PRESENTS
LA GRADIVA
A FILM by Marine Atlan
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Films We Like Acquires Canadian Rights to Cannes Critics’ Week Winner La Gradiva.
Films We Like is pleased to announce the Canadian release of La Gradiva, the debut feature by French filmmaker Marine Atlan, which had its world premiere in competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, where it won the AMI Paris Grand Prix.
A richly atmospheric coming-of-age drama set against the charged beauty of Naples and Pompeii, La Gradiva follows a group of French high-school students on a class trip to discover the ruins of Pompeii and the bodies petrified by Vesuvius. In this ancient landscape of myth, heat, death, and desire, the students — and their teacher — are drawn into a dizzying emotional descent. One by one, they are overtaken by longing, anger, fear, and confusion, until the forces they have tried to contain begin to overwhelm them.
Known for her meticulous and expressive work as a cinematographer, Atlan makes a striking transition to directing with a first feature that is both sensuous and unsettling. Blending the volatility of adolescence with the ghostly presence of history, La Gradiva captures a generation on the edge of eruption, where the past is never buried and desire moves like lava beneath the surface.
Running time 145 minutes
Country France, Italy
Language English, Italian, French
Media Contact mercy@filmswelike.com
About Films We Like
Founded by award-winning documentary filmmaker Ron Mann (Grass, Comic Book Confidential, Carmine Street Guitars) Films We Like is a boutique distributor of documentary, independent, and international films in Canada.