Six Days in Spring


Six Days in Spring is a 2025 drama film directed by Joachim Lafosse, who co-wrote the screenplay with Chloé Duponchelle and Paul Ismaël. The film stars Eye Haïdara as a desperate woman who borrows her ex in-laws' house on the French Riviera to spend a short holiday with her children without telling them.
The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 73rd San Sebastián International Film Festival on 19 September 2025, where it won Silver Shell for Best Director and Jury Prize for Best Screenplay.

Cast

Production

In 2023, the film received advance on receipts from Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée for the production funding. It also received the support in production funding from Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre in October 2023, before its filming later in Spring.
In March 2024, screen.brussels committed the support to film project from the Regional investment fund.

Release

Six Days in Spring was selected to compete for the Golden Shell at the 73rd San Sebastián International Film Festival,where the film had its world premiere on 19 September 2025 and won two prizes. On 26 September 2025, it competed at the Odesa International Film Festival in European competition program.
It was also screened in International Perspective at the São Paulo International Film Festival on 17 October 2025.
The film competed in the 'Progressive Cinema Competition - Visions for the World of Tomorrow' section of the 20th Rome Film Festival on 19 October 2025.
It was released theatrically in France on 12 November 2025 by Les Films du Losange and in Belgium on 10 December 2025 by Cinéart.

Reception

Critical response

Aurore Engelen of Cineuropa reviewing at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, praised the film for its characteristic alignment with Joachim Lafosse's cinematic style, notably his focus on familial alienation, intimate power dynamics, and emotionally charged enclosed settings. Engelen noted that while the film maintains a palpable tension, it "tends to avoid crisis point, despite it always seeming just around the corner," subtly subverting audience expectations through the risks taken by its protagonist, Sana. Engelen praised Eye Haïdara's performance for its precision and restraint, writing that she "treads along this razor edge with confidence" in a narrative built around "small nothings, avoided acts, faces turned away." The film's plot "allows room'" for broader social reflections, including "the assignment of social class, the illusion of social mobility and of changing social class, and the universal right to beauty," concluding in what Engelen describes as a "dogged determination to not allow the joy of gazing at the sea to be taken away."