Red Island, Robin Campillo’s first film since 120 BPM (2017), is a loosely autobiographical story of a boy’s coming-of-age in Madagascar on one of the last French army air bases in the early 1970s, a relic of the French colonial empire. Inspired by the intrepid adventures of his beloved comic book super hero Fantômette, ten-year-old Thomas (Charlie Vauselle) gives his imagination free reign as he explores the complexities of the grown-ups’ world, eavesdropping on private lives and relationships he cannot fathom. Beneath the languid, seemingly carefree expatriate life, Thomas’s eyes are gradually opened to the compromised reality of adulthood.

Notes by David O’Mahony

Screening as part of the IFI French Film Festival, November 15 – 26.