Julia Lambert, uncrowned queen of London theatreland in the 1930s, feels that her life is in a rut. She may well be a highly celebrated actress and the theatre she runs together with her husband keeps on staging hit after hit, but still she senses a lack of inspiration and more importantly, she is bored. At this critical juncture in her life, she meets an enthusiastic young devotee… The film by Robert Lantos and István Szabó featuring a star cast is about self-discovery and self-acceptance, but above this, about the roles played on the stage and in life. What is the world, indeed, if not theatre?
National Film Institute – Film Archive, Restoration Premiere
Supporting film:
Lumière compilation
Hungarian animation, colour, 1980, dir: ?, No Dialogue, 5’
Gobelin compilation
French animation selection, colour, 2025, No Dialogue, 3’
Virtuoso, dir: Basile Dieraert, Ayse Zeynep Direk, Charlie Gerthoffer, Anna Mezzanotte, Chloe Schaf, 2025, 1’
En bon thermes / On Good Thermes, dir: Alice Le Roux, Augustine Mazereeuw, Madèle Moulin, Marion Penaud, Elora Tarquin, 2025, 1’
L'Echo de Tihany / Tihany’s Eco, dir: Mara Brandibur, Raphael Doucet-Bon, Liam Keller, Lou-Andréa Kretz, Maëlys Laurenti, Ritankar Saha, 2025, 1’
Every year, so-called ‘curtain films’, that is, shorts projected prior to feature screenings, at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival are produced by students of the animated film department from the famous Gobelins, l’école de l’image university. In 2025, Hungary was guest of honour at the prestigious festival and taking this into consideration French students made their short films in the spirit of Hungarian culture. From the ten shorts evoking Hungarian towns, landscapes, celebrities, myths and cartoons, those featuring Ferenc Liszt, the spa baths of Budapest and the Tihany legend debut in front of a Budapest audience at the Film Marathon opening gala.
