Charting a relationship from its origins through its aftermath, While We Are Here follows the lives of Lamis, a Lebanese woman, and a Brazilian man named Wilson, who one day meet while living in New York. In alternating voiceover, the pair reflect on their impressions of the city, their courtship, and their eventual separation, as vivid images of urban and rural life trace Lamis and Wilson’s individual paths from New York to Berlin and Brazil, respectively. Equal parts diary film, travelogue, and epistolary drama, this discreetly expanding fiction from partners Clarissa Campolina and Luiz Pretti captures the beauty and fragility of love and its memory. See the North American premiere this Thursday at 6:30pm at Art of the Real with the directors in person, followed by the U.S. premiere of Nicole Vögele’s Closing Time, a vivid portrait of a curbside eatery in Taipei.
Cannes Dispatch: Gaspar Noé
Flashing lights: the director on his latest mind-expanding project Lux Aeterna, which debuted at Cannes this week