The Super 8 Years

AVAILABLE TO RENT FOR ONE WEEK!
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2022 @ 12:00am PDT → THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15 @ 11:59pm PDT
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Annie Ernaux delivered her Nobel Prize lecture in literature on Wednesday December 7, 2022. Click HERE to watch the speech and/or read her text (in its English translation).

In celebration of Annie Ernaux’s 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, and just in time for the 2022 Nobel Ceremony (Saturday, December 10) and her awaited speech, we are excited to present The Super 8 Years, a fascinating and touching documentary directed by Ernaux and her son, David Ernaux-Briot.

One of France’s most respected contemporary writers and 2022 Nobel laureate, Annie Ernaux’s autobiographical novel L’Événement was adapted into last year’s critically acclaimed and award-winning film Happening, directed by Audrey Diwan.

Now, The Super 8 Years give us further insight into her work and life. It is an intimate and autobiographical body of work that captures the inner lives of women like Ernaux during societal and cultural changes in France from the 1960s onwards. A natural extension of her literary work in its form and content, The Super 8 Years shows the pastimes, lifestyles, and aspirations of a middle class family in post-1960s France through the lens of the Ernaux family archive. Composed of silent Super 8 home video footage shot by Annie Ernaux’s then husband Philippe Ernaux, the film features pensive voiceover narration, written and performed by Ernaux - a narration that sometimes tells a different story than the one we see on the screen.

Annie Ernaux, whose novels and memoirs have earned her a devoted following, opens a treasure trove with this delicate journey into her family’s memory, chronicling the period when her first books were published, her sons became teenagers, and her marriage started unravelling. Compiled from gorgeously textured 8mm home movie images shot between 1972 and 1981, this portrait of times, places, and moments of personal and political significance takes us from holidays and family rituals in suburban France to trips abroad in Chile, Albania, Spain, and the USSR.

Supplying her own introspective voiceover, Ernaux and her co-filmmaker, her son David, guide the viewer through fragments of a decade, diffuse and vivid in equal measure. The Super 8 Years is a remarkable visual extension of Ernaux’s ongoing literary project to make sense of the mysterious past and the unknowable future.

Reviews

Those experienced with [Annie Ernaux’s] work, whether in print or film, should find her documentary debut The Super 8 Years, co-directed by her son, David Ernaux-Briot, equally intimate and thought provoking.
Nicholas Bell - IONCINEMA.com

[A] bittersweet look at the passage of time, delivered with a compelling blend of personal intimacy and broader societal upheaval…
Lisa Nesselson - Screen International

We get much more than what we see, and yet nothing in the text seems forced or academic.
Amy Taubin - Artforum

Not Rated (all audiences).

Original Title: Les Années Super 8