Les Invisibles review

Sebastian Lifshitz's tender, graceful but slow-paced doc gives a dozen elderly French homosexuals the opportunity to tell their life stories at length.

In among tales of prejudice and Catholic guilt, skilful use of home movies and ’70s footage serves to honour groundbreaking rebels like Babette, a snowy-haired unrepentant seducer, and Christian, whose portrait in a magazine once shocked French society.

Funny as well as moving, the film makes an unlikely star of Pierrot, an octogenarian bisexual goat farmer, still eager for action: “I had a lot of men and women down by the river...”