Throughout a nuanced and sometimes underrated body of work, Joachim Lafosse demonstrates a rare eye for how intimate bonds become arenas of power, fear, and expectation. Family dynamics unfold as a psychological battlefield, and the home shifts between shelter and confinement, a tension Lafosse repeatedly treats with both precision and sensitivity. In this ongoing exploration, ethical dilemmas surface as a central preoccupation, revealing the French-language director’s insistence on examining people under pressure rather than presenting neat moral conclusions. The film “a silence” was submitted to a major festival competition today, and this choice underscores Lafosse’s intent to provoke rather than placate. Yet the latest entry feels more restrained than his earlier achievements, a shift that some viewers interpret as a departure from the sharper emotional edges of films like Losing Your Mind (2012), After Us (2016), or An Uneasy Love (2021).
The core mystery at the center of the plot concerns a scandal that rocked Belgium fifteen years ago, a tale that reaches into legal corridors as the attorney for the victims’ families becomes a focal point. The silence that Astrid (Emmanuelle Devos) has kept toward the perpetrator for thirty years—ostensibly to safeguard her marriage, protect her children, or preserve a outwardly polished life—serves as a charged backdrop for a meditation on guilt, complicity, and the price of silence. Lafosse does not shy away from current conversations about abuse and moral rot, but he handles them with a careful hand that avoids sensationalism. The results are not meant to be easy, and some might find the execution uneven; still, Devos delivers a performance that remains quietly powerful, even when the film’s rhythm can feel underpowered in places.
As another entry in the competition, MMXX has sparked discussion about its tone and purpose. Some observers view it as an extension of contemporary protests—echoes of a world wrestling with public health mandates and the friction surrounding obedience to authorities. Cristi Puiu, a filmmaker known for shaping Romanian cinema’s New Wave, resists turning his work into overt justification or propaganda. Instead, his cinema leans away from explicit explanations, inviting viewers to confront ambiguity and form their own interpretations. This stance signals a deliberate choice to examine how power, fear, and uncertainty shape collective behavior rather than to preach a single, tidy message.
The four segments that comprise MMXX unfold with a deliberate, almost austere cadence. The connections between stories are minimal beyond recurring figures and the shared lens of a life lived under crisis conditions. The imagery—marked by emblematic signs and recurring attitudes toward daily life during the pandemic—resonates with a sense of familiarity and unease. What may appear initially as fragmented or inconsequential soon reveals itself as a meditation on the fragility of social trust and the malleability of truth when fear tightens its grip. The films move at a pace that rewards patient viewing, with dialogue that often requires careful attention to interpret, and a tonal arc that darkens toward a provocative, lurid culmination of organ trafficking and child exploitation. Taken as a whole, MMXX emerges as a stark examination of humanity’s health in Romania during 2020, a period marked by upheaval, anxiety, and a reckoning with vulnerability. The overarching impression is sobering: the pandemic did not merely upend routines; it exposed the fault lines in ethics, governance, and personal responsibility, leaving viewers with a difficult, lingering question about what society owes its most vulnerable.