Adam's Sake (Drama)

Rating:

Director: Laura Wandel
Producer: Annemie Degryse,Marie Ange Luciani,Jan De Clercq,Stéphane Lhoest,Delphine Tomson
Screenwriter: Laura Wandel
Cinematographer: Frédéric Noirhomme
Composer: Yolande Decarsin,Mathieu Cox
Editor: Nicolas Rumpl
Production Designer: Paul Rouschop
Key Cast: Jules Delsart,Anamaria Vartolomei,Léa Drucker

A harried nurse searches for answers about a malnourished boy in this gripping hospital drama directed by Bright Horizons alum Laura Wandel and produced by the Dardenne brothers.

Lying in a hospital bed with a feeding tube in a stretched-thin paediatric ward, Adam (impressive newcomer Jules Delsart) refuses to eat without his mum, Rebecca (Anamaria Vartolomei, Happening), by his side at all hours. But is she the reason he is here, with very specific demands on his diet, insisting his stomach cannot handle regular food, and does medically trained nurse Lucy (César winner Léa Drucker, Last Summer, MIFF 2023) know better? As they butt heads, and Rebecca becomes increasingly frantic, Adam gets sicker, trapped within a broken system that may not have time to broker a life-saving solution.

Opening Critics’ Week at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, the latest film from Playground (MIFF 2022) writer/director Laura Wandel throws us headlong into another harrowing dilemma, with a documentary-style immediacy in which there’s no room to breathe. Fans of The Pitt will recognise the ticking-clock mechanics of Lucy’s shift as it teeters on the edge of disaster – with the remarkable Drucker, so impressive in Custody, once again dynamite.

“Wandel avoids easy answers … As in Playground, she captures a remarkable performance from her young lead while speaking truth to power about the fundamental failings within the systems designed to protect the most vulnerable.” – Little White Lies