The Ones Who Grieve, the new film by director Quarxx has received it's world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2026.
The Ones Who Grieve begins with a man working in a wood shop carving masks. He slowly and methodically chips away at the wood. The material begins to lift up and curl and eventually is pulled away. Given enough force, will and persistence the wood yields to the desire of the carver. This process is repeated until the eyes, the mouth form.
The wood carver is Jacob (Thierry Frémont). Jacob is a very stout, religious man. His faith is unyielding and his guiding force, He is also the patriarch of a family of three, his wife Emilie (Isabelle Anciaux) and his daughter Zélie (Zélie Rixhon). He rules his family with an iron fist. He imparts on his daugheter that of utmost importance is, "The love of God and your family." Jacob is played by Frémont with great intensity as a man who warped faith guides his pathos no matter how far his actions veer from actual scripture.
In rural 19th century France a disease has taken root among humans. It is called the Black Veil. The person suffering from malady has their eyes become black and they can no longer speak. Jacob has been appointed or self-appointed as the village "masker". He prepares the affected body for death in an effort to save the soul. This involves sewing the eyes and the mouth shut and affixing a wooden mask - the masks he carves - onto the person's head. The person is then taken out into the woods among the animals. The person is not killed because as Jacob says, "Thou shall not kill."
Zélie tries to navigate her father's world while finding her own. This is the crux of the film. A battle of wills. Force versus freedom. Time after time in history we have see religious belief used as a cudgel and not as compassion. Jacob is a great many things, his hypocrisy is front and center.
The violence that Jacob brings to the victims of the black veil, people advancing progress and his own family is visceral. As someone who written about cinema for over two decades and has seen all manners of the destruction of the body - the way Quarxx and his team treat the brutality of Jacob's determination to rule the world as he sees fit is unnerving. I believe one of the highest compliments you can pay a filmmaker is to say that images they have crafted in their film has stayed with you. This is such the case with The Ones Who Grieve.
Ultimately the film is about systems and the people who wield power within these structures and the people who are navigating these individuals and trying to persevere themselves from such wanton destruction. As Quarxx has said about his lead character, "Zélie is not a passive victim. She is a body and a mind in resistance, even when that resistance is silent, internal, almost invisible."
That being said, defeating a system of oppression and the perpetrators who operate within these constructs may not be so easy to overcome in the end.
