110 minutes – Drama, Coming of Age
Language: English, French
Festival release date: September 5, 2024 – TIFF (World Premiere)
Release date: TBA
Production companies: Babe Nation Films, Elevation Pictures, Barry Films
Canadian distributor: Elevation Pictures

A Canada-Germany coproduction, Bonjour Tristesse was adapted by the film’s writer-director, Durga Chew-Bose, from Françoise Sagan’s coming-of-age novel of the same name. We find 18-year-old Cécile (Lily McInerny) languishing on the French seaside during the heat of a mid-summer holiday. While her handsome father Raymond (Claes Bang) and his bohemian lover Elsa (Naïlia Harzoune) concentrate on their passion, Cécile has all the time in the world to float and daydream and play at having a summer romance with a local boy (Aliocha Schneider). Perhaps idyllic, things change not for the better when her late mother’s friend Anne (Chloë Sevigny), who is a celebrated American-born, Paris-based fashion designer arrives. By late summer the power of the sun has faded and as things cool and life returns to some form of normal, Cécile discovers many truisms about the fabulous people around her…as she does about herself.

Bonjour Tristesse is writer-director Durga Chew-Bose’s debut feature.
NOTE: Based on the same book, Otto Preminger directed the British-American production of Bonjour Tristesse in 1958.