Winner Palme d'Or 2023 Cannes Film Festival
The much-lauded winner of this year’s Palme d’Or is a riveting and sharply intelligent portrait of a woman on trial for husband’s murder.
Sandra Hüller (Toni Erdmann, Perth Festival 2017) plays Sandra, a successful German writer who has spent the last year living with her French husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) and 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) in a chalet in the idyllic French Alps. When Samuel is found dead by young Daniel, lying in the snow with a severe head injury, the police begin investigations that gradually reveal a fractious relationship. A year later, Sandra is on trial for murder, with her son’s testimony crucial to the outcome.
Director Justine Triet’s fourth feature has cemented her status as one of today’s great filmmaking talents. Unfolding over two-and-a-half hours like a compulsively readable novel, Anatomy of a Fall is both a dissection of an intimate relationship and of the judiciary process. Featuring an electrifying lead performance from the mesmerising Sandra Hüller this gripping courtroom drama is a bracing, Hitchcockian showstopper. Taut, suspenseful and thrilling until the final moment it will linger in the mind long after the closing credits.