Writing Life – Annie Ernaux Through the Eyes of High School Students

Claire Simon’s film Writing Life begins in French classrooms, where students read Annie Ernaux aloud. The reading is careful, deliberate, slightly tentative. Occasionally someone stumbles over a word and laughs, more at themselves than at the text, before continuing. In the hallways during breaks, laughter and movement fill the space, but in class, the speech sharpens. The film drifts from one school to another, from one group of students to the next, never lingering on any single individual, following the flow of conversation.

Simon does not film Annie Ernaux herself; instead, she allows the texts of the French feminist, writer, and Nobel laureate to encounter a new generation of readers. The students speak about the works with remarkable clarity and thoughtfulness. They argue, test ideas, and carry them far, often conscious of the camera.

Ernaux’s language is straightforward and unadorned, and it is precisely this simplicity that opens up space for discussions about the body, gender, love, and social class. During a break, one student wonders whether Ernaux’s texts affect some readers more than others, especially the passages on abortion. The thought hangs in the air. Others immediately challenge it, asking whether one can still identify with the experience. The scene offers no answers but leaves the audience with the question of whose experiences can become shared, the norm.

Seemingly ordinary spaces in the film open up into expansive social microcosms. The students discuss individual experiences that intersect with class, gender, and power. They are filmed up close, yet their autonomy is preserved. Simon trusts that meaning emerges slowly, in the spaces between words, pauses, and glances. Like Ernaux’s writing, the film does not impose emotion but allows it to form in the viewer’s mind. Simon also brings her characteristically strong feminist gaze to the film.

Ernaux has said that she writes life – not her own, not theirs, not even anyone’s individually. This idea carries through the entire film. Writing Life is not a portrait of the author but of the movement of literature itself: how text passes from one person to another and becomes shared. Classrooms become places where reading stops being a school task and transforms into thought that lingers long afterward.

Eleonora Weyner (translated by Anni Rossi)

Writing Life will be released in cinemas across Finland on 8 May, 2026. Read more at bkscinema.fi.