CPH:DOX 2026 - La belle année

If you can remember the kind of stormy and unrequited love affairs that are part of growing up and getting to know yourself, then here is a beautiful opportunity to relive that special time in your life. That is exactly what French-Swedish filmmaker Angelica Ruffier does in ‘La belle année’’. As a teenager, she was deeply obsessed with her teacher: a chic and cultured young woman who had modelled her style after Louise Brooks. 

Now Angelica is an adult and lives in the countryside somewhere in Avignon. When she loses her father and has to clean up his house, old memories come flooding back and mix with impressions from her formative years at the movies. A cinematic aura hangs like a sweet perfume over ‘La belle année’, where the lesbian vampires from the 1970s cult classic ‘Daughters of Darkness’ are the queens of a cinema universe of red velour. The question is whether Angelica should risk everything and seek out the teacher she hasn't seen since school ended?