THE GUARDIANS (Les Gardiennes)

Friday, April 27 – 5:30 pm – Renoir Theatre

West Coast Premiere | France / Switzerland | 2017 | Drama | 134 min |  In French with English subtitles

Directed by: Xavier Beauvois
Written by: Xavier Beauvois, Frédérique Moreau, Marie-Julie Maille
Cinematography: Caroline Champetier
Film Editing: Marie-Julie Maille
Original Score: Michel Legrand
Produced by: Sylvie Pialat (Les Films du Worso), Pathé Production, France 3 Cinéma, Orange Studio
Cast: Iris Bry (Francine Riant), Nathalie Baye (Hortense Sandrail), Laura Smet (Solange)
International Sales: Pathé Films
U.S. Distributor: Music Box Films
U.S. Release Date: May, 4. 2018

Nathalie Baye and real-life daughter, Laura Smet, play a mother and daughter holding down the family farm while their men are off in the trenches, in Xavier Beauvois’ quietly taut World War I drama. Plowing fields, harvesting crops and grinding wheat, year after year, is back-breaking labor for the two women. So they bring on a new farmhand, a soft-spoken orphan (played by radiant newcomer Iris Bry) who soon becomes one of the family. Searing at times, bucolic at others, the film is a graceful portrait of women working shoulder-to-shoulder and the emotional toll the war wages on the men they love.

Accomplished writer/director/actor Xavier Beauvois began his career as assistant director to André Téchiné and Manoel de Oliveira, before writing and directing his first feature, Nord (1991). Beauvois’ second feature, Don’t Forget You’re Going to Die, in which he plays a young man whose life takes a downward spiral when he discovers he’s HIV-positive, was honored with both the Prix Jean Vigo and the Jury Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. His numerous other directing credits include The Young Lieutenant (2005), also starring Nathalie Baye, and Of Gods and Men (2010), which reaped numerous accolades, including the Grand Prize and Ecumenical Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the César Award and French Film Critics’ Award for Best Film, and was named Best Foreign Film by both the London Film Critics’ Circle and the National Board of Review.

Presented in Association with: Music Box Films, Pathé Films

COLCOA Series: Women Make History