EXCLUSIVE: Charades has acquired French writer-director Julien Gaspar-Oliveri’s debut feature Stonewall (La Frappe) for international sales ahead of the film’s just-announced world premiere at Cannes Critics’ Week.
The film, premiering out of competition in the sidebar’s special screenings section, is about a brother and sister in the south of France who must face long-buried family trauma when their father is released from prison. It stars Bastien Bouillon, who is also heading to Cannes this year in Lea Mysius’ Competition film The Birthday Party, alongside rising actors Diego Murgia, Romane Fringelli and Heloise Volle.
The film is produced by Easy Tiger’s Marc-Benoît Créancier, who is also behind Vincent Mael Cardona’s Cannes 2025 midnight screening No One Will Know and Houda Benyamina’s Divines, which won the Camera d’Or in 2016. Créancier said the filmmaker “asserts a bold and deeply personal vision through a film that explores territories still rarely addressed in cinema. Through its emotional power, it resonates far beyond its narrative.”
Charades co-founder Carole Baraton said the company discovered the filmmaker via his Arte web series Those Who Blush. “We were immediately struck by its sensitivity, humanity, and the precision of his commitment as a director of young actors.”
Gaspar-Oliveri also directed the Cesar-nominated 2022 short film Tender Age. He said of his debut feature: “I wanted to capture silence on film – its weight, what it conceals, how it redirects violence; for those who live with it.”
Ad Vitam will release the film in France.
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