Landes

The 1920s, in Landes, in southwestern France. In the middle of an immense forest a social crisis is brewing. Liéna, just 35, just widowed, has inherited her husband's his vast properties and his crazy dream to have electricity throughout his lands. Liéna wants to make this electrical dream come true, no matter the cost. But no one else seems to be interested, neither her family nor her associates, nor even the unions. So she fights, ever more stubborn and determined, only to finally understand that another dream exists, a social and emotional realm beyond the country's stalled and suffocating reality. "The main character, Liéna is… a distant relative of whom my grandfather and especially his sister -- little Suzanne in the film -- spoke to me often. I saw the film heroine in her. But with my co-writers, we ‘fictionalized’ her a lot. In life Liéna was much tougher than her fictional counterpart. We did not want a hard and rigid stepmother, just the opposite. The film is a portrait of a young woman, the widow of a large forest landowner, who gets it into her head to bring electricity to all the farms. Except that nobody wants it. But she will insist." -- François-Xavier Vives (SudOuest.fr)