“Paris is always a good idea,” whispers Audrey Hepburn to the stiff yet strangely alluring Humphrey Bogart. This famous line is from the film Sabrina (1954) but could be attributed to a thousand novels, movies, and articles on the myth of the city. My love of Paris is perhaps, to some, a bit cliché. But I find the earnestness of the city to be quite beautiful. It’s a warm glow of hope on a cold winter’s day like this one.
I grew up watching old black and white romance movies with my stepmother - Sabrina being our persistent favorite. The 1994 remake with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond is even better. While Spanish was the more obvious choice of a language to study in school, by 11 years old, I was firmly committed to learning French. 10 years later, I studied in Paris as a college student. It was everything I hoped it would be. How lucky to wander through the city before smartphones existed. I walked for miles with a Paris Pratique in my back pocket. I had no destination. No curated route. I’d walk to get lost and see where my feet took me.
In Paris, I fell in love with photography and Agnes Varda films. I watched Godard’s Breathless for the first time and devoured the intuition of the 1960s New Wave. I am certainly not the first to take this well-trodden path, but great art (and great cities) looms large in our dreams for a reason. I think I’ve always been a filmmaker, though I didn’t go back to school for it until many years later. ‘Paris the dream’ filled my head with ideas and ‘Paris the reality’ let me touch them.
Paris and film both taught me how to pause and be present. The Ciné-Club selection for February, in its beautiful simplicity, does the same.
Stéphane Brizé’s La Loi du Marché (2015) or the English title that feels more apt, The Measure of a Man, is a small story and a common one. A man works hard to support his family with honor and respect despite a barrage of setbacks. And to observe such a noble venture through the unflinching gaze that only French cinema can provide, a small story from beginning to end, carries a profound resonance worthy of Greek epics.
La Loi du Marché was nominated for the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or and Vincent Lindon’s performance earned him the award for Best Actor that year. I shed a few tears every time I see it. I hope you’ll join me in February and do the same.
Mariel Iezzoni is an independent filmmaker practicing both fiction and documentary film. Her latest short, Burial, premiered at the Richmond Film Festival and was a Special Jury Nominee. She received her MFA in Film from the City College of New York where she graduated a BAFTA Scholar and winner of the Chantal Akerman Student Prize.
She is currently writing and producing her first full-length feature film, Red Hill Town, about a family who are the last remaining citizens of an abandoned coal mining town in northeast Pennsylvania. She began her love of French cinema as an undergraduate student in Paris.
I grew up watching old black and white romance movies with my stepmother - Sabrina being our persistent favorite. The 1994 remake with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond is even better. While Spanish was the more obvious choice of a language to study in school, by 11 years old, I was firmly committed to learning French. 10 years later, I studied in Paris as a college student. It was everything I hoped it would be. How lucky to wander through the city before smartphones existed. I walked for miles with a Paris Pratique in my back pocket. I had no destination. No curated route. I’d walk to get lost and see where my feet took me.
In Paris, I fell in love with photography and Agnes Varda films. I watched Godard’s Breathless for the first time and devoured the intuition of the 1960s New Wave. I am certainly not the first to take this well-trodden path, but great art (and great cities) looms large in our dreams for a reason. I think I’ve always been a filmmaker, though I didn’t go back to school for it until many years later. ‘Paris the dream’ filled my head with ideas and ‘Paris the reality’ let me touch them.
Paris and film both taught me how to pause and be present. The Ciné-Club selection for February, in its beautiful simplicity, does the same.
Stéphane Brizé’s La Loi du Marché (2015) or the English title that feels more apt, The Measure of a Man, is a small story and a common one. A man works hard to support his family with honor and respect despite a barrage of setbacks. And to observe such a noble venture through the unflinching gaze that only French cinema can provide, a small story from beginning to end, carries a profound resonance worthy of Greek epics.
La Loi du Marché was nominated for the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or and Vincent Lindon’s performance earned him the award for Best Actor that year. I shed a few tears every time I see it. I hope you’ll join me in February and do the same.
By Mariel Iezzoni
Mariel Iezzoni is an independent filmmaker practicing both fiction and documentary film. Her latest short, Burial, premiered at the Richmond Film Festival and was a Special Jury Nominee. She received her MFA in Film from the City College of New York where she graduated a BAFTA Scholar and winner of the Chantal Akerman Student Prize.
She is currently writing and producing her first full-length feature film, Red Hill Town, about a family who are the last remaining citizens of an abandoned coal mining town in northeast Pennsylvania. She began her love of French cinema as an undergraduate student in Paris. 
