Jacques Audiard’s return to Paris after his 2018 revisionist western The Sisters Brothers finds the filmmaker collaborating with Portrait of a Lady on Fire writer-director Céline Sciamma, along with Léa Mysius, on an adaptation of Adrian Tomine’s award-winning 2015 collection of graphic short stories Killing and Dying.
Set in the French capital’s 13th arrondissement, on the left bank of the Seine, Audiard’s film charts the interwoven relationships between four twenty-somethings, played by Lucie Zhang, Makita Samba, Savages lead singer Jehnny Beth and Noémie Merlant, who played the artist in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Capturing a very different Paris to the one that appeared in his previous films, which were dominated by the city’s underworld, Paris, 13th District is a modern story of love and life, reflecting the shifting attitudes towards identity and fidelity.
