Penelope My Love
All Feature Films A-Z
•
1h 27m
Dir. Claire Doyon - 88min - 2021 - France
For 18 years I have been filming Pénélope, a young adult with autism. One day I opened the cupboard that contained DV tapes and Super 8 reels. It almost popped my eyes out. We had to bring all these images together.
Pénélope mon amour traces the journey of a mother and her daughter through the years. It tells of different stages: the shock of the diagnosis, the declaration of war, the abdication of arms, to finally accept and discover a different mode of existence. This body of Pénélope, and a fortiori this body of the autistic person in the social space, what place does it occupy and what place do we give it? What land can cinema invent to design a hospitable space, dream of a world allowing the invisible to become visible?
Pénélope keeps cheering for what she is, I keep questioning who she is. The answer to the question is precisely in this endless quest. Everything is mirrored to me. So, isn't it Pénélope who in turn tells me who I am?
Up Next in All Feature Films A-Z
-
Perhaps What I Fear Does Not Exist
Dir. Corine Shawi - 72min - 2022 - Lebanon
When her father becomes suddenly paralised, the filmmaker spends four years in between hospitals finding shelter, behind her camera, away from a family tragedy.
Rehabilitation centres, VR experiments, fervent prayers, voice notes, love making and cemet...
-
Philip And His Seven Wives
Dir. Marc Isaacs - 70min - 2005 - UK
Is it possible to live like an Old Testament king in suburban Hove? Well, that's what Philip Sharp is attempting to do. Formerly a rabbi, with a sister who is a hairdresser in Golders Green, Phillip has lighted out into the sacred wilderness.
It transpires t...
-
Prayer for a Lost Mitten
Dir. Jean-François Lesage - 2019 - Canada
Night has fallen and Montreal is under a blanket of snow. At the City Transit Company, people line up at the lost and found office where upon reflection, losing something becomes a symbol of a deeper loss. This creative documentary is sometimes melanchol...