Winter Boy (2022)

Set over the course of one winter, the most autobiographical and arguably best film to date from acclaimed writer/director Christophe Honoré (Sorry Angel, Inside Paris, Love Songs) follows a young man on the cusp of adulthood who, after being sent reeling by an unexpected loss, looks for comfort in all the wrong places.

17-year-old Lucas (terrific newcomer Paul Kircher) is drifting through his final year of boarding school, blithely passing time with his boyfriend, but mostly looking forward to following his older brother Quentin (Vincent Lacoste), a fledgling artist, to Paris. But a sudden accident soon strips away everything Lucas has taken for granted, filling him with an anger that his teenage self can’t begin to articulate. His mother Isabelle (Juliette Binoche) is unable to find the means to console him, so Lucas heads to the city to spend a week with Quentin and his flatmate.

Honoré’s gift for building narratives around flawed characters is as strong as ever, and with WINTER BOY he confronts his own history as never before. The filmmaker has lived a version of Lucas’s story, and his coruscating honesty about - and empathy for - his flailing alter ego drives every scene.