Diamant Brut
A French feature debut about a 19-year-old girl growing up in a poverty-stricken neighbourhood in southern France. When she hears that contestants are being sought for the reality series Miracle Island, she sees a chance for a better life.
Liane lives with her mother and little sister under the dusty sun of Fréjus in the South of France. Obsessed with beauty and the need to become ‘someone’, she sees reality TV as her opportunity to be loved. She aspires to become the ‘French Kim Kardashian’. Fate smiles upon her when she auditions for ‘Miracle Island’. Being cast is a major longshot, but Liane milks the opportunity for all its worth, calling herself an influencer, chronicling her costly and often excruciating body modifications on Instagram, and studying comments from her thousands of followers with an almost religious fervour.
In Liane, actress Malou Khebizi and director Agathe Riedinger have created a truly unique heroine – making such a seemingly vain character so sympathetic is quite a feat. Liane’s desperation, not just for fame, but to escape her circumstances and her trauma, is palpable and devastating.