My Eternal Summer

Jury motivaton:

My Eternal Summer is a beautiful and deeply moving film. The portrayal of young Fanny, who has to say goodbye when she would rather look forward, is so specific that it makes an otherwise frequently described topic – illness and grief – feel authentic and moving in new ways. Through the portrait of the interaction between mum, dad, and teenage daughter in the family cottage, the debutant director Sylvia Le Fanu takes a surprisingly lyrical approach to the material. She insists that the time before death can be experienced as a mixture of banal day-to-day actions and waiting, all the things you never get to say, and grief without death having yet occurred. Le Fanu draws on her own experiences of bereavement and losing a loved one to cancer at a far too young age. The director’s personal experiences shine through clearly but not heavily from the first scene to the last. My Eternal Summer displays impressive self-control and an understanding of human nature that is displayed in a story that could easily be claustrophobically depressing. Instead, it demonstrates lightness in the images and tenderness for the characters. The editing is not only realistic, but also elegantly suggestive. It exudes an unusual maturity and clear direction from a debut filmmaker. The film demonstrates that fiction can pose humanistic questions that are just as important as social or political ones, while also being complex and relatable. Fanny gets to know her mum as she says goodbye. In parallel, she gets to know herself as a young person and has to carry something heavy. Amidst this sadness, there is also hope, which the film conveys by way of a beautiful and optimistic ending. As you sit in your cinema seat, you are warmed by the little light in the darkness that Sylvia Le Fanu has given us with her film.