Most of us became familiar with the name Justine Triet with the release of Anatomy of a Fall last year. With its twisty, Oscar-winning script and magnetic performances, the film announced Triet as a filmmaker of formidable talent, capable of marshalling realist dramatic beats into a juicy true crime narrative. 

To understand how Triet developed into one of cinema’s most effective storytellers, we’re going back to the early days of her career and screening two of her early short films - which, fittingly for a filmmaker who mixes the realist and the dramatic to such compelling effect, consist of a documentary and a fiction short. In these films we can see that Triet has long been adept at teasing out moments of truth from expertly crafted scenarios - and that from the very start she has been exploring the uneasy attitude of men and women to their shifting status in society.

Alongside Triet’s Two Ships and Shadows in the House, we’ll be screening a short documentary by a Bristol filmmaker at the start of her own career - Toni Lotta Groner’s Wicked and Bad.

On Tuesday 23th July, we’ll be continuing the story when we screen Triet’s debut feature, the incendiary custody battle docu-fiction Age of Panic (tickets available here).

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Two Ships (Vilaine fille mauvais garçon. Dir: Justine Triet, 2012, French with English subtitles, 30 mins, Cert: 18 TBA). Thomas is a young, broke, single artist. Needing to get out for some air, he urges his best friend to organize a party. There, he finds himself attracted to Laetitia, an expansive young woman teetering on high heels. They spend a night of laughter and minor crises in each other's company.

Shadows in the House (Des ombres dans la maison. Dir: Justine Triet, 2009, 36 mins, Portuguese with English subtitles, Cert: 18 TBA). In the outskirts of São Paulo, Gustavo, 15 years old, spends his days in a community center run by the Evangelical Church. His mother Giselle, an alcoholic, is summoned to the center where she is to meet Valeria, the worker responsible for communication with the authorities who decide on the custody validation of the children.

Wicked & Bad (Dir: Toni Lotta Groner, 2023, 15 mins, Cert: 18 TBA). Tyler, a young man arrested at the Kill the Bill demonstration in Bristol, experiences his final week of freedom before beginning a custodial sentence.

Doors: 19:00

Film starts: 19:30