WRITING LIFE – ANNIE ERNAUX THROUGH THE EYES OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Annie Ernaux was the first French woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She is regarded by many as a source of individual and collective emancipation, where the personal and the universal converge. In WRITING LIFE – ANNIE ERNAUX THROUGH THE EYES OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS, Claire Simon uses Ernaux’s work as a starting point for conversations between students and teachers, ranging from everyday topics to more profound issues.

Ernaux’s unfiltered accounts and her characteristic “écriture plate” (a raw, unadorned writing style) – whether she is describing a trip to the supermarket or an abortion – invite students to reflect on their own experiences with striking candour. This is followed by a lesson on love in Creole, an exploration of the intergenerational consequences of climbing the social ladder, and an attempt to put into words the disappointment of parental betrayal. Simon demonstrates how Ernaux’s work has not only earned its place in literary history, but can still help young people today to articulate their experiences and desires.

As a filmmaker, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor, Claire Simon has built up an impressive body of work that moves freely between documentary and fiction. With WRITING LIFE (or ÉCRIRE LA VIE, also the title of Ernaux’s collected works), the French filmmaker brilliantly succeeds in creating the right conditions to (as Ernaux once said to Simon in an interview) make reality “sweat”.