The feature directorial debut of New Wave icon Juliet Berto (collaborating with partner Jean-Henri Roger), Neige shows a side of Paris too-rarely seen in canonical French cinema. Predominantly set in and around the neighbourhood of Pigalle, the film presents a social tapestry of proletarian life. Populated by immigrants, sex workers, and others living at society’s margins, Neige loosely follows a bartender (Berto) and West Indian pastor (Robert Liensol) as they try to aid community members trying to get through another day against the threats of precarity, police violence, and heroin withdrawal.
 
Edited by Yann Dedet (of Passe Montagne and Double Messieurs), Neige features Stévenin as Berto’s Hungarian boxer boyfriend. Resonant with Stévenin’s own fascination with marginal life and distinguished by its queer, non-masculinist sensibility, the film makes skilful use of the actor’s peculiar blend of rough edges and childlike sincerity, and presents a social world absent from his own films of the periphery.

This is the UK premiere of Neige.