Le milieu de l'horizon (2019)

In 1976, the year of the great drought, tensions grow within the family as Gus, a 13-year-old farmer’s son, watches. The crops dry out in the fields, and the chickens die from the heat: his father is desperate. The arrival of Cécile, a friend of his mother Nicole, does nothing to improve matters. Divorced, she stands out as a free-spirited woman in a still fairly conservative community. A same-sex relationship develops between the two women, stirring Jean’s jealousy and gossip in the village. Jean eventually loses his temper. Cécile is violently thrown out. Nicole decides to leave her home. Jean drowns his sorrows in alcohol, and Gus must temporarily take on the farm work alone, with his disabled cousin Rudy. When the rain finally comes, it is torrential: Jean, Gus, and Rudy must rush to retrieve their chickens to keep them from drowning. During the effort, Rudy falls into a coma. Gus’s older sister Léa is part of the orchestra performing Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” which Nicole also attends.