Legendary French sensualist Claire Denis returns with a steamy, Cannes Grand Prix–winning romance-thriller starring Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn.

In this swooning, sexually charged adaptation of Denis Johnson’s 1986 novel, Qualley (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, MIFF 2019) stars as an American journalist drifting through a boozy haze in Nicaragua. While there, a side hustle in sexual favours leads her into a hot and heavy liaison with a mysterious English businessman (Alwyn, The Favourite, The Souvenir: Part II) – and into a web of political espionage from which both desperately seek to escape.

One of contemporary cinema’s greatest auteurs, Denis (Let the Sunshine In, MIFF 2017; Bastards, MIFF 2013; Beau Travail, MIFF 2000) infuses the source text’s drama with her singular brand of disquieting eroticism, updating its Nicaraguan Revolution backdrop to a pandemic-addled world haunted by the ghosts of colonisation and foreign co-dependence. With slippery supporting turns from John C. Reilly as a harried editor and filmmaker Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems; Good Time, MIFF 2017) as a shadowy stranger, Stars at Noon is sheer cinematic seduction – all danger and desire.

“From the film’s bristling, dust-licked atmospherics to its frank, corporeal eroticism to yet another shivery, enveloping score by longtime collaborators Tindersticks, Stars at Noon is vintage Denis.” – Variety