Gentle Monster
The lives of a musician and a police detective unexpectedly dovetail in Marie Kreutzer’s (Corsage, MVFF45) latest provocative drama when a search warrant for a filmmaker’s hard drives upends the life of his wife. Philip (Laurence Rupp) declares his innocence to musicologist and performance artist Lucy (Léa Seydoux, The French Dispatch, MVFF44), but each protestation reveals more deceptions as the investigation unfolds into his participation in a shocking corner of the dark web. While Lucy reels from the revelations and their impact on her young son, lead investigator Elsa (Jella Haase) confronts her own challenges as her dementia-ridden father harasses his caretakers. In their parallel experiences, Lucy and Elsa encounter the haunting and vivid travails of male privilege and entitlement, gaslighting, and patriarchal cruelty as they navigate a fragile landscape where home hides some of the worst manifestations of sexism and misogyny. With excellent support from Catherine Deneuve as Lucy’s mother. —Sterling Hedgpeth
Director/s
Marie Kreutzer
Marie Kreutzer is an Austrian writer and director who made her feature debut in 2011 with The Fatherless, winning an honorable mention for Best Debut Film at the Berlinale. She went on to make Gruber is Leaving (2015), We Used to Be Cool (2016), The Ground Beneath My Feet (2019), and television movies Die Notlüge (2017) and Vier (2022). She received BAFTA, European Film Awards, and Film Independent Spirit Awards nominations for Corsage (2022), her drama imagining a year in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria.
Expected Guests
MARIE KREUTZER: Director
LEA SEYDOUX: Actor