Strange Birds

Panorama

""Girard deploys a deadpan humor of attrition, as if Jim Jarmusch had a female French cousin""

Screen Daily
  • Archive - Festival 33
  • Director: Elise Girard
  • France 2017
  • 72 minutes
  • French
  • Subtitles in Hebrew, English

Mavie, 27, freshly arrived in Paris from her native Tours, is sleeping on the couch of a childhood friend and dreaming of being a writer. An ad in a café leads her to a job in the dusty-but-charming bookshop of 76-year-old Georges. A special relationship unfolds between these two lonely souls.

Elise Girard presents a bitter-sweet romantic comedy with deadpan humor, absurdities and delightful twists. Cinematographer Renato Berta beautifully captures the film’s settings; its cafés and the Latin Quarter, where “strange birds”, seagulls, can suddenly fall from clear skies.

Filmography: Belleville-Tokyo (2011).


  • Director Elise Girard
  • Production Janja Kralj
  • Script Elise Girard, Anne-Louise Trividic
  • Cinematography Renato Berta
  • Editing Thomas Glaser
  • Music Bertrand Burgalat
  • Festivals Berlin
  • Actors Lolita Chammah, Jean Sorel, Virginie Ledoyen, Pascal Cervo
  • Source MPM Films, Paris; Kinoelektron, Paris