The Stranger

L'Étranger

France, Belgium, Morocco | 2025 | 122 min

Language: French

Subtitles: English

Not for persons under 12

Director(s): François Ozon

Script: François Ozon, Philippe Piazzo based on a novel "l'Étranger" (1942) by Albert Camus

Cast: Benjamin Voisin, Rebecca Marder, Pierre Lottin, Swann Arlaud, Denis Lavant, Christophe Malavoy, Nicolas Vaude, Jean-Charles Clichet, Jean-Benoît Ugeux, Mireille Perrier

Production: FOZ, France 2 Cinéma, Gaumont, SCOPE Pictures, Lions Production & Service

Distribution: Edge Entertainment

Drama

Literature Classic Outsiders Critics Choice History Society

Masters

Screenings:

In his new film, François Ozon has taken on Nobel laureate Albert Camus’s The Stranger (1942), a novel modest in length yet monumental in literary significance. Premiered in the main competition of the Venice Film Festival, Ozon’s black-and-white film is an elegant adaptation that remains faithful to the spirit of its source. At the same time, he enriches the interpretation with a critical layer of historical and political context, while Malek Bensmaïl’s The Arab, also screening at Espoo Ciné, offers a full-fledged counter-narrative.

Benjamin Voisin gives a suitably understated performance as the detached Meursault, who almost absent-mindedly shoots the Arab—a character left unnamed in Camus’s novel. Yet in the eyes of society, his greatest offense seems to be his inability to display the expected emotions and behavior following his mother’s death.

At its key moments, Ozon’s film draws directly on Camus’s text, but between the lines it asks who can afford to detach themselves from morality and surrender to the void of existential absurdity. The Stranger opens with a 1940s travel advertisement proclaiming that “Algeria smiles.” It does not. Tensions are mounting.

Tytti Rantanen

Updated 2026-07-30 17:30:10 UTC