Elle

Michele runs a video-game studio in Paris and is assaulted in her own home by a masked intruder. Rather than report it, she responds with a disquieting composure, investigating the attacker herself and drawing him into a game she seems to control, all while a catastrophe from her childhood shadows the present.

For clinical readers the film is a study in trauma, repetition and the attempt to master helplessness by seizing the terms of the encounter. It offers a difficult, unsentimental picture of how early catastrophe can shape adult sexuality and agency. It was selected in Competition at Cannes in 2016 and is based on the novel Oh... by Philippe Djian.