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GIFFONI FILM FESTIVAL 1978 - 29 July.6 August

Sections & Films

SMALL CHANGE

Category: Edition 1978

Synopsis
In the town of Thiers, summer of 1976, teachers and parents give their children skills, love, and attention. A teacher has his first child, a single mother hopes to meet Mr. Right, another mom reaches out to Patrick, a motherless lad who is just discovering the opposite sex. Patrick befriends Julien, a new student who lives in poverty with his mother and has a terrible secret. Bruno shows his friends how to chat up girls. Sylvie stages a witty protest against her parents. Brothers give a friend a haircut. A toddler falls from a window and is unhurt. Everybody goes to the cinema. At camp, Martine catches Patrick's eye. A teacher explains: "Life is hard, but it's wonderful."

Original Title L'ARGENT DE POCHE
Italian Title GLI ANNI IN TASCA
Category Official Competition
Festival Awards Bronze Gryphon - Best Teen Movie (1978)
Section Official Competition
Tipology Feature Film
Duration 104'
Production Year 1976
Nationality France
Directed by François Truffaut
Screenplay François Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman
Main cast Jean-François Stévenin, Georges Desmouceaux

 regista Francois TruffautFRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT

French director François Truffaut began to assiduously go to the movies at age seven. He was also a great reader but not a good pupil. He left school at 14 and started working. In 1947, aged 15, he founded a film club and met André Bazin, a French critic, who became his protector. Bazin helped the delinquent Truffaut and also when he was put in jail because he deserted the army. In 1953 Truffaut published his first movie critiques in "Les Cahiers du Cinema." In this magazine Truffaut, and some of his friends as passionate as he was, became defenders of what they call the "author policy". In 1954, as a test, Truffaut directed his first short film. Two years afterwords he assisted Roberto Rossellini with some later abandoned projects.
The year 1957 was an important one for him: he married Madeleine Morgenstern, the daughter of an important film distributor, and founded his own production company, Les Films du Carrosse; named after Jean Renoir's La carrozza d'oro (1952). He also directed L'età difficile (1957), considered the real first step of his cinematographic work. His other big year was 1959: the huge success of his first full-length film, I 400 colpi (1959), was the beginning of the New Wave, a new way of making movies in France. This was also the year his first daughter, Laura Truffaut, was born.
Truffaut was the most popular and successful French film director ever. His main themes were passion, women, childhood and faithfulness.