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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Wendy Ide

The Super 8 Years review – deeply personal documentary of Annie Ernaux’s family breakdown

‘Perceptive’: Annie Ernaux in The Super 8 Years
‘Perceptive’: Annie Ernaux in The Super 8 Years. Photograph: © Les Fillms Pelleas

A decade’s worth of the 8mm home videos of the French author and Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux forms the basis of this delicate and very personal documentary. Co-directed by Ernaux and her son, David Ernaux-Briot, it’s a wisp of a thing, little more than an hour long. But Ernaux’s lucid, perceptive narration brings a more profound significance to the scrappy, amateurish reels shot by her late ex-husband, Philippe Ernaux. The slow-motion breakdown of a family is tracked by a lens that initially sought out intimacy and celebration, but finds itself, as the years pass, increasingly distanced from figures caught in its time capsule of a frame.

Watch a trailer for The Super 8 Years.
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