Bernadette Lafont, and God Created the Free Woman

A journey in the company of Bernadette Lafont, French Cinema’s most atypical actress. Tracing her career from pin-up girl, to New Wave model of sexual freedom, to drug-dealing granny in the film Paulette, by way of La Fiancée du Pirate and Les Stances à Sophie, this film pays tribute to her extraordinary life and artistic odyssey. Her grand-daughters, Anna, Juliette and Solène, revisit the dreams of Bernadette, in the family home in the Cevennes region where they, like her, grew up. Her close friends, Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon, reminisce on their artistic and human complicity. Throughout the film, Bernadette Lafont in person, with her inimitable character actress voice, re-evokes a life in cinema marked with insolence, courage and freedom.

Keywords

  • #AccelerateAction | Internationaler Frauentag 2025
  • Creatives: Make Movies!
  • Exclusive Docs: New Perspectives
  • Sooner Exclusives
  • film about film
  • history
  • women
  • work

Actors

  • Bernadette Lafont
  • Jean-Pierre Kalfon
  • Bulle Ogier
  • Michel Demonteix
  • Anna Medveczky

Director

  • Esther Hoffenberg

Biography, Documentary


1h 5min


16+

FR


ES

IT

PT

DE

France
2016
Bernadette Lafont embodied the unyielding desire for freedom and independence like hardly any other actress in her time.

Bernadette Lafont embodied the unyielding desire for freedom and independence like hardly any other actress in her time.


A journey in the company of Bernadette Lafont, French Cinema’s most atypical actress.


Tracing her career from pin-up girl, to New Wave model of sexual freedom, to drug-dealing granny in the film Paulette, by way of La Fiancée du Pirate and Les Stances à Sophie, this film pays tribute to her extraordinary life and artistic odyssey.


Her grand-daughters, Anna, Juliette and Solène, revisit the dreams of Bernadette, in the family home in the Cevennes region where they, like her, grew up. Her close friends, Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon, reminisce on their artistic and human complicity.


Throughout the film, Bernadette Lafont in person, with her inimitable character actress voice, re-evokes a life in cinema marked with insolence, courage and freedom.

Festivals

Cast & Crew