Sandrine Kiberlain has worked with some of France’s top directors since she began her film career in 1986, including Jacques Audiard (A Self-Made Hero), Benoît Jacquot (Seventh Heaven), André Téchiné (Being 17), Claude Miller (Betty Fisher and Other Stories), Stéphane Brizé (Mademoiselle Chambon), Alain Resnais (Life of Riley), and Maïwen (Polisse). She has received nine César nominations and won two: in 1996 for most promising actress in Laetitia Masson’s To Have or Not and in 2014 for Albert Dupontel’s 9-Month Stretch.
A Radiant Girl, which premiered in 2021 as part of International Critics’ Week during the Cannes Film Festival, marks Kiberlain’s feature debut as a writer-director. The film, set in Paris during the summer of 1942, centers around a 19-year-old aspiring actress named Irene (Rebecca Marder) who’s rehearsing for the entrance exam to the coveted Conservatory. When she isn’t spending time in imaginary worlds, Irene is making new friends and discovering love, and in ignorance of the Nazi occupation starting to creep across Europe.
Partly inspired by Kiberlain’s own family story, A Radiant Girl will open on February 17 in Manhattan at the Quad Cinema, to be followed by a national release.
See the exclusive trailer below.
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