Set Me Free (1999)

Synopsis: Seeking refuge from the confusions of adolescence, thirteen-year-old Hanna (Vanasse) ducks into a showing of Godard's existential masterpiece VIVRE SA VIE while playing hooky from school. Her life... Seeking refuge from the confusions of adolescence, thirteen-year-old Hanna (Vanasse) ducks into a showing of Godard's existential masterpiece VIVRE SA VIE while playing hooky from school. Her life is forever changed as she becomes engrossed in the tormented but beautiful Nana--Anna Karina's housewife-turned-streetwalker--and adapts the heroine's mantra as her own: "I'm free to live my life." Outside of the theater, amongst the gray tenements of Montreal in the early '60s, Hanna struggles to "live her life" and mold her identity against her feelings of isolation and displacement amongst her conflicted family. Her Catholic mother (Bussieres - LA VIE FANTOME) is an overworked seamstress, battling with clinical depression and the financial burden of supporting her family. Her Jewish father (Manojiovic - UNDERGROUND), a chronically underemployed holocaust survivor from Poland, is an unpublished poet tormented by history as well as his stunted ability to express himself. With the companionship of her elder brother Paul (Merineau - SOUS-SOL), whom she idolizes, her friend Laura (Christeler), the lonely child of a traveling concert pianist, and her sympathetic school teacher (Huston - author of CANTIQUE DES PLAINES), whom bears a striking resemblance to Anna Karina, Hanna struggles to find love and direction as she learns to shoulder the responsibilities and consequences of her new found freedom. [More]

Starring: Karine Vanasse, Pascale Bussieres, Miki Manojlovic, Alexandre Merineau

Starring: Karine Vanasse, Pascale Bussieres, Miki Manojlovic, Alexandre Merineau, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Monique Mercure, Charlotte Christeler

Director: Lea Pool

Director: Lea Pool
Screenwriter: Lea Pool
Producer: Lorraine Richard

[See More Credits]