Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2018, France) won the European Film Award for Best Film. Céline Sciamma's period drama follows a painter commissioned to secretly capture the likeness of a young Breton woman before her arranged marriage, a task that becomes an act of mutual looking and falling in love.

Sciamma creates a film built entirely on gaze: who is looking, who is seen. Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel in a love story you feel long after it ends.