Der junge Mann

In the organizer's words:

She is in her mid-fifties and begins an affair with a man thirty years her junior. He is a student, still in the milieu from which she believes she has emancipated herself. He leaves her girlfriend of the same age and loves her with a passion like no other. Enraptured days and nights in his sparse room, mattress on the floor, walls full of holes, broken fridge. But the intimate episode is also something political, on the street, in the restaurants and bars: almost constant angry looks, furious reactions. She is once again the "scandalous girl" of her youth, but now without any shame, with a feeling of liberation.

Annie Ernaux breaks her last taboo - in a radically pointed and concise way, she tells of a scandalous love affair, an ambivalent return to her own past and the triumphant overcoming of a lifetime of shame.

Translated from the French by Sonja Finck
Nobel Prize for Literature 2022
Playing time: 55 minutes, no intermission