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Halfway through writer-director Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s cinephile coming-of-age story A Paris Education, a girl confronts a budding filmmaker: “You seem out of touch with reality… like you live an armchair life.” It is not the first time aspiring cineastes in Civeyrac’s IndieLisboa entry get scolded for being self-centered navel-gazers, nor does the slap feel entirely undeserved. A mélange between Garrel’sRegular Lovers (with which it shares a gorgeous black and white cinematography, courtesy of Dp Pierre-Hubert Martin) and Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden (of which it echoes the same affection for deranged, self-destructive loners), A Paris Education follows the solipsistic journeys of a few film students whose only real concern in life seem to be whether or not they’ll ever join the ranks of the auteurs they binge-watch before reality catches up with their dreams.

Long-haired and clean-shaven Etienne (Andranic Manet) is the protagonist. A native of Lyon, he...

A Paris Education (Mes Provinciales)‬ director Jean-Paul Civeyrac: "I had the idea for the film after seeing the Marlen Khutsiev film of which we see an excerpt in the film. It's called La Porte D'Ilitch [I Am Twenty]." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

When was the last time Novalis (writer of the early Romantic movement and champion of the blue flower) was quoted in a film? Jean-Paul Civeyrac's A Paris Education (shot by Pierre-Hubert Martin, edited by Louise Narboni), starring Andranic Manet (Katell Quillévéré's Heal The Living) with Sophie Verbeeck (Jérôme Bonnell's All About Them), Diane Rouxel (Frédéric Mermoud's Moka), Jenna Thiam (Cédric Kahn's Wild Life), Gonzague Van Bervesseles, and Corentin Fila, illuminates the sundry elements of what actually constitutes education.

Jean-Paul Civeyrac: "I think there's a parallel there with the end of Flaubert's Sentimental Education where the characters say, what we lived that was most powerful, is something that happened before.