Non-Fiction

Directed by OLIVIER ASSAYAS

Starring VINCENT MACAIGNE GUILLAUME CANET JULIETTE BINOCHE

Released 18 OCTOBER

Way, way back in 1996, French director Olivier Assayas made a film about the film industry called . It might be best described as a sincere satire, in that it gently mocked the institutionalised double-speak and the foppish tendencies of highfalutin artists railing against The System, takes us from movies to novels, this time zeroing in on the inherent narcissism of those who write about and, by extension, earn filthy lucre from the gory details of their private life. It, too, adopts a comic framework, but inside is an earnest inquisition into how physical books are being nudged into the cultural doldrums, mainly due to the rise of what Assayas sees as ephemeral digital alternatives. The film is also interested the ways that new books are aggressively marketed and tracked, as well as how (usually) very young, digitally-savvy upstarts are now running the asylum. It is highly critical of this domain, but everyone has their moment in Assayas’ crosshairs: the slimy back-room operators and the over-sensitive authors who just want to wank onto a page and call it art, all the while remaining unshackled from any dismal commercial concerns. Until it’s time to be paid. And as it turns out, everyone is fucking everyone else, so this is a publishing industry satire as bacchanalian orgy. But in a very genteel, French, non-stick kinda way.