La Gradiva

DramaComedy

In cinemas 4w later · Theatrical Oct 21, 2026 (FR)

★ Shortlisted by Mitch Allen

Programme: Centrepiece
Year: 2026
Runtime: 145 min
Country: France, Italy
Language: French / Italian
Premiere: North American Premiere
In cinemas: Oct 21, 2026 (FR)

A small group of French high school students goes on a school trip to Pompeii to discover its ruins and the bodies petrified by Vesuvius in 79 CE. It is in this ghost town that they are suddenly overcome by a dizzying sensation. One after another, James, Toni, Suzanne, and their Latin teacher, Mme Mercier, allow themselves to be engulfed by desire, anger, and despair—until they surrender to it completely and lose everything.

From the TIFF programme

A pack of rowdy French teenagers embark on a school field trip to Pompeii, where desire, passion, angst, and class tensions in the present unfold against the ruins of the ancient past.

This intimate coming-of-age film follows a group of French high school seniors on a trip to Pompeii, transporting viewers into an arena of eternal ruin and decay to watch them transition into an uncertain future. The messy, hormonally-charged teenagers explore desires and fears, ambitions and hesitations, romantic entanglements and rivalries — big feelings all rendered with weight and poetry in the skillful hands of director Marine Atlan.

As their journey progresses, the dynamics of the ensemble shift, with pressure building between the students as they spend time in close proximity and confront the hidden economic realities that structure their social lives. Characters are bathed in southern Italy’s hazy sunlight as they navigate interpersonal tensions and hold political arguments about class, balancing visual poetry with an intellectual rigour that acknowledges the rich inner lives of teenagers. The film takes its title from Gradiva by Wilhelm Jensen, a novel that became the basis for a Freud essay on psychoanalysis in 1907 and continues to inspire works on fantasy and the unconscious today.

A sensitivity arises from the natural performances and a documentary-like approach to shooting, balancing perspectives between individuals and the group with ease. Known for her work as a cinematographer in Thunder (TIFF ’22) and Jessica Forever (TIFF ’18), Atlan marks her feature debut with a potent story that captures the fleeting nature of adolescence and summer with sensuality and vitality.

ROBYN CITIZEN