Gloria Mundi

Available for rental: Sunday, June 21, 2020 @ 6am PST → Wednesday, June 24 @ 6am PST

Join our Zoom Q&A with Ian Burley, English-language subtitler of the film – all the way from France. Tuesday, June 23 @ Noon.

Robert Guédiguian’s latest drama begins with a family gathered in joy for the birth of baby Gloria. Her parents are a working-class couple, Nicolas (Robinson Stévenin), a gig driver, and Mathilda (Anaïs Demoustier, also in Alice and the Mayor, streaming this year at the SFFF), daughter of Sylvie (Ariane Ascaride, winner of the Best Actress award at the 2019 Venice Film Festival), who works the night shift as a cleaning lady. Sylvie lives with Richard (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), a bus driver and father of her other adult daughter, Aurore (Lola Naymark). The family is soon joined by Mathilda’s real father, Daniel (Gérard Meyland), a quiet man who has just been released from prison after several decades and is back in Marseille to meet his granddaughter.

As life becomes increasingly difficult for all, except for Aurore who runs a successful secondhand shop with her partner Bruno (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), buying goods cheap from the financially desperate and reselling them at a tidy profit, family ties are tested, secrets are revealed, and tensions rise.

A thoughtful drama about generational divide and the gig economy.

Not Rated (adult themes, sex scenes, nudity, drug use, violence).

Reviews

A heartfelt, engaging, bittersweet family drama. Robert Guédiguian reunites his regular repertory for a heartfelt, gently scathing take on the gig economy and the generational divide. Variety – Jessica Kiang

A downbeat but not despairing portrayal of a world in which moral values and personal ties have become brutishly devalued, although hope of redemption still prevails. All the key actors are characteristically on form and nail their characters with absolute precision. This is especially Meylan’s film, his bear-like loner emerging as a Dostoevskian redeemer and tower of strength. (…) A solid addition to his canon. Guédiguian is indeed France’s Ken Loach. Screen – Jonathan Romney