IDFA x De Balie: Gabin

For ten years, this coming-of-age documentary follows Gabin, a sensitive teenager growing up in the French countryside. Between the expectations of his hardworking parents and his own dreams, he gradually finds his own path.

Gabin doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps. He has no desire to be a butcher; he wants to work with living animals. He likes talking about his feelings, cuddling his favorite cows, and playing video games. His teenage growing pains are ordinary, yet complex, and director Maxence Voiseux captures these formative years with remarkable serenity.

Over ten years, the film follows Gabin as he grows up in the countryside of northern France, between the cattle farm of his loving mother and the butcher shop of his taciturn father. Using a static camera, Voiseux quietly observes Gabin as he searches for his own path while his parents struggle to keep their business afloat.

Accompanied by dreamlike music, the film offers a tender portrait of a teenager on the threshold of adulthood. Amid mounting pressure from his father, an inevitable move to an agricultural boarding school, and the peaceful landscapes of northern France, Gabin reveals the poetic struggle of a boy determined at all costs to remain true to himself.