FALCON LAKE

CHARLOTTE LE BON | CANADA, FRANCE | 2022 | 100 MIN | NR | FRENCH, ENGLISH

In this quietly daring debut feature, a shy teenager on a summer vacation experiences the joy and pain of young adulthood when he forges an unlikely bond with an older girl. 13-year-old Bastien (Joseph Engel) and his family travel from France to rural Canada, where they stay with family friends in a rustic lakeside cabin. He and his younger brother are forced to share a room with their hosts’ mysterious teenage daughter Chloé (Sara Montpetit), who’s only a couple of years older than Bastien but already seems intimidatingly mature. Bastien is, unsurprisingly, smitten with his new roommate. Over the course of the trip, the two begin to open up to each other, forming a friendship that’s as precious as it is precarious. Like its protagonists, Falcon Lake is stranger and more complex than it initially seems. Charlotte Le Bon bends the genre conventions of the coming-of-age drama and adds touches of ghostly foreboding, crafting a work that is at once warmly familiar and boldly offbeat.

Cast: Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit, Monia Chokri