Jodie Foster at Cannes 2025: the shock of Vie privée
Why this article?
On May 20, 2025, Jodie Foster made a stunning return at the Cannes Film Festival in Vie privée, a psychological thriller directed by Rebecca Zlotowski. The film marks a major artistic meeting between two prominent figures of contemporary cinema, both committed to a political and sensitive depiction of female experience. Foster plays a psychiatrist investigating the suspicious death of a patient. This French-speaking role marks her comeback to European auteur cinema, nearly 40 years after The Blood of Others.
Jodie Foster: strength, intelligence, legacy
An actress of mind and body
From Taxi Driver to two Oscars, Jodie Foster has played deep, ambiguous characters. In Nyad (Netflix, 2023), she plays Bonnie Stoll, coach and best friend to swimmer Diana Nyad: a physical, grounded, and emotionally engaged performance. Foster proves that her presence is as much about body as mind.
True Detective: Night Country — memory and justice
In season 4 of True Detective (HBO, 2024), Foster plays Liz Danvers, a police officer in remote Alaska. The series tackles institutional neglect and the disappearances of Indigenous women. More than just a noir thriller, it’s a feminist, ecological, and spiritual narrative. Foster won the 2025 Golden Globe for her haunted, restrained performance.
A creative force in Hollywood
Producer since the 1990s (Egg Pictures), director (including a documentary on Alice Guy), Jodie Foster has influence. She chooses, shapes, and champions stories: queer, historical, ethical. With Vie privée, she continues her commitment to meaningful cinema.
Rebecca Zlotowski: intimacy and power
From Belle Épine to Other People’s Children, Zlotowski explores desire, grief, and fragile connections. With Vie privée, she crafts a thriller about care, guilt, and institutional trauma. Her style favors uncertainty, silence, and reflection, turning Foster into a mirror for doubt and resistance.
Vie privée: synopsis, themes and cast
Lilian Steiner (Foster), a renowned psychiatrist in Paris, loses a patient, Paula (Efira), under mysterious circumstances. Convinced it’s murder, she begins a personal investigation that slowly reveals deeper structures: medical secrecy, moral weight, and the limits of care.
This is less about the crime than its reverberations. Zlotowski focuses on internal tremors, not external action. Foster becomes the vessel for a meditation on accountability, memory, and emotional labor.
Cast highlights:
- Jodie Foster: Lilian Steiner, a nuanced lead in a fully French-speaking role.
- Virginie Efira: Paula, the absent but haunting patient.
- Daniel Auteuil: Gabriel, Lilian’s ex-husband, torn between support and distance.
- Mathieu Amalric: Simon, Paula’s widower, ambiguous and unsettled.
- Vincent Lacoste: a cold, rational psychiatric intern.
- Luàna Bajrami: a magnetic young colleague or patient.
- Frederick Wiseman: cameo by the legendary documentarian, symbol of institutional critique.
Trailer
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Are you excited to see Jodie Foster speak French again? Did you watch True Detective or Nyad? Share your thoughts with us on @movieintheair.
