As the title suggests, Père et fille tells the story of a father growing up alone with his daughter after the premature death of the mother. If the premise is sad, director Quentin Papapietro manages to build a comedy in which the feeling of heartwarming fatherly love is staged with intelligence, and a great sense of cinema. With humour and a hint of absurdity, Père et fille offers a new way to consider family films.
Arnaud, a student remaining alone in Paris during the summer, is obsessed with the wall where the names of the Parisian soldiers who died in the 1914 war are engraved. He finds himself confronted by one of these soldiers, who invites him to step out of time and to bring comfort to his loved ones.
For a residency organized by the University, Miranda Ackerman, a writer, returns to Caen where she lived a decade earlier. She is astonished to discover that the University is hosting her in the very house where she lived with Richard, her partner at the time. Richard now teaches at the university. As they reconnect, she begins to be disturbed by presences in the house.
Born in Limoges in 1987, graduate of ESAV and former critic at Cahiers du cinéma, Quentin Papapietro has shot around twenty short films in ten years, including 40A service Pierrick (2020) broadcast on Canal+, as well as two feature films, Water Music (2014) and En Fumée (2018). His films, selected at major festivals in France and internationally, were the subject of a mini-retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française in 2019.