AFFFF26: The Stranger

Australian Premiere

L’Étranger

The superb new drama from multi award-winning writer/director François Ozon (Swimming Pool, 8 Women, Under the Sand), THE STRANGER is a gripping adaptation of Albert Camus’ landmark novella about a detached young expatriate on trial for murder in 1930s French-colonised Algeria.

Summer, 1938. Meursault (Benjamin Voisin, Lost Illusions, AF FFF22), a quiet and unassuming clerk in his early thirties, attends his mother’s funeral. The next day he begins a casual affair with Marie (Rebecca Marder), a colleague randomly encountered at the local baths, and quickly slips back into routine. However, daily life is soon disrupted by his volatile neighbour (an excellent Pierre Lottin, My Brother’s Band, AF FFF25), who draws Meursault into a dispute involving an ex-lover. And then, one blisteringly hot afternoon, an inexplicable event occurs on a beach, one that will see Meursault’s very moral standing brought to question…

Visually resplendent with sensuous black-and-white imagery, Ozon’s elegant and masterfully realised film shines a contemporary lens on Camus' classic tale of dissociation and morality, capturing the beauty and heat of a charged society on the boil. Both impactful and mysterious, THE STRANGER is one of the major artistic highlights of this year’s Festival, and should not be missed.

2025 Venice International Film Festival | BookCiak Award