Augustine

Alice Winocour made her feature debut as a director with Augustine, a French historical drama from 2012 that she also wrote, with an erotic streak running alongside the drama. Running about 102 minutes and shot entirely in French, it draws on real people to tell of the closeness between a physician and his patient.

The story is set in nineteenth-century France. The neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot treats Louise Augustine Gleizes, a young woman working as a kitchen maid who has been diagnosed with hysteria and, after a violent seizure, is partly paralysed down her left side. The patient is known as "Augustine" or "A." The film imagines a deepening passion between the two, although the sources say that in reality no such relationship existed. The cast is led by Vincent Lindon, Grégoire Colin, Soko and Chiara Mastroianni, with Grégory Gadebois, Olivier Rabourdin and Sophie Cattani also appearing.

The film first met an audience in the Special Screenings section of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and then played in the Discovery section of the Toronto International Film Festival. It opened in French cinemas on 7 November 2012 and reached a limited number of screens in the United States on 17 May 2013 through Music Box Films.