Drama · Comedy
French (La Vie devant soi)
1977 · Directed by Moshé Mizrahi · 105 min
In a cramped walk-up in working-class Paris, an aging former prostitute and Holocaust survivor takes in the children of women who work the streets. Her oldest ward, a streetwise Arab boy named Momo, has questions about who he is and where he comes from. A tender, funny, unsentimental portrait of an improvised family.
Why it matters in cinema history
A key late-1970s French art-house success, it brought Romain Gary's Goncourt-winning novel to the screen and put the mixed, immigrant, postwar Paris of the margins at the centre of an internationally honoured film.
Watch with intention
Watch it as a portrait of two people who have no one else, and notice how comedy and need share almost every scene.
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