Anatomy of a Fall
Original Title:
Anatomie d'une chute
Duration:
152 minutes
Country:
France
Language:
French, German, and English with English Subtitles
Director(s):
Justine Triet
How often do men simply fall to their deaths? In Anatomy of a Fall, the 2024 Academy Award-winner for Best Original Screenplay, novelist Sandra Voyter lives with her husband Samuel Maleski, and their 11-year-old visually-impaired son, Daniel. But their relationship is deeply strained, with Daniel often caught in the crossfire. Returning one morning from a walk with his service dog, the boy finds his father dead in the snow below their chalet, seemingly having fallen from the third floor. But did he jump? Or was he pushed? Or did the man just fall? The marriage of Sandra and Samuel slowly unfolds as audiences follow this unsettling psychological thriller across the icy sheets and murky depths that constitute a failing love-relationship.
Quote:
“When we started working on this film, it was like a genre film. We have so many thrillers on all the platforms and I wanted to do something different. The original idea was to have a film where there was a lack of visual elements and images, unlike films which depict a trial where there are all sorts of flashbacks and you see the life of the couple - that might have been easier - I could have shown their lives in that manner. But everything is based on absence. The child doesn't see very well and there aren't many images, yet you have this loud, loud music which is a focal point for the film. Whence the idea of placing the spectator in a position like the child or the jurors where there's a lack of facts and evidence - everything is interlinked. This delirium springs from the fact that there's so much that's missing.”
Justine Triet, Cannes Press Conference, 2023
Awards:
+ Cannes Film Festival: Winner of Palme d'Or
+ Golden Globe Awards: Winner of Best Screenplay and Best Foreign Language Film
Presented By:
Heinz College DICE
Sponsored By:
University of Pittsburgh Law, Criminal Justice, and Society (BA)
Director Bio
A French film director, screenwriter and editor who became the first female French filmmaker to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay this year. Triet graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris and has directed multiple films revolving around the theme of an individual within a group. Sur place (2007) was shot in the middle of a student protest, Solferino (2009) during the French presidential election, and Two Ships (2012) in the midst of a São Paulo shantytown. Her first feature film Age of Panic (2013) mixed documentary and fiction, and she was subsequently highlighted by critic Stéphane Delorme as one of the best rising French filmmakers. In 2016, she wrote and directed the romcom In Bed with Victoria, which was nominated for the Cesar Awards for Best Film and Best Original Screenplay, and in 2019 Sibyl competed for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2023, she received the Palme d’Or for Anatomy of a Fall, and while doing so, she declared her support for the pension reform protest movement, opposing President Emmanuel Macron’s repression of it. She also dedicated her award to new directors and those facing challenges in the film industry. Her remarks sparked debates, and she was criticized by right-wing activists and politicians while gaining support from the left-wing parties and the SRF, the French directors’ guild. However, Triet continues to hone her craft and be an active voice for the marginalized in the film industry, signing a petition against Javier Miliei’s reform on Argentine film schools in January and being a member of the French gender equality group Collectif 50/50.