Arnaud Dufeys
2024
Belgium
French
Coming of Age | Queer | Live-action
19 minutes
One hot summer evening. Alone at home, by the pool and bored to death, 16-year-old Clément is killing boredom by swiping guys' profiles on a dating app. Determined to lose his virginity, he lies about his age on his date with Naël, a young man 8 years his senior. As the moment of intimacy approaches, Clément is rushing things... But it is by discovering a body completely different from Naël's that Clément will grow up.
Clément | Charles Lebrun
Naël | Vadiel Gonzalez
Angelo | Victor Meurice
Produced by
MAKINTOSH FILMS | Arnaud Dufeys & Arnaud Ponthiere
Co-Produced by LUNA BLUE FILM | Serge Kestemont
Directed by Arnaud Dufeys
Written by Nicolas Moulin
Director of Photography | Pépin Struye
Editor | Nicolas Bier
Production Designer | Mathilde Lejeune
Costume Designer | Elise Abraham
Music Composer | Lolita Del Pino
BERLINALE 2024 | Generation
Teddy Award | Nomination
Brussel Short Film Festival | National Selection
Omlandinski / Sarajevo Youth Film Festival | OFF Generation Shorts
Brussel Short Film Festival | Arte Prize
Arnaud Dufeys is a Belgian filmmaker and producer, who graduated from the Institut des Arts de Diffusion. His graduation film, ATOMS, won numerous awards in international films festivals, including the Grand Prix at the Zinebi Festival in Bilbao and the Best Director Award at the Curta Cinema in Rio de Janeiro.
INVICIBLE SUMMER is his third short film, following Dizziness. He has just completed his first TV documentary "Pour que cela n'arrive plus" and is currently developing two features co-written and co-directed with Charlotte Devillers : "On vous croit" and "Plaisir".
- ATOMES (2012)
- VERTIGES [Dizziness] (2014)
- INVINCIBLE SUMMER (2024)
From his teenage summers memories, Arnaud remembers long periods of boredom. Long stretches of time lasting more than two months, with little or nothing going on. Today, he never feels bored anymore. Too many things to do, too many ideas, too many desires... More resources but less time, or rather the feeling that it's going by faster and faster.
In INVINCIBLE SUMMER, a teenager experiences time as he spends a late summer day discovering bodies. Clément is in a hurry to lose his virginity. He can't wait to be an adult, and he wants his first time to be on this day. Naël's body obsesses and electrifies him. But they are interrupted by his old friend Angelo, who calls him to help.
He is not yet aware that for Angelo, this is a crucial turning point: one that marks a certain physical decline; a body that no longer responds quite so well to the desires of the spirit. It's when Clément comes face-to-face with the weakness of Angelo's body, in terms of effort and duration, that he realizes that he can wait and postpone his first time for a while.
Thus, INVINCIBLE SUMMER is a film about the dawn and twilight of adulthood; a parallelism between three bodies: the developing one (Clément), the one at the peak of a certain physical vigor (Naël) and the one showing the first signs of weakness associated with aging (Angelo).
INVINCIBLE SUMMER plunges us back into adolescence, into the recklessness where we willingly put ourselves in danger, those moments when we yearn to appear older while still children. It captures how when trembling with desire, you get yourself into tricky situations. Summers of boredom, when we wander wearing shorts and riding our bikes. It's a film of infinite tenderness, narrating how encounters can be caring.
