Foreign Language

In Claire Burger’s tender and surprisingly funny third feature, Langue étrangère, the issue du jour is the multiplicity of simultaneous crises that young people in Europe and beyond must contend with today: from fascism to climate change, from structural racism to police brutality. Most significantly, and one of the reasons why this is such a necessary film, Burger links contemporary Europe’s political chaos to its psychic disarray. Could the tendency of young people to engage in collective protest also serve to obscure individual challenges?