In the suitcase
Anaelle is 18 years old. In a few days, she leaves for England to attend university. Belongings are scattered on her bedroom floor: the styles of her school years, holiday mementos, sociology textbooks. She wishes she could take it all. Packing the contents of her life, Anaelle laughs, cries, yells, and lights up a cigarette. She reflects on the past and worries about the future. What she packs in her suitcase connects the two.
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Simon KesslerDirector
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Maxime HervéOriginal soundtrack
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Milo LeeColorist
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Vincent BucherSound
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Anaelle Sessin-FedidaKey Cast"Anaelle"
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Project Title (Original Language):Dans la valise
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Project Type:Documentary
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Runtime:23 minutes 10 seconds
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Completion Date:May 13, 2019
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Country of Origin:France
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Country of Filming:France
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Language:French
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Festival International du Film Ethnographique de QuébecMontréal
Canada
World Premiere -
Australian Inspirational Film FestivalPerth
Australia
September 1, 2020
Official Selection
Simon Kessler is a French documentary filmmaker based between Montreal and Paris. He has directed and developed a number of documentaries for network television, including the National Geographic and Planète+ channels. His documentary AF447: In Search of Flight AF447 has been featured by the Guardian, France Inter, Radio-France International and Radio-Canada. In addition to his television work, Simon has developed a number of self-produced short documentaries. His personal practice privileges intimate portraits of people, places and institutions in intersticial moments.
In my filmmaking practice, I attend to life's interstisial moments; by which I mean the necessary but overlooked in-between moments that take one's life from place to place, or experience to experience. When my sister decided to attend university abroad, I set out to make a film about her moving out. Yet, over the course of filming, I was repeatedly drawn to the simple act of her packing. As she debates which objects to take and which to leave behind, the audience bears witness to a young woman's anxiety about the future and nostalgia for the past. With care, the film elongates and celebrates a moment that marks an end (of sorts) of girlhood.