A Radiant Girl

Directed by Sandrine Kiberlain
Film Movement
2021
98 Minutes
France
French
Drama, Jewish, Coming of Age
Not Rated
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Paris, summer 1942. Irene is a young, bubbly, 19-year-old Jewish girl. Her family watches her discover the world, friends, new love and a passion for the theatre. The aspiring actress is living her youthful life without a care in the world, but she does not know that time may be running out. French actress, Sandrine Kiberlain, makes her directorial feature film debut with a story of self discovery, loss and one woman's world on the brink of change in Nazi-occupied France. 

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  • "There’s plenty to engage in A Radiant Girl, not least a performance by Rebecca Marder which more than delivers on the luminous promise of the English title."
    Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily
  • "Between Marder's exquisite performance and Kiberlain's powerful yet subdued storytelling, radiant is the perfect word to summarise the writer-director's feature debut."
    Andrew Murray, The Upcoming
  • "Kiberlain presents an adeptly conceived character portrait contained in just the right way to remain chillingly effective and memorable."
    Nicholas Bell, Ion Cinema
  • "Marder does indeed live up to the film’s title as the infectiously vivacious Irene, and “A Radiant Girl” is laced with enlivening bursts of creativity.... Making the most of a moment isn’t only a skill of Kiberlain’s, but a means of survival in “A Radiant Girl” when it’s clear there’s no assurances of how long it’ll last."
    Stephen Saito, The Moveable Fest
  • "Rebecca Marder is marvelous in the leading role of Irene and delivers a star-making performance in A Radiant Girl."
    Danielle Solzman, Solzy at the Movies
  • "A masterfully assembled coming-of-age that falls in love, enchants, unsettles, and breaks your heart."
    Ricardo Gallegos, La Estatuilla
  • "A Radiant Girl offers a chilling look at fascism’s accumulating evil in a way that lulls its audience into a sense of complacency — a pointed mirroring — and then pierces right straight through the heart when it’s least expected."
    Matthew Lucas, In Review Online
  • "Marder is a radiant actress, her face an open book. She plays Irène as a young woman with joie de vivre and excitement, and perhaps some willful blindness about the political situation around her. Part of what differentiates A Radiant Girl from other holocaust dramas is that Kiberlain is less interested in telegraphing future harm than she is in showing the psychological impacts of even small losses of civil liberties. "
    Alex Heeney, Seventh Row
  • "Sandrine Kiberlain’s début feature, A Radiant Girl... contains sparkling moments of illumination where the historical context of Paris in the summer of 1942 enters into a dialogue with lines by Marivaux from 1740, as well as a coming-of-age tale that is as old and new as theatre itself."
    Anne-Katrin Titze, Eye for Film
  • "To put it simply, A Radiant Girl is something special. A unique yet incredibly effective blend of both the best and worst of humanity, the film is as charming as it is devastating."
    Carson Timar, Clapper
Winner
Best Screenplay
Torino Film Festival
Nominated
Golden Camera
Cannes Film Festival