In our films, we always start from a deeply political or social subject, but we try to infuse it with an offbeat, sensitive perspective, shot through with magic. Not a spectacular magic, but a way of looking at the world differently… We have always felt that the margins are entitled to imagination. In the places we visited and among the people we spent time with—in Gagarine (2021) as well as with asylum-seeking families—we met children whose imagination was incredibly powerful. Listening to their dreams immediately breaks down clichés: a child can dream… as a way to keep looking up at the sky when reality becomes too dark.
The Green Eyes is a coming-of-age tale that shifts the perspective on a highly political subject in order to reconnect with universal emotions. It seems to us that the theme of immigration often becomes a political tool used to divide and manipulate. By telling an immigration story from a child’s perspective, we wanted above all to re-humanize situations that are too often stripped of their humanity and caricatured… In this sense, the fable format helps us touch upon fundamental life impulses, such as a father seeking to protect his children, or a sister wanting to save her brother. — Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh
Writer-directors Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh return to The American French Film Festival with their second feature The Green Eyes / Les Yeux verts. Following their acclaimed debut Gagarine, their beautifully realized new work centers “resignation syndrome” as a portal to magic realism. Traumatized by the upheaval of the immigration experience and imminent deportation from France, young Iraqi refugee Nour (Sayyid El Alami) falls into a coma. His sister Chaya (Douae Butarbuch M’zaouki)—left alone with Nour when their father travels to Spain for work—enters her brother’s dreams to bring him back to consciousness.
The Green Eyes screens on the closing day of the festival. See link and info below for details.
THE GREEN EYES
Directed by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh
Written by Liatard, Trouilh, and Guillaume Laurant
The American French Film Festival
Sunday, November 8, at 11 am
Directors Guild of America
7920 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles
theamericanfrenchfilmfestival.org/the-green-eyes
Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh quotations courtesy and © the filmmakers,June Films, andHaut et Court.
Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh, The Green Eyes / Les Yeux verts (2026), from top: Douae Butarbuch M’zaouki; Sayyid El Alami and Butarbuch M’zaouki; Anamaria Vartolomei and Butarbuch M’zaouki; The Green Eyes / Les Yeux verts French poster; El Alami and Butarbuch M’zaouki (2).
Images courtesy and © June Films and Haut et Court.
