Annie Ernaux and her son David Ernaux-Briot were invited to the Cannes festival to present their film Les Années super 8 which consists in home video footage shot between 1972 and 1981. The film was directed by David Ernaux-Briot, with text written and read by Annie Ernaux .
Image: Les Films Pelléas.
At the 2022 Turin book festival, Annie Ernaux has been awarded the Mondello Prize.
(source and photo/ report).
On the 30th November 2021 Annie Ernaux was selected as one of the 12 inaugural international writers to join the Royal Society of Literature’s International Writers programme, a new award recognising the contribution of writers across the globe to literature in English, and the power of literature to transcend borders and to bring people together. At a time of rising nationalism, RSL International Writers celebrates the many ways in which literature can shape a future world. Each year new writers will receive this life-long honour and be invited to join the RSL’s International Writers, forming an ever-expanding global community of authors.
Audrey Diwan’s ‘Happening’ (L’événement) has won the Golden Lion in Venice for best film. Adapted from Ernaux’s autobiographical account, the film features Anamaria Vartolomei as Anne Duchesne, a student seeking a back-street abortion at a time when it was illegal in France.
The adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s 1991 Passion simple, by director Danielle Arbid, features actors Laetitia Dosch and Sergei Polunin. The love story between a Parisian lecturer and a Russian diplomat is available to watch on Curzon Home Cinema.
Set up and curated by Michèle Bacholle, who is also the author of many essays and a book on Ernaux, this ‘Musée Annie Ernaux‘ website provides an exploration into the main places which inhabit Ernaux’s writings – and in turn, the reader’s imagination. Through photographs and critical notes, Bacholle invites us to ‘enter’ these places.
As Annie Ernaux turns 80 this month, she features in an interview for the Financial Times (‘I never feel legitimate, yet I persevere’) and is named ‘Author of the month’ in the London Review Booskhop.
Régis Sauder’s documentary, J’ai aimé vivre là, is an evocation of Cergy-Pontoise, guided by the texts and voice of Annie Ernaux, who lives there. The film, which was presented at the International film festival in Marseilles in July 2020, will be out on screens in early 2021. The trailer and press review can be found here.
A Girl’s Story, the English translation of Mémoire de fille (trans. Alison L. Strayer), is being published simultaneously this week by Seven Stories Press and Fitzcarraldo Editions.
On 30 March 2020, Annie Ernaux addressed a letter to President Emmanuel Macron, in response to the coronavirus crisis. Her letter, originally entitled ‘Sachez, Monsieur le Président, que nous ne laisserons plus nous voler notre vie‘ and broadcast on France Inter, is translated in English by Alison L. Strayer as ‘Letter to the President‘.