Blame It On Fidel review

France, 1970: the bourgeois existence of nine-year-old Anna (Nina Kervel) is thrown into disarray when her lawyer dad (Stefano Accorsi) and journo mum (Julie Depardieu) become left-wing activists. The family relocates to a cramped Paris flat where strangers come and go, exposing Anna to a sweep of unfamiliar ideas and ideologies. Cleaving to a child’s-eye-view of a time of significant social change, documentarist-turned-feature director Julie Gavras (daughter of Costa-Gavras) elicits excellence from Kervel as the stubborn schoolgirl struggling to deal with the lack of certainties in her new lifestyle. The youngster’s finest moment comes amid the panic of a tear-gassed anti-Franco demonstration – a scene epitomising Blame It On Fidel’s blend of the personal and the political.