Angoulême 2026 – day 1: If you think well, Isabelle Huppert, Ben’Imana, Marine Delplace

Every day, a look back at the highlights of the 19th edition of the French-speaking film festival.

Film of the day: If you think well by Géraldine Nakache

It is his fourth feature film but also a double premiere. Her first overtly dramatic film and the first film she directed without acting in it. After All that glitters And We York (co-directed by Hervé Mimran) and I will go where you go (performed solo), If you think well therefore marks a turning point for Géraldine Nakache. A remarkably controlled turn. It depicts a love story, whose intensity and luminous joy of the first days will quickly give way to a relationship under influence. The one that Jacques (Niels Schneider, impressive) exerts on Gil (Monia Chokri, heartbreaking, who formed a couple with him in 2010 already in Imaginary Loves by Xavier Dolan). In the dialogues as well as in the heavy silences, in what she shows as in what she chooses to leave off-screen, Géraldine Nakache constantly finds the right tone and the right distance to describe this spider’s web which weaves itself around Gil and ends up suffocating him. And this is precisely how his film feels. Physically. In Gil’s head and body. Without Géraldine Nakache ever needing to add more. We come out KO standing. A tour de force

Released September 16

Actress of the day: Isabelle Huppert in Neither seen nor known

When we think of Isabelle Huppert’s extraordinary career, comedy is not the first genre that spontaneously comes to mind. However, from The richest woman in the world has A crime passing through Tip top (where she already teamed up with Sandrine Kiberlain), she also ventured there with a relish and playfulness that crossed the screen. After directing her in La Ritournelle and an irresistible episode of Ten percent where her self-deprecation worked wonders, Marc Fitoussi wrote the central role of Neither seen nor known. Corinne Maclou. An extra who goes on film shoots hoping one day to finally be spotted. And where she will therefore meet the “real” Sandrine Kiberlain but also Anne Marivin, Ana Girardot, Diane Krüger, Vincent Dedienne and Emmanuelle Bercot. Huppert amazes by the way in which she appears instantly credible in a role of thousand-power composition and can therefore become the vector of everything that the comedy carries behind it here: the description of the backstage of cinema as a place of hierarchical power and the small annoyances and great humiliations that go with it. A certain cruelty is assumed here and gives relief to the subject beyond the obvious comicality of the initial situation. And we can read a dialogue organized by the Angoulême festival with Ten percentthe film, which will close on Saturday. Rejoicing

Released October 7

Director of the day: Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo for Ben’Imana

He’s definitely one of the heavyweights in the competition. The Rwandan Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo arrives in Angoulême, crowned with her Cannes Camera d’Or which last May was crowned the best first feature film in all sections combined. This excellent reputation which precedes it is in no way usurped. Firstly because Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo takes hold of a horror whose wounds still remain raw in her country thirty years later: the genocide of the Tutsis perpetrated by the Hutus which, in 1994, claimed 1 million victims in 100 days. Her story takes us back to 2012, at the time of the Gacaca trials (the popular and traditional local courts set up in Rwanda) in the footsteps of a mother and her daughter. One, a genocide survivor, haunted by her past. The other looks to the future. Ben’Imana is a great film about the resilience and ability of these women, despite everything they suffered or saw committed before their eyes (rape, murder of their loved ones with machetes, etc.), to believe in justice and even reconciliation. There is absolute dignity in Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s gesture, a refusal of any victim position. The words exchanged, the face-to-face encounters are hard, poignant but never bring tears. This project took almost ten years to see the light of day and after having thought of making a documentary, Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo ventured on the path of fiction with the same rigor brought to the writing, to the image as to her direction of almost all actresses – except Isabelle Kabano (the heroine of Small country by Eric Barbier for which she received the interpretation prize in Angoulême in 2020) – non-professional. An eminently personal work carrying a universal message.

Released February 3, 2027

Video of the day: Marine Delplace

The winning singer of the 12th edition of the Star Academy in 2024 is part of the Jury for this 2026 edition of the Angoulême festival. We met her yesterday just before the opening ceremony and she told us about the president of this jury, Franck Dubosc.