"Even though its madcap humour and creative cinematography gained it a cult following (a Paris cinema showed it one day a week for more than twenty years), Zazie dans le métro was seen as a curiosity or, at best, a stylistic exercise. Yet to watch it today is to rediscover a gem - not just a technically advanced film, though it is that, but also a seminal one about Paris and a prescient account of a modern girl on the brink.." - Ginette Vincendeau, The Criterion Collection
"It was the first film I wanted to study and rewatch; it sparked my interest in film‑making. Zazie dans le métro is an adaptation of the novel by Raymond Queneau. Malle sought to create filmic equivalents to the various literary styles with which the author experimented. I love this – adapting the verbal into something so visual. And Malle did so very inventively." - Richard Ayoade, director and actor
The second of two free breakfast screenings at LIFF 2023 (Before Sunrise screens on 4 November), this zany and anarchic comedy from Louis Malle is sure to help you wake up! In this most freewheeling of French New Wave films and Malle’s first in dazzling colour, precocious ten-year-old Zazie (Catherine Demongeot) comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle (Philippe Noiret) and discovers that the Métro is closed due to a strike. But that’s no obstacle to having fun for Zazie as she sets out on a madcap adventure around the streets and sights of the City of Light.
