The Super 8 Years review – deeply personal documentary of Annie Ernaux’s family breakdown

A decade’s worth of the 8mm home videos of the French author and Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux forms the basis of this delicate and very personal documentary. Co-directed by Ernaux and her son, David Ernaux-Briot, it’s a wisp of a thing, little more than an hour long. But Ernaux’s lucid, perceptive narration brings a more profound significance to the scrappy, amateurish reels shot by her late ex-husband, Philippe Ernaux. The slow-motion breakdown of a family is tracked by a lens that initially sought out intimacy and celebration, but finds itself, as the years pass, increasingly distanced from figures caught in its time capsule of a frame.