Q&A with Delphine Deloget on Mar. 8

Once again confirming her status as one of contemporary French cinema’s most magnetic and sensitive performers, Virginie Efira (Other People’s Children, Rendez-Vous 2023) stars in All to Play For as single mom Sylvie. A bartender, Sylvie gamely works late shifts to support her two beloved sons, adolescent Sofiane (Alexis Tonetti) and teen Jean-Jacques (Félix Lefebvre, Summer of ’85, Rendez-Vous 2021). But after Sofiane has an accident while she’s at work, Sylvie must contend with a stubbornly dispassionate child welfare service system to regain custody of her youngest. Making her feature debut, writer-director Delphine Deloget operates in the finest traditions of French realism, offering a compassionate, carefully observed perspective on the travails of a loving parent contending with the mechanisms of an inflexible bureaucratic system. At the center of this multifaceted portrait is Efira, delivering a richly layered performance as an overwhelmed but fiercely dedicated mother.