Jonas and Lila, Til Tomorrow

Swiss director Alain Tanner, who wowed audiences in the 1970s with his art house classic Jonah, Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976), returns to the same territory with this decidedly more downbeat film. The movie details the life of Jonah (Jerome Robart), who has indeed just turned 25. A recent film school graduate, he is living with his Senegalese girlfriend and childhood sweetheart Lila (Aissa Maiga), and occasionally shooting documentaries. The film explores the shifting emotional landscape of Jonah and Lila's relationship as the two take in a boarder, Irina - a Russian woman on the lam from Soviet mobsters, for whom she made an adult movie. Meanwhile, Lila longs to return to Senegal to be with her grandmother. Jonas et Lila, a Demain ran at the 1999 San Sebastian Film Festival.