STORY OF AUGUST

Over three summers, following her parents’ divorce, August, a lively and determined teenager, spends her holidays with her father in a seaside town in transition. As time goes by, she discovers the cracks and silences within her family, while searching for her own place. She learns to face the emotional legacy they have left her and to break the cycle of family trauma. 

After his previous film about violence and racism, Robert-Jonathan Koeyers continues his exploration of Black identity through a more personal lens. In Story of August, he chooses to turn his attention to intimacy and joy, as an act of resistance against the painful and tragic narratives, too often associated with Black lives. Through meticulously crafted animation – micro-expressions, silences, gestures, and lighting – the spectator shares August’s emotions: her contradictions, fears, her sense of wonder, and her quest to find her place within a family scarred by silent wounds. A colour palette mirrors this evolution, from bright summer days to the darker shades of night. Playing with chromatic contrasts, stylistic shifts, and chaotic accelerations, the director captures the effervescence of adolescence in all its complexity. The result is a subtle, intimate family drama – a character study about inherited trauma, shifting family dynamics, and the beauty of daily life, to simply live and love.