Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

Taking place during an unspecified African civil war, Claire Denis’s White Material is, like her Beau Travail, an extraordinary fusion of sound and images, evoking a wide range of emotions, memory and experience. Through Maria (brilliant acting again from Isabelle Huppert) a fierce and fearless white woman who refuses to abandon her coffee crop when confronted by a world gone mad, Claire Denis presents the themes of remaining strong in the face of danger, the marginality of being a white woman in black Africa, our attempts and failures to understand the world and ourselves, and the intimacy and frailty of human relations. All with the support of Christophe Lambert as Maria’s ex-husband, Isaach De Bankolé as ‘The Boxer’, an inspirational Che-like guerrilla fighter, and music by Tindersticks, this is what Jason Solomons of The Observer calls ‘a superb and complex film.’