Screen/Society--"Misericordia" (Alain Guiraudie, 2024) | 2026 French Film Festival

Screening as part of the 2026 French Film Festival
(Jan 29 - Feb 13, 2025)

MISERCORDIA [Miséricorde]
(Alain Guiraudie, 2024, 103 min, France, French w/ English subtitles, DCP)

-- Ranked Best Film of 2024 by Cahiers du Cinéma

The teasingly entwined ambiguities of love and death continue to fascinate Alain Guiraudie (STRANGER BY THE LAKE, NYFF51), who returns with a sharp, sinister, yet slyly funny thriller. Set in an autumnal, woodsy village in his native region of Occitanie, his latest follows the meandering exploits of Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), an out-of-work baker who has drifted back to his hometown after the death of his beloved former boss, a bakery owner. Staying long after the funeral, the seemingly benign Jérémie begins to casually insinuate himself into his mentor's family, including his kind-hearted widow (Catherine Frot) and venomously angry son (Jean-Baptiste Durand), while making an increasingly surprising-and ultimately beneficial-friendship with an oddly cheerful local priest (Jacques Develay). In Guiraudie's quietly carnal world, violence and eroticism explode with little anticipation, and criminal behavior can seem like a natural extension of physical desire. The French director is at the top of his game in MISERICORDIA, again upending all genre expectations.

"As in his award-winning STRANGER BY THE LAKE, the director's penchant for blending queerness into Hitchcockian genre conventions keeps the story both compelling and enigmatic." - NPR

"For sheer suspense, few recent thrillers match Alain Guiraudie's low-key but high-anxiety mystery MISERCORDIA." - Richard Brody

Sponsored by Albertine Cinemathèque, a program of FACE Foundation and Villa Albertine.

French Film Festival website: https://francophone.duke.edu/news/2026-french-film-festival-jan-29-feb-13