Bitten

France, 1967: Françoise, a young boarding school student, lives in a world of strict rules and religious discipline, but behind the facade of the sacred walls, she longs for freedom and adventure. When she has a terrifying vision of her own death one night, she is determined to live her last night as if there were no tomorrow. Together with her best friend Delphine, she breaks out of the boarding school and accepts an invitation to a mysterious costume party in a dilapidated villa deep in the forest. Amid the haze of Gauloises cigarettes, the shouts of wild youth, and the sounds of forbidden radio stations, Françoise meets the enigmatic Christophe. Pale and with a piercing gaze, he fascinates her—and reminds her of the mystical beings of her imagination. The night becomes a journey into the unknown, into a shimmering, dark world where the line between life and death, dream and reality, blurs. Romain de Saint-Blanquat’s atmospheric coming-of-age vampire drama was invited to screen in the innovative “Concorso Cineasti del presente” competition for emerging filmmakers at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival. The film was released in German theaters in April 2025. “With ingenuity and a penchant for gothic romance, this fantasy drama blends fairy-tale motifs with elements of the coming-of-age film. The melancholic film also proves to be a finely woven homage to the fantasy cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, without devolving into a postmodernist film of quotations.” (Lexikon des Internationalen Films)