2 AUTUMNS 3 WINTERS

Three friends and two catastrophes collide in this playful, stylish outing from one of the vanguard of fresh new Gallic filmmaking.

Best friends Arman and Benjamin are thirty-something, single and going nowhere. When Arman is mugged it turns out to be a blessing as it brings Amélie into his life. But then Benjamin has a stroke, and over the course of a couple of years the lives of Amélie, Arman and Benjamin will become ever more entangled.

An unexpected, whimsical tale of ennui and the transformative power of calamity, 2 Autumns, 3 Winters is a deliciously offbeat film from up-and-coming French indie maestro Sébastien Betbeder. Weaving together 16mm and HD, pop-cultural references and self-aware asides to camera, Betbeder's film is a funny, disarming and endearing portrait of a third-life crisis and the decisions we have to make when choice is taken away from us.