Ecrire la vie - Annie Ernaux racontée par des lycéennes et des lycéens (Writing Life - Annie Ernaux Through the Eyes of High School Students)

After Vous ne désirez que moi (2021), her portrait of Marguerite Duras, acclaimed filmmaker Claire Simon once again turns to a French literary icon through an indirect lens. This time, we discover the work of Nobel Prize–winner Annie Ernaux through the eyes of students from eight secondary schools across France. The teenagers unlock their inner worlds via Ernaux’s novels and her signature écriture plate—a raw, direct, unembellished style. What follows are lessons on love in Creole, reflections on the intergenerational costs of climbing the social ladder, and attempts to give words to the disappointment of parental betrayal. In Écrire la vie—also the title of Ernaux’s collected works—Simon masterfully creates the conditions for what Ernaux once told her in an interview: to make reality "sweat."