France 2021, 88 min, French, Hebrew & English subtitles
When her little girl Penelope was diagnosed as autistic, Claire Doyon went to war. “I was determined to save her,” she says. But save her from what? What monster threatened her daughter? In this intimate bare-all film, the filmmaker shows the winding journey she and her family have gone through. After 18 years of filming her daughter, she uses the footage to figure out her life with Penelope: the shock of diagnosis, the hope for change that refuses to let acceptance take its place, the desperate attempts to “fix the girl”, and the great relief that comes with the decision to let go, let Penelope be who she is, be different—a decision that leads the director to self-discoveries of her own. Deep and sensitive, this film is a study of mother-daughter relations.
Previous Festivals: FIDMarseille
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