Young French Cinema 2022: The Heroics
Director: Maxime Roy Run Time: 99 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2021
Starring: Ariane Ascaride, Clotilde Courau, François Créton, Richard Bohringer, Roméo Créton
Country: France
Language: French
Les Héroïques/The Heroics is presented at the Film Center and in our Virtual Screening Room as part of Young French Cinema.
Premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. After spending forty years drunk and high, 53-year-old Michel has been clean for nearly six months. Sobriety brings harsh realizations about a life wrecked by substance abuse: the mother of his infant son has left him, his eighteen-year-old son from a previous relationship is avoiding him, his dying father resents him, and his job search is getting nowhere. It seems this former junkie and forever punk will never live down the word “LOSER” stitched on the back of his leather jacket.
“beautifully captures the emotional turmoil of a man and the shadows of an urban world, delivering a very well made, surprising and personal feature debut”
—Fabien Lemercier for Cineuropa
Maxime Roy’s debut feature The Heroics features an extraordinary performance by lead actor and co-screenwriter François Créton, whose own struggles with addiction inspired the character of Michel. The filmmakers’ inventive use of slang is a delightful example of French as a living, evolving language.
Young French Cinema 2022 Program See our upcoming films