Something in the Air

SOMETHING IN THE AIR is the newest film by French filmmaker Olivier Assayas. Following his critical triumphs, SUMMER HOURS and CARLOS, Assayas’ semi-autobiographical new feature is a vibrant, incisively crafted story of a young man’s artistic awakening in the politically turbulent French student movement of the early ‘70s. In a nod to his earlier film COLD WATER, Assayas’ surrogate Gilles (newcomer Clement Metayer) is a graduating high school student in Paris deeply involved in the counterculture of the time. While Gilles begins to realize that his interests lie more in the revolutions in music and art, he finds himself pulled into ever more dangerous political protests by the people around him, especially his radicalized girlfriend (Lola Créton of GOODBYE FIRST LOVE). Illuminating and elegiac, Assayas’ story celebrates that thrilling, evanescent moment in history when young people could feel revolution just within their grasp.

SOMETHING IN THE AIR premiered at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, where it won for Best Screenplay, and was also featured at the 2012 Toronto and New York film festivals.

"Made with the bittersweet clarity of hindsight and the assurance of a director in peak form, 'Something in the Air' is Olivier Assayas' wise and wistful memory-piece on the revolutionary fervor that suffused his young adulthood. Conjuring the mood and attitudes of 1970s European counterculture with pinpoint detail and nary a shred of naive romanticism, this tender but dispassionate semi-autobiographical drama offers a gentle rebuke to the celebratory spirit of many post-'68 movies, capturing how political zeal gives way to confusion, compromise and a dawning sense of personal identity."- Justin Chang, Variety

"Olivier Assayas has made one of the most distinctive and nuanced films in memory about the much-chronicled post-1968 years of radical European politics, as well as providing droll insight into his self-discovery as an artist... This is a beautifully crafted work and an acute evocation of its period both in look and attitude." - David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter