A pivotal figure in the Greek Weird Wave, Ariane Labed first gained attention with her role in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth (2009) before delivering an award-winning Venice Film Festival performance in Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg (2010). Since then, she has collaborated with visionary directors such as Richard Linklater, Guy Maddin, Justin Kurzel, Joanna Hogg, and, most recently, Brady Corbet, further cementing her reputation as a versatile and compelling actress. In 2019 she presented her short feature debut in the Quinzaine section – we interviewed her for her remarkable “Olla,” and were excited when the trades announced that was she was going to direct her feature debut.
Selected for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section,
September Says (which would go by the title September & July in its domestic release in France) works with subjects of loss, mental health, while girlhood or womanhood is about carving your place in this world. Adapted from Daisy Johnson’s novel Sisters, the film delves into the intense, suffocating bond between two siblings—a relationship so entangled that the lines between them begin to blur. Far from boring, the adaptation pulses with raw emotion and psychological tension. In our conversation, I sought to understand why this source material resonated with Labed’s artistic vision, as well as her approach to visualizing the story’s claustrophobic world—a box within a box, rendered even smaller, even more inescapable.
