In Paris, a family is victim of a tragic incident, when the patriarch is accused by his wife of pedophilia. Years later, the three sisters have independent dysfunctional lives and never see each other. The middle sister Sophie finds that her beloved husband and photographer Pierre is unfaithful and is having an affair with Julie and he leaves her. When the lover discovers that Pierre has two children, she ends the affair. The youngest, Anne, is student of Sorbonne and has a crush and gets pregnant of her professor Frédéric, who is married and father of her best friend. The oldest sister, Céline, is a lonely woman that periodically travels by train to visit her handicapped dumb mother Marie that is trapped in a wheelchair in an asylum for elders. When the stranger Sébastien contacts Céline, she believes he is a shy admirer; however, after an awkward encounter, he reveals secrets from the past that will affect the relationship among the sisters. –IMDb
Danis Tanović was born in 1969 in Zenica, former Yugoslavia, today Bosnia & Herzegovina. After a diploma in civil engineering, he studied piano at the Academy of Theatre Arts and film at the Sarajevo Film Academy and then spent two years on the frontline filming for the army. In 1994 Tanović emigrated to Belgium to continue his film studies. He has directed No Man’s Land (2001) – Best Foreign Language film at the Academy Awards, Hell (2005) and Triage (2009). Cirkus Columbia has been selected as the Bosnian entry for Best Foreign Language film at the Academy Awards 2011. —Göteborg International Film Festival
Following Tykwer’s Heaven, Tanovic’s L’enfer sees a sophomore attempt to do justice Kieślowski’s unrealised legacy. Yet one can’t recall him resorting to such banal metaphors as chicks left in their nest signifying filial trauma, or juxtaposing a sapling’s bloom or newlyweds against infidelity and dysfunction - or even, its trivial homages to Three Colors’ recycling woman, Véronique’s tree motif; all within its hollow portrayal of the disarray in three sisters’ lasting insecurities. As such, it endures sophomoric, rather; deadening, to the soporific.