Annual Top Films Lists

Top 200 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2023: #186. Alice Zeniter & Benoît Volnais’ Before the Collapse

Published on January 5, 2023

Avant l’effondrement

It wasn’t quite ready for a ’21 launch, but author Alice Zeniter & Benoît Volnais will see their co-directorial debut break bread in the New Year with a prestige Rotterdam showing — its among the selections in the Big Screen Competition section. Production on Avant l’effondrement (Before the Collapse) took place in August of 2021 in Bretagne with Niels Schneider, Ariane Labed, Souheila Yacoub surrounding them in a tale about the collapse of self. Marie Masmonteil produces.

Gist: In a scorching Paris, Tristan, campaign manager for a legislative candidate, receives an anonymous letter containing a positive pregnancy test. Because he may have a fatal and incurable genetic disease, he becomes obsessed with finding the woman who sent him that test. But is it dealing with a morbid joke, a cold revenge, a cry for help or a political maneuver? Tristan decides to investigate, risking his professional and emotional life.

Release Date/Prediction: To have its world premiere this month in Rotterdam, this has a domestic France release in April.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).