Enzo (Drama)

Rating:

Director: Robin Campillo
Producer: Marie-Ange Luciani
Screenwriter: Laurent Cantet,Robin Campillo
Cinematographer: Jeanne Lapoirie
Editor: Robin Campillo
Production Designer: Mélissa Ponturo
Costume Designer: Isabelle Pannetier
Key Cast: Maksym Slivinskyi,Pierfrancesco Favino,Elodie Bouchez,Eloy Pohu

Robin Campillo directs a sensual queer coming-of-age tale of a bourgeois French teen and the Ukrainian labourer who shakes up his world.

Enzo’s family have a villa with a pool and ocean views, but he doesn’t feel at home there. So, against his parents’ wishes, the 16-year-old drops out of school and gets a job at a nearby construction site. He’s terrible at it, but he derives pleasure from working with his hands alongside the other labourers – especially Ukrainian immigrant Vlad, who is torn about whether to stay or to return and fight in the war. Charismatic, capable and a true salt-of-the-earth man, Vlad is everything Enzo wishes he was, and his admiration soon evolves into something more.

Opening the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Enzo was initially slated for direction by co-writer Laurent Cantet (Heading South, MIFF 2006; The Class) before his death in 2024, leading long-time friend and collaborator Robin Campillo (BPM, MIFF 2017) to take the reins. The resulting feature blends Cantet’s interest in class with Campillo’s observant humanism, the camera capturing scenes of tender camaraderie and following Enzo as he finds himself. In the lead role, Eloy Pohu expertly channels the cocktail of traits – arrogant but lost; curious but closed off; wanting to be loved but wary of vulnerability – that mark male adolescence, providing a magnetic if enigmatic lodestone for this delicate tale of alienation, belonging and growth.

“A heartfelt, urgent drama about youth and desire – and destiny, sexuality and class … Campillo and Cantet show us that the agonies of being young and existentially rebellious are not simply shallow and callow: they represent a state of idealism which is poignantly brief.” – The Guardian


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