EXCESS WILL SAVE US

2022 / 100 min / color

A young director returns to her hometown – a small village in the north of France – to see how the local community has been affected by growing rumors of a terrorist threat. She points the camera at her multi-generational family: her subdued yet affable father; her eccentric brothers; her teenage cousin who’s in love with TikTok. It quickly becomes apparent that narratives put forth by politicians through the media take on a life of their own in places like this. . That would be the simplest way to describe the short film that French director Morgane Dziurla-Petit made in 2019, before developing it into her feature-length debut. She decided to keep following the characters she knows so well, asking them, for example, about the COVID pandemic or the premiere of her film at an international festival. The result is an original and highly entertaining story about complex family relationships, the absurdities of existence, and how reality can be created with a device as small as a camera.

• Rotterdam IFF – Special Jury Award