Latifa: A Fighting Heart

Danielle (Bernadette Lafont), a grandmother in her sixties, is planning to take her two grandchildren to their father’s house for the Easter vacation. Since retiring as a schoolteacher, Danielle has regularly taken on this responsibility after her daughter’s divorce. This time, however, the children’s father is not there to welcome them, giving Danielle the opportunity to spend a bit more time with her grandchildren and to take them out for the day. Jumping at every opportunity presented to them, Danielle soon transforms this day-outing into an impromptu holiday. Only what starts out as a fun adventure gradually turns into an inexorable deconstructing experience, and it soon becomes impossible for Danielle to contemplate taking the kids back…

March 11, 2011. The biggest tsunami Japan has ever experienced triggers the Fukushima disaster. Risks are being downplayed but the foreign community in Tokyo is terrified by this tragic event and the fact that no one is capable of assessing its scope. Among them, Alexandra, a French executive newly arrived from Hong Kong to work in a bank, has to face this nuclear crisis. Torn apart between fol- lowing the company’s instructions and going back to her husband and children who are still in Hong Kong, she will find herself defending honor and given word, despite the pervading terror and chaos.

For forty years, a filmmaker has obsessively collected magazine covers, articles, and photographs of Isabelle Adjani, carefully cutting and pasting them into large notebooks — now reaching volume 42. Les Cahiers d’Adjani transforms this lifelong fan devotion into a cinematic exploration of memory, obsession, and the passage of time. As the director finally dares to turn his camera toward his own secret archive, the film unfolds as both an intimate self-portrait and a reflection on fame, desire, and the fragile bond between artist and admirer. Through these meticulously crafted “cahiers,” it becomes a story of objects, collectors, family, and the strange ways in which a life can be shared with a star through images.