In Your Wake

20-year-old Marco (Nicolas Giraud) works in a canteen and spends his spare time training at the local boxing club. His uneventful existence is dramatically shaken up when the father who has neglected him for several years stumbles back into his orbit.

Gabriel (Jacques Gamblin) is recovering from a car accident and brags about his big plans to buy a bar and get his life back on track. Marco readily sets aside any resentment he carries toward his father, and is enthralled and buoyed by the dreams, schemes and enthusiastic banter. Yet it soon becomes clear that Gabriel doesn't have the money to deliver on the plan, and in order to get his hands on some cash, he drags Marco into the criminal underworld and toward a heist that could be the making of both men, or their complete undoing.

Impressively filmed, verité style, In Your Wake combines a pulpy crime fiction with a resonant, believable father-and-son drama. An assured and confident debut feature from award-winning shorts director David Oelhoffen.

Michael Hayden