On September 2, Meursault will make his grand return to the Lido. Fifty-eight years after Luchino Visconti's adaptation of L'Etranger (The Stranger) was screened at the Venice Film Festival, a new version of Albert Camus's novel has been selected for the official competition.

Behind the camera is François Ozon. In a phone interview, the director recounted that after reading the book as a teenager, he revisited it while working on an abandoned film project about a nihilistic young man. He came away from the rereading "deeply moved." "I realized the book was still relevant, that it had incredible power," he said. By chance, the rights held by Gallimard were available. All that remained was to convince the Camus family, and to decide how to adapt a novel published in 1942 that is now the subject of debate for its depiction of Algerians.

Ozon is not the only French filmmaker at the Italian festival – which runs from Wednesday, August 27, to Saturday, September 6 – to draw inspiration from literature. Besides Claire Simon's documentary Ecrire la vie (Writing Life), presented in the parallel Giornate degli Autori selection and centered on high school students discussing the work of Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux, the four main French film entries at this Mostra 2025 are all adaptations.

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