Close

Director: Lukas Dhont

Producers: Michiel Dhont, Dirk Impens

Cast: Eden Dambrine, Gustav De Waele, Émilie Dequenne, Léa Drucker

Belgium, Netherlands, France 2022
105′

The most beautiful movie of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Lukas Dhont’s Grand Prix winning Close is a sensual and tender story about the friendship of two 13-year-olds. Leo and Remi love spending time with each other, their relationship is intense, spontaneous, lively. But silly gossip, peer pressure and the feeling of being lost in a world that is never obvious make Leo start distancing himself and hurting Remi. No one in contemporary cinema knows better how to work with young actors than the author of the memorable Girl. Veracity rings out from every gesture, glance and word spoken by teenage actors. Dhont talks about the helplessness that is an inherent part of adolescence – at the age of 13, who can assess the strength of their feelings and decisions? The 31-year-old Belgian director does not judge. He is guided by an extraordinary empathy that distinguishes only the greatest humanists in the moviemaking world. Close becomes not only a beautifully filmed coming-of-age story, but, above all, a universal film about accepting one’s mistakes and learning to experience the most difficult and brutal emotions.