Fictional Marguerite (Ella Rumpf) starts off as a mousy maths prodigy too close to her mother, developing into a lauded genius and worldly woman, overcoming misogynistic academic men to reach her proof of something that is real, but which hasn’t actually been proven, called Goldbach’s conjecture. The proof is an Olympian feat involving walls of calculations. More interesting is the relationship Marguerite has with another student, Lucas (Julien Frison), and her friendship with Noa (Sonia Bonny), who’s another kind of trailblazer altogether.
Divertimento Directed by Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar
The true story of Zahia Ziouani (Oulaya Amamra) who becomes one of France’s 4 per cent of female orchestral conductors. As a girl in the mid-1980s, Zahia is gripped when she sees on her musical family’s tiny TV screen Ravel’s Bolero, played by an orchestra conducted by Sergiu Celibidache (Niels Avestrup). With strong support from her immigrant parents, Zahia and her twin sister, cello-playing Fettouma (Lina el Arabi), attend lycée Racine, where privileged kids from the exclusive suburbs of Paris make fun of them. The way Zahia overcomes huge obstacles, with drive and determination second to none is an inspiration and the film as a whole is the festival’s best.
Rosalie Directed by Stéphanie di Giusto
A true story about a woman in small town 19th-century France, who has a hormone disorder that gives her a full beard. The real-life “bearded lady” Clémentine Delait took part in freak shows, and like Rosalie (Nadia Tereskiewicz, also starring in the festival’s glamorous whodunit The Crime Is Mine) kept a café selling selfie postcards, becoming something of a local celebrity. Rosalie marries Abel (Benoît Magimel) in one of his two roles in this festival, the other as Chef Dodin Bouffant opposite Juliet Binoche as Eugenie in the exquisitely filmed culinary delight The Taste of Things. It the tragic love story of Rosalie and Abel that makes Rosalie outstanding.
The President’s Wife Directed by Léa Domenach
Catherine Deneuve plays a convincingly wry, subtly amusing version of Madame Bernadette Chirac who, in real life, turned herself into a feminist icon often stealing the limelight from her philandering husband President Jacques Chirac (Michel Vuillermoz). With a not-quite-true quality to it, acknowledged at the outset, the film is a timely political diversion on the eve of the snap election in France.
