September Says

An unsettling and oneiric tale of sisterhood is French actor Ariane Labed’s Cannes-premiering directorial debut, based on a Gothic novel.

Born less than a year apart, September and July are inseparable and have created a world all their own. But they’re ostracised by their peers, so the older, more brash September sticks up for her timid and impressionable sibling when the need arises. When an incident occurs at school, the pair are forced to relocate with their single mother to an isolated house on the Irish coast. It’s here that the sisters’ intense closeness begins to give way. As July searches for meaning and their loving mother grows distant, the younger sibling reckons with a disturbing truth.

Having acted in Greek ‘Weird Wave’ films by Athina Rachel Tsangari (Attenberg, MIFF 2011) and her husband Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, MIFF 2015) as well as in more recent eccentric delights like Flux Gourmet (MIFF 2022), Labed ventures into feature directing with an adaptation of Sisters by Booker-shortlisted author Daisy Johnson. Premiering in Cannes Un Certain Regard, September Says abides by the novel’s haunting tone and veers towards the surreal: a shift in aspect ratios mimics a warping perception of reality, while the unnerving sound design by Oscar winner Johnnie Burn (The Zone of Interest) conjures an air of slow-building dread.

“One of the year’s finest directorial debuts … [The sisters’] kinship is of the (very) knotty kind, and Labed is the ideal candidate to examine its ties and twists up close.” – Cineuropa