Léonor Serraille follows up Jeune Femme, her audacious first feature from 2017, with Mother and Son, a moving portrait of the complex and sometimes painful relationship between an African immigrant mother and her sons. Rose (Annabelle Lengronne) has come to Paris from the Ivory Coast in 1989 with her two boys, 10-year-old Jean and 5-year-old Ernest. Housed in cramped, temporary accommodation with extended family, Rose finds work as a cleaner, though her impulsive behaviour and penchant for partying jeopardises her already precarious position. She rejects the advances of Jules (Jean-Christophe Folly), a fellow Ivorian who insists she needs to marry, and dates whomever she pleases. Spanning a period of more than twenty years, the perspective shifts from Rose to that of, in turn, Jean and Ernest, in this engrossing chronicle of the construction and deconstruction of a family.

There will be Open Captioned screenings on Friday 30th at 13.00 and Monday July 3rd at 18.10.

Notes by David O’Mahony.