Céline Sci­amma has begun work on her next film, a child­hood drama

Few film­mak­ers came out of 2019 look­ing bet­ter than Céline Sci­amma, who won over a vast swath of new fans with her peri­od romance Por­trait of a Lady on Fire. While a long­time fix­ture of the inter­na­tion­al fes­ti­val cir­cuit, she’s now attained the lev­el of crossover celebri­ty-auteur, where even news of prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy hav­ing com­menced on a new film reach­es devo­tees in the mainstream.

Today brings one such devel­op­ment, as Sci­amma has report­ed­ly begun work on the fol­low-up to her sap­ph­ic art­house sen­sa­tion. Vari­ety reports that her next film Petite Maman is under­way, a French title approx­i­mate­ly equiv­a­lent to ​‘lit­tle moth­er,’ or more col­lo­qui­al­ly, ​‘mom­my.’ While details of the plot are thin on the ground, we do know that two eight-year-olds will lead the film, a dra­ma about childhood.

This won’t be Sciamma’s first time work­ing with juve­nile actors, either. Her fans will imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize a pat­tern run­ning through her oeu­vre, as the major­i­ty of her films have con­cerned the mat­u­ra­tion of young peo­ple, from the mid-teenage years (Girl­hood and her debut Water Lil­lies) to the begin­ning of the dou­ble-dig­it ages (Tomboy). These two will be the most junior sub­jects to have passed by Sciamma’s cam­era, explor­ing a for­ma­tive phase new to her filmography.

When the gen­er­al pub­lic can expect to see this remains a mat­ter of great uncer­tain­ty, like just about every­thing else these days. If there’s a fes­ti­val sea­son to speak of in 2021, then that’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty, but Cannes has yet to take action in any direc­tion. If the fates be kind, we’ll see this one – at pub­lic or at home – by the end of next year.