2019 Film Festival
film synopsis
Continuing his long-running fascination with modernity and its transformation of society, the ever-lively Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep; Personal Shopper) turns his attention to the worlds of writing and publishing in this trenchant, satirical reflection on communication and insincerity in the digital age. Alain (Guillaume Canet) serves as head of a prominent publishing house in Paris, while his wife Selena (Juliette Binoche) stars in a police procedural series of somewhat dubious merit. Distinctly blasé about the future of his profession and its inevitable digitization, Alain begins sleeping with a data-driven millennial subordinate while Selena continues her own affair with a bumbling, fragile-egoed writer. As the infidelity mounts, the two engage in long, wine-fueled nights of voluble debate alongside their media-class friends over the meaning of their careers in a new era. A film both nostalgic for an analog past and eager to reckon with the uncertainty of the present, Non-Fiction offers an intellectual, self-reflexive, and reliably humorous perspective on contemporary culture and those who steer it.