Suspended Time

“As society recedes in the spring of 2020, film director Paul Berger (Vincent Macaigne) returns to his childhood home in the provincial Chevreuse Valley. Still processing the legacy of his parents and feeling out the uncertain shape of the world to come, Paul hunkers down with his documentary filmmaker girlfriend Morgane (Nine d’Urso), his music journalist brother Etienne (Micha Lescot), and Etienne’s new girlfriend Carole (Nora Hamzawi). Squabbling over the minutiae of health protocols and the morality of a hermetic lifestyle mediated by ubiquitous online shopping, the makeshift household finds new ways to lacerate familiar wounds. Yet Paul also finds a surprising refuge in the compulsory quietude of pandemic life, an opportunity to reconnect with the books and art and enchanted forests of his youth.

A scabrous French comedy from master filmmaker Olivier Assayas, Suspended Time is a sharply personal and fiercely neurotic ode to the eternal expanse of memory and the allure of life beyond our personal screens.

“A poetic memoir, a brittle family-tension comedy, a game playing on the twin registers of storytelling and autobiography, in the tradition of that French literary genre called ‘autofiction.'" ~ Jonathan Romney, Screen International

"Without a doubt the best film made about the pandemic to date.” ~ Ben Rolph, AwardsWatch