Cousin Jules

A lost masterpiece of cinema, now beautifully restored and available for the first time in years, Cousin Jules was the result of five years of painstaking work by director Dominique Benichetti and cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn. Over that period, the team photographed and recorded the daily lives of Jules (Benichetti’s cousin) and his wife, French farmers living alone in the countryside. The result is a ravishing, totally immersive work, in which we not only enter into the subjects’ world but also into the very rhythms of their lives, captured with a wonderful sensitivity that never feels condescending or clinical. Highly and widely praised when first seen in 1972, the film slipped from view after Benichetti turned his attention and talents to a host of other projects. Yet the memory of Cousin Jules lingered for its small but devoted cult of admirers, and now thanks to the generosity of the Gould Family Foundation,and the restoration work done by Arane/Gulliver Laboratories in Paris, this extraordinary film is with us once again.