Prolific French writer/director and five-time Cannes contender Arnaud Desplechin’s (My Sex Life… Or How I Got Into an Argument, Hitchcock/Truffaut,) latest film is an uncommonly resonant coming-of-age story that mines the breadth of human emotion and explores the power of the past to define our present.

Lusciously shot and scripted, My Golden Days is a quintessential coming-of-age portrait. Returning home to Paris after many years away, scholar and anthropologist Paul Dedalus recalls three pivotal moments from his childhood in France. Told in flashback, the episodes move from heartbreaking to exhilarating and back again. An abusive, suicidal mother, a secret humanitarian mission to Russia, the sublimity of young love and the wrenching pain of loss make up the memories recounted by the now middle aged Dedalus. Desplechin infuses his film with characteristic warmth and a reverence for the blinding emotions of youth. His characters are at once wise and foolish, determined and lost. Starring Mathieu Amalric as the adult Dedalus, My Golden Days is a look at the singular experience of the young, and the wounds we suffer that never fully heal.