What Will Summer Bring

At the beginning, an objet trouvé: a video camera bought by the director at an online auction site during an extended visit to the south of France to see his girlfriend at the end of 2019. His voiceover explains that he found some footage still stored on the camera and wants to use it to make something for cinema. To do this, he has to obtain permission from the camera’s previous owner, an older man named Charles. Qué será del verano takes little time in building momentum. Charles' dogs were only just playing in the river when the camera suddenly looks out of the window of a plane about to land in Yaoundé. The voiceover explains that Charles has a job at the embassy. He falls for a woman who is an expert on successful living and later meets her son, the member of a militia. Off we go again, over flooded dirt roads into the forest of the secessionists. Is any of this true? It doesn’t matter. The way Qué será del verano shows such disdain for plausibility and zig-zags between Buenos Aires, Montpellier and Yaoundé is intoxicating. The lockdown that forbids such movements will come soon enough. (Berlinale)