Winner: Best Performance by an Actress - Queer Palm, Cannes Film Festival 2025
Fatima, 17, the youngest of three daughters, treads carefully as she searches for her own path, grappling with emerging desires, her attraction to women, and her loyalty to her caring French-Algerian family. Starting university in Paris, she dates, makes friends, and explores a whole new world, all while confronting a timeless and heartrending dilemma: How can one stay true to oneself when reconciling different parts of one’s identity feels impossible?
Hafsia Herzi began her career as an actress in The Secret of the Grain (La Graine et le Mulet) by Abdellatif Kechiche, for which she won a César Award and the Best Emerging Actress Prize at the Venice Film Festival. As an actress, she has worked with filmmakers such as André Téchiné, Bertrand Bonello, Patricia Mazuy, Iris Kaltenbäck, Sylvie Verheyde, Teddy Lussi-Modeste, and Radu Mihaileanu. Her first two films as a director were selected at the Cannes Film Festival. You Deserve a Lover (Tu mérites un amour), selected for Critics’ Week, received critical acclaim in 2019, and Good Mother (Bonne Mère) won the Ensemble Prize in the Un Certain Regard section in 2021, awarded by Andrea Arnold.
MK2
