris at all costs and of President here confirms his talent as a confessor and succeeds in making this sum of individualities a devilishly endearing collective through their ability to reveal their faults without dwelling on their fate. A fascinating human epic from start to finish
Undetermined exit
Today’s casting: Camembert
Anyone who has ever played Trivial Pursuit knows what moments of humiliation and anguish each game can generate depending on the questions that we shy away from and which reveal an ignorance that we seek to hide. The duo Matthieu Rumani-Nicolas Slomka had the idea of making it the driving force of their first feature film and using a part in real time to dynamite from the inside a family with already apparent flaws. With this idea of culture as a mode of social recognition and therefore by extension of integration or exclusion depending on one’s level of erudition. The clever scenario advances with carefully distilled twists and turns. But this scathing comedy is also and above all worth for the cast brought together by the two directors, playing very intelligently with the different families… of actors: Kristin Scott-Thomas, Alex Lutz, Pascale Arbillot, Bernard Le Coq, Panayotis Pascot, Anaïde Rozam, Guillermo Guiz and Jérémie Gillet. Their complicity, their liveliness and their sense of comedy hit the mark
Released November 18
Video of the day: Hafsia Herzi
On display atStories of the night by Léa Mysius and A few words of love by Rudi Rosenberg in this 2026 edition of the FFA, the actress returned to First on his very first festival memory. That of the 2007 Venice Film Festival which revealed her to the eyes of the whole world from her first appearance in the cinema in The Seed and the Mule by Abdel Kechiche
