Conceived as a loose sequel to L’enfance nue, Graduate First returns to Lens in northern France, now in sharper decline, and widens its focus from one troubled boy to a group of working-class teenagers facing the looming baccalauréat. They hover between school and the unemployment line, sleep together, fall into half-hearted marriages, talk of Paris, fight, smoke, take seaside trips… anything to delay the exam and the future it pretends to secure. Reworked after false starts as a television documentary and shaped in close collaboration with locals, the film draws on real conversations that Pialat transforms with unsparing clarity yet quiet tenderness. Desires flare, tempers snap, plans dissolve, and the small illusions of youth give way to something undeniably honest about a generation running in place. An NYFF19 selection. A Cohen Media Group release.