La Gradiva

Marine Atlan came to directing through cinematography, and her debut feature La Gradiva carries the mark of that training in its painterly, tactile images. The film premiered in the 65th Semaine de la Critique — Cannes's parallel section devoted to first and second features — in 2026, where it won the Grand Prix, the section's top award, and went on to a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. It is a French–Italian production.

The premise is deceptively simple: a group of French secondary-school students travel to Naples to see Pompeii, the city and its inhabitants frozen by Vesuvius. Against this backdrop of preserved ancient bodies, Atlan stages a coming-of-age story of adolescent desire, curiosity and the first stirrings of adulthood. The title nods to Wilhelm Jensen's novella Gradiva and the Freudian reading it later inspired, and the film threads that current of awakening longing through its young ensemble, led by Antonia Buresi.

Critics responded to its sensuality and formal confidence, and the Critics' Week Grand Prize marked Atlan as one of the most promising new French directors of the year. Joining a long tradition of French coming-of-age cinema, La Gradiva is an unusually assured first feature, alert to the strange proximity of youth and ruin.