Costa-Gavras was a titan of 1970s political cinema, and his debuting daughter Julie clearly draws on her own experiences for this delightful adaptation of Domitilla Calamai’s novel.
A wonderful sense of juvenile indignation imbues nine year-old Nina Kervel’s performance, as she struggles to understand why her bourgeois Parisian parents have hauled her out of her beloved catechism class at convent school, sold their home and become infatuated with Chilean democracy.
Whether confiding her doubts to her conservative grandmother or playing shop with bearded revolutionaries, Kervel retains an amusing gravitas. Perfectly capturing the era’s flawed idealism, this is a little gem.