LA BELLE ANNÉE
Sweden, Norway
2026 | 95 min. | Documentary

After the death of her estranged father, Angelica and her brother are forced to return to their childhood home — a big house in the French countryside overflowing with unspeakable clutter and the lingering presence of their despotic parent.

As Angelica begins the overwhelming task of clearing it out, she comes across her teenage diaries, resurrecting a secret and fierce love she once harbored for her history teacher, Mademoiselle B.

Through the words of the diaries, Angelica’s adolescent infatuation unfolds in the present. For a brief time, the house transforms into a space where memories, fantasies, and desires are vividly relived. As her list of duties never seems to diminish, an intense longing grows within Angelica: to meet Mademoiselle B again.

LA BELLE ANNÉE is Angelica Ruffier’s autobiographical odyssey through the year following her parent’s death. The film weaves together decisive documentary moments with cinematically staged dreams, raising questions about what shapes our character and our lives – who we choose to call family, and what we do with the memory of a passion.

Directed by: Angelica Ruffier
Produced by: Marta Dauliute, Brynhildur Þórarinsdóttir, Turid Rogne, Elisabeth Kleppe
Cinematography: Simon Averin Markström
Editing: Anna Eborn
Original Score: Leo Svensson Sander
Sound: Thomas Angell Endresen

Statement of the director:
Where do we find meaning in life’s most tumultuous moments, like when a parent dies or when we struggle with the confusion of teenage years? Moments that force us to redefine ourselves and our place in the world. What stories do we tell ourselves to survive? To feel less alone? Miss B. came into my life at two critical turning points. As a 16-year-old, my love for her became a lifeline amidst a turbulent family life marked by my father’s violence. She became both a familiar and fantastical figure, and the fiction I created around her helped fill a void that might otherwise have been filled with the domination and violence I experienced from my father.

After his death in the fall of 2021, I took on the responsibility of managing his legacy. It was no easy task, as every inch of my childhood home, now overflowing with items, felt haunted by his presence. Alone in the house, with grief and anger as constant companions, I began to do what I always did when reality became too much: I viewed my life as a movie. This perspective gave rise to Angelica, my cinematic self. The film follows Angelica as she seeks reconciliation, partly by clearing out the house with her brother – a cathartic process that addresses their shared experiences of insecurity – and partly through her meeting with Sylvie. There, she seeks continuity and perhaps a new type of relationship.

The feelings and attributes that my teenage self projected onto Miss B. reflect her own search for identity and security. But why adult Angelica wants to meet Miss B. she does not know herself in the present of the film; perhaps she is still a bit bewitched. As a director, I can in hindsight interpret it as a search for reconciliation between the perfection possible in fiction and the essential imperfection of life. She needs to break the enchantment of the untold and to meet a real person in a relationship she has dreamt of – as two adults. But I also want the audience to wonder if their love – impossible then – might be possible now.

Angelica is a character who wants to believe, and thus, many coincidences occur in her life. As a director, I look for recurring motives in the material – the flammable grass, the scythe at grandfather’s, the letters. The young Angelica gives Sylvie a book that adult Angelica gets to see again once they meet. I envision the film in crimson, a color that symbolically permeates the story.

I often describe LA BELLE ANNÉE as autofiction. I believe you can go further and say more – more honestly, more precisely, more directly – when using yourself. I have experienced it so I can talk about it. I am inspired by literature and authors like Annie Ernaux, Maggie Nelson or Alison Bechdel, who delve into their own life experiences to find the universal and new norm-critical perspectives on the world they live in.

My goal is also to reach the universal in my specific experience. In this process, I serve as both director and protagonist. The film follows me through intense moments in my life, both painful and joyous. Distance from my own material arises in dialogue with the team, especially with cinematographer Simon Averin and editor Anna Eborn. Even though I decide which documentary situations to film and write the fictional ones, I seek the team’s interpretations to relinquish control. Our steady team has grown into the story over four years, and it is this composition of people that shapes the film’s expression.

I want LA BELLE ANNÉE to be a tribute to film and literature, to the fictional characters who give us guidance through life. It reflects the harsh and elusive moments of life but is also a warm and inviting cinematic space that accepts the entire spectrum of human emotions and perhaps offers solace.

I want to give the audience room to feel with me. To expose emotions that are not black and white, where grief is angry and the most tragic love can become a foundational force. This film digs into the forces that shape one’s personality and how we can be born out of our tenderness for another person. Building a film in parallel with living the events it tells has given me a space for reflection, play and comfort. This film is my companion, and I would like it to become one for the audience.

Production:
MDEMC Production
https://www.mdemc.se/

World Sales:
Odd Slice Films
https://www.oddslicefilms.com/

Press/social media agency:
MDEMC Production
https://www.mdemc.se/