Anatomy of a Fall

Bristling with emotional depth, this Palme d’Or–winning courtroom drama puts the complexities of a relationship on trial.

Successful novelist Sandra stands accused of murdering her husband, Samuel, himself an author albeit of lesser esteem. But when her case goes before the courts, what comes under scrutiny are the machinations of a failing marriage – as obscure to outsiders as it is to the couple’s 11-year-old son, who lost his vision in an accident some years prior. Were their fiery spats, which often arose from artistic rivalry, just quotidian contretemps, or were they signs of something more sinister?

Co-written by director Justine Triet and her husband, Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall depicts marital acrimony with an uncomfortable veracity rivalling Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage, in a legal procedural investigating the nature of truth. Both Sandra and Samuel drew inspiration from the everyday and, as their work is dredged up as evidence, so too are thorny questions about self-narrativisation, storytelling and how experience is filtered into art. Sandra Hüller (Toni Erdmann, MIFF 2016) is utterly compelling as the defendant – a difficult character who is by turns shrewd, beguiling and ultimately unknowable – proving herself one of the most dynamic and versatile actors of her generation.

“Triet’s piercing film holds the ambient tensions and illogical loose ends of domestic life against the harsh and rational light of [the] legal system ... A cyclone that sends the mind soaring, and primes the heart for a hefty fall.” – IndieWire

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Please note: The Saturday 5 August session can be booked as a Food & Film experience. Find out more here.