Sister

L'enfant d'en haut

Switzerland, France

2012

97 Min

Color

1.85:1

French, English

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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PROD Denis Freyd, Ruth Waldburger

SCR Antoine Jaccoud, Ursula Meier, Gilles Taurand

CAST Léa Seydoux, Kacey Mottet Klein, Martin Compston, Jean-François Stévenin, Gillian Anderson, Yann Trégouët, Johan Libéreau, Magne-Håvard Brekke, Gabin Lefebvre

SOUND Étienne Curchod

Berlinale (Competition): Silver Bear, Istanbul (Within the Family), BAFICI (Función de Clausura)

Synopsis

Every day, twelve-year-old Simon takes the cable car up to the mountains where the slopes bristle with the hustle and bustle of winter season tourists. He pokes about in hotel wardrobes and changing rooms looking for something to eat in rucksacks, but what he’s really after are skis that he can turn into cash.
Whenever he talks to holidaymakers or hotel staff, he tells them that his parents died in a car accident and that he lives alone with his sister. Louis, the young woman who lives in the apartment in the valley has no idea what Simon gets up to all day long. Their odd relationship alternates between quarrels and tenderness.

Ursula Meier sets her second feature-length drama against the backdrop of a popular tourist destination in the Alps. From the broad, anonymous mass of people, she has distilled the story of one child who believes he has found a way to offset his breadline existence. This portrait of a boy on the brink of puberty, poised between deceit and an unquenchable need for love and tenderness, is at the same time an exploration of the contradictions and hidden depths of an ostensibly prosperous world. –Berlinale

Director

Ursula Meier

Ursula Meier (born 24 June 1971) is a French-Swiss film director who received the Best Director award at the 2008 Festival du Film Francophone d’Angoulême [Angoulême French-Language Film Festival] for her first theatrical feature, Home, which won the 2009 Swiss Film Prize for Bester Spielfilm [Best Film] as well as Bestes Drehbuch [Best Screenplay] (shared with Antoine Jaccoud). It also received France’s César nomination for Meilleur Premier Film [Best First Film] and a Best Film nomination at Argentina’s Mar del Plata Film Festival.

A native of Besançon, the capital of the Franche-Comté region in eastern France, near the Swiss border, Ursula Meier graduated from Belgium’s Institut des Arts de Diffusion [Institute of Visual Arts] and served as assistant director to the internationally-renowned Swiss auteur, Alain Tanner, on his films Fourbi [Gear] (1996) and Jonas et Lila, à demain [Jonas and Lila, ‘Till Tomorrow] (1999). She won her first major film… read more

Ursula Meier (born 24 June 1971) is a French-Swiss film director who received the Best Director award at the 2008 Festival du Film Francophone d’Angoulême [Angoulême French-Language Film Festival] for her first theatrical feature, Home, which won the 2009 Swiss Film Prize for Bester Spielfilm [Best Film] as well as Bestes Drehbuch [Best Screenplay] (shared with Antoine Jaccoud). It also received France’s César nomination for Meilleur Premier Film [Best First Film] and a Best Film nomination at Argentina’s Mar del Plata Film Festival.

A native of Besançon, the capital of the Franche-Comté region in eastern France, near the Swiss border, Ursula Meier graduated from Belgium’s Institut des Arts de Diffusion [Institute of Visual Arts] and served as assistant director to the internationally-renowned Swiss auteur, Alain Tanner, on his films Fourbi [Gear] (1996) and Jonas et Lila, à demain [Jonas and Lila, ‘Till Tomorrow] (1999). She won her first major film award for the 1998 short, Des heures sans sommeil [Sleepless], which received the Special Jury Prize at the Festival International du Court-Métrage de Clermont-Ferrand [Clermont-Ferrand International Festival of Short Films] as well as the International Grand Prize at the 1998 Toronto Film Festival and a Best Short Fiction Film nomination at the Molodist International Film Festival in Kiev.

In 2002, her film Tous à table [Table Manners], which had already won the Audience Award and the Press Award at the 2001 Clermont-Ferrand Festival, as well as the Best French-Language Short Film award at the 2001 Créteil International Women’s Film Festival, received a Swiss Film Prize nomination for Bester Kurzfilm [Best Short Film].

In 2003, Ursula Meier served as a member of the jury at the Brest European Short Film Festival and won the Cinema Prize—Feature Film award at Portugal’s Avanca Film Festival as well as Bester Spielfilm [Best Film] Swiss Film Prize nomination for her made-for-TV movie, Strong Shoulders. In April, with the selection of Strong Shoulders for New York City’s New Directors/New Films series at the Museum of Modern Art and Film Society of Lincoln Center, she made the journey to introduce the film and participate in question-and-answer sessions. Six years later, Home was also selected for New Directors/New Films and, in April 2009, she once again made appearances at the Museum of Modern Art and The Walter Reade Theatre, introducing the New York premiere of the film. —Wikipedia

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