Screened as part of NZIFF 2017

BPM (Beats Per Minute) 2017

120 battements par minute

Directed by Robin Campillo Big Nights

A wary newcomer to the radical activist life risks his heart with one of its firecracker stars in this stirring and moving exploration of the ACT UP movement that protested government inaction on AIDS in the 90s.

France In French with English subtitles
144 minutes CinemaScope / DCP

Rent

Director/Screenplay/ Editor

Producers

Hugues Charbonneau
,
Marie-Ange Luciani

Photography

Jeanne Lapoirie

Production designer

Emmanuelle Duplay

Costume designer

Isabelle Pannetier

Music

Arnaud Rebotini

With

Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (Sean)
,
Arnaud Valois (Nathan)
,
Adèle Haenel (Sophie)
,
Antoine Reinartz (Thibault)
,
Félix Maritaud (Max)
,
Ariel Borenstein (Jérémie)
,
Aloïse Sauvage (Eva)
,
Simon Bourgade (Luc)
,
Médhi Touré (Germain)
,
Simon Guélat (Markus)
,
Coralie Russier (Muriel)
,
Catherine Vinatier (Hélène)
,
Théophile Ray (Marco)
,
Jérôme Clément-Wilz (Etienne)
,
Jean-François Auguste (Fabien)
,
Saadia Bentaieb (Sean’s mother)

Festivals

Cannes (In Competition) 2017

Awards

Grand Prix
,
Cannes Film Festival 2017

The personal and the political are as vitally connected as the chicken and the egg in Robin Campillo’s moving and inspiring Cannes Grand Prix winner. The writer/director draws on his own experience as a member of AIDS activist organisation ACT UP in 90s Paris, embedding an intimately observed love story within a vivid evocation of the dynamics of radical protest.

Hunky Arnaud Valois plays Nathan, a wary, HIV-negative newcomer to the movement who falls for firecracker Sean (incandescent Argentinean actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), HIV-positive and irresistibly impatient with the group’s more pragmatic leadership.

Campillo wrote Laurent Cantet’s The Class and this year’s The Workshop. His skill for catching the currents of a group discussion is as persuasive as ever. The issues that once exercised ACT UP take on clear and present life in 2017 as the young activists brainstorm, strategise dramatic interventions and storm the institutions that would let them die.

“It’s both devastating and heartening to watch, these horrifyingly young people bravely confronting vast and seemingly unmovable systems – government, pharmaceutical companies, etc. – while attending to their own fears, their own fragile mortality...

The film’s political and moral weight should not overshadow the artistry of its design, nor the quiet profundity of its unreserved and admirable approach to gay intimacy. Campillo has given his movie the breath of true life. It grieves and triumphs and haunts with abounding grace and understanding, its heartbeat thumping with genuine, undeniable resonance.”— Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair