The Sedona International Film Festival is proud to present the Northern Arizona premiere of “Suspended Time” showing Sept. 5-11 at the Alice Gill-Sheldon Theatre.

As society recedes in the spring of 2020, film director Paul Berger (Vincent Macaigne) returns to his childhood home in the provincial Chevreuse Valley. Still processing the legacy of his parents and feeling out the uncertain shape of the world to come, Paul hunkers down with his documentary filmmaker girlfriend Morgane (Nine d’Urso), his music journalist brother Etienne (Micha Lescot), and Etienne’s new girlfriend, Carole (Nora Hamzawi).

Squabbling over the minutiae of health protocols and the morality of a hermetic lifestyle mediated by ubiquitous online shopping, the makeshift household finds new ways to lacerate familiar wounds. Yet Paul also finds a surprising refuge in the compulsory quietude of pandemic life, an opportunity to reconnect with the books and art and enchanted forests of his youth.

A scabrous French comedy from master filmmaker Olivier Assayas, “Suspended Time” is a sharply personal and fiercely neurotic ode to the eternal expanse of memory and the allure of life beyond our personal screens.

“Lyrical ... A profound delight ... ‘Suspended Time’ invites you to listen in your own life to that which is often neglected or unheard.” — Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

“The tenderness of the story is stirring ... It is Assayas who carries Suspended Time from its elegiac start to finish.” — Manohla Dargis, New York Times

“Liltingly effective ... Assayas has crafted a beautiful and moving tableau of how one small group dealt with a bewildering change ... A poignant, delicate balance of competing feelings.” — Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal

“Suspended Time” will be shown at the Alice Gill-Sheldon Theatre Sept. 5-11. Showtimes will be Friday and Monday, Sept. 5 and 8 at 3:30 p.m.; and Saturday, Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 6, 10 and 11 at 6:30 p.m.

Tickets are $12, or $9 for Film Festival members. For tickets and more information, please call 928-282-1177. Both the theatre and film festival office are located at 2030 W. Hwy. 89A, in West Sedona. For more information, visit: www.SedonaFilmFestival.org.