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JUST DON’T THINK I’LL SCREAM

In the first minutes of this exquisitely unusual essay film, experimental filmmaker Frank Beauvais tells us that he and his boyfriend have separated after several years and that he has remained alone in the village in Alsace where he and his partner settled six years earlier. Lacking the money to return to Paris and the will to leave the house, Beauvais loses himself in cinéphilie, watching movies at a frenetic pace. The result of this period of seclusion is Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream, a memoir composed of hundreds of short clips culled from Beauvais’s manic film binge set against his controlled voiceover. It is a midlife crisis film, a record of a dark stretch in French history during which the Nuit Debout protest movement and the terrorist attack in Nice accentuated the sense of a society in crisis, but also the narrative of a slow rebirth. Perhaps most importantly, it is an incredible monument to our obsessive, intimate relationship with images. In the endless flow of sequences celebrated and obscure, Beauvais finds an extension of his thoughts, fears, and desires. As he reorganizes these images to communicate his experience, he takes a decisive step back into the world, sharing with us a work of radical intimacy.