RED ISLAND Trailer: Robin Campillo’s Coming-of-Age Tale Explores an Expat Family in 1970s Madagascar

Following up his Cannes Film Festival-winning sensation BPM (Beats Per Minute), which showcased AIDS activism in 1990s France, writer-director Robin Campillo is back with an intimate new drama. Red Island, based on the director’s childhood, is a coming-of-age story that centers on ten-year-old army brat Thomas (newcomer Charlie Vauselle) who lives on a military base in 1970s Madagascar with his fracturing family. Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Quim Gutiérrez, Amely Rakotoarimalala, Sophie Guillemin, and Hugues Delamarlière also star. Following a festival run, it’ll arrive next month in U.S. theaters. Ahead of its August 16 release at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center, the official U.S. trailer has been released from Film Movement.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Living on one of the last remaining military bases amidst a hedonistic group of French armed forces in 1970s Madagascar, ten-year-old Thomas begins to find cracks in the surface of his family’s blissful existence on the idyllic island. Taking inspiration from his comic book hero Fantomette, Thomas spies on those around him, discovering the hidden and tangled political and sexual lives of the colonizers and the colonized. As relocation looms, Thomas questions whether the memories he has made are ones he should remember fondly.

See the U.S. trailer and poster below.

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