In Your Hands

Ludovic Bernard (Mission Pays Basque) demonstrates his elegance and sensitivity behind the lens with In Your Hands in an emotionally stirring tale of a young man and his rare gift for music.

Mathieu (Jules Benchetrit) lives with his family in a housing project where peer pressure has led him into petty theft. When the director of a prestigious music conservatory, Pierre (Lambert Wilson, Raising Colours in this year's Festival), hears Mathieu playing piano at a railway station (#PianoEnGare), he is mesmerised. Pierre decides to secure him private lessons with the imposing Countess (Kristin Scott Thomas), although with a secret agenda: to enter Mathieu in an international competition. Social pressures, and the daunting prospect of performing piano professionally causes Mathieu to question himself.
Will he be able to play at the international competition or not?

With a sweeping and swirling camera that seems to get 'inside' the music, Bernard wrangles many themes throughout In Your Hands, including that of social privation, although distinguished along class lines, not race or creed. Mathieu's tackling of Rachmaninoff echoes the 1996 film Shine, in which Geoffrey Rush as the adult David Helfgott also conquered this 'Everest' of classical piano.