Foreign Tongue

Q&A with Claire Burger on March 13

When Fanny (Lilith Grasmug) meets her German pen pal Lena (Josefa Heinsius), their initial rapport is rocky: the shy, insecure French teen has arrived from Strasbourg for an extended visit at a difficult moment for the more assertive Lena. With time, however, the two girls’ relationship grows and deepens into real friendship; when Lena agrees to visit Fanny in France, their shared interest in political activism takes a troubling turn. In her third feature, Claire Burger (co-director of Party Girl, Rendez-Vous 2015) casts an up-to-the-moment eye on two young women exploring their desires and discovering themselves in the context of dangerously charged political and societal circumstances. With outstanding supporting performances from Nina Hoss and Chiara Mastroianni as the two girls’ mothers, Foreign Tongue is at once intimate in its portrait of two differently wounded girls at vulnerable moments in their lives, and thrilling in the unexpected revelations and twists that propel the two through the upheavals of young adulthood.