Movie discussion: "Sous Le Ciel D'Alice". This discussion is sponsored by the Alliance Française de Charlottesville, a French language and cultural center in downtown Charlottesville. We are a non-profit organization, and we will celebrate our 30th year of existence in 2023 :)
Thursday: September 29 at 7pm
Online and in English (there will be an option to split into 2 groups for those who would like to have the discussion in French)
Cost: $10.00 for members / $15 for non-members/ Free for new AFC members who signed up for AFC membership in September 2022
Film is an important tool for facilitating language learning as well as understanding of other cultures. The Federation of Alliances Françaises USA is pleased to highlight a selection of very special films each year through its program, One Film One Federation. All selections undergo a rigorous evaluation in order to be chosen as one of the year’s focus films. This fall, the AFC is pleased to partner with the Federation to offer single viewer streaming of the movie Sous Le Ciel D'Alice.
Director: Chloé Mazlo
Writers: Chloé Mazlo, Yacine Badday
Starring: Alba Rohrwacher, Wajdi Mouawad, Isabelle Zighondi
Drama (1h 32m)
Celebrated animator Chloé Mazlo makes her feature debut with this strikingly original film inspired by her family’s life in the years leading into the Lebanese Civil War. We begin in the 1950s with Alice, a young Swiss woman eager to escape her strait-laced home in the Alps by becoming a nanny in Beirut. She soon falls in love with Joseph, a local astrophysicist dreaming of putting the first Lebanese national on the moon. As the lovers marry and start a family, Mazlo combines meticulously designed live action sequences with the occasional offbeat stop motion scene to create an irresistible picture of the glory days when Beirut was known as “the Paris of the Middle East.” Unfortunately, the civil war soon sucks the joy out of Alice and Joseph’s relationship. Yet Mazlo seeks neither to elicit pity nor to edify her considerable achievement here is to convey the quotidian strain of life during wartime while maintaining a nearly bubbly tone through her attention to detail, distinctive compositions, inventive approach to character, and obvious fondness for eccentrics. Far from denying the horror of kidnappings, army raids, and forced exile, Mazlo underlines the tragedy by contrasting these hardships with the exuberance of a place and society that exudes love of life.