All True Artists Are Hated: The Transgressions of Catherine Breillat
Screening Dates
  • August 3 (Saturday) 6:30
  • August 8 (Thursday) 8:40
  • August 19 (Monday) 6:30

“As fascinating as it is discomfiting and as intelligent as it is primal … France’s foremost bad girl has made an extremely good movie—and maybe even a great one.”

J. Hoberman, Village Voice

Arguably the chef‑d’œuvre in a defiantly singular career, Catherine Breillat’s no-holds-barred look at sibling rivalry and sexual awakening gleans gut-dropping truths from its brutal, unflinching honesty. Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) is a pudgy, taunted, 12-year-old girl committed to unceremoniously losing her virginity to ​“a nobody.” Her sister Elena (Roxane Mesquida), a flirty, knowingly attractive 15-year-old, is determined to save herself for first love. On summer vacation with their oblivious parents, the sisters meet a smooth-talking Italian law student who coerces Elena into a sordid, sexual relationship under the guise of grande amour. Anaïs, sharing a room with her sister, helplessly witnesses Elena’s exploitation—as do we. A Rohmerian holiday film by way of New French Extremity, this acclaimed follow-up to scandalizer Romance is punctuated by one of the most shocking, disturbing, and oddly cathartic denouements in the Breillat corpus.

In French with English subtitles

Advisory: Fat Girl contains a scene of sexual violence.

“A strange, discomfiting, and fascinating film about the horrors of adolescence.”

Manohla Dargis, LA Weekly

“Few movies have so effectively conveyed the alienation of adolescence, and the way children can be driven almost mad by their separation from life and love.”

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
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