Few can deny that we are currently passing through a historical epoch in terms of technological evolution. Like the generation that endured the Industrial Revolution, we are faced with new machines and inventions which promise both a leisurely future but the dismantling of modern industries. The world is changing fast for the characters of Non-Fiction as well, even as they keep the flame burning for the art of print publishing. This is the new and playful film by Olivier Assayas, one of France’s great modern directors, who has spent his last few movies pondering questions of identity and placement. Actresses facing middle age, radicals seeking nihilist satisfaction in the heated 1970s, these have been some of Assayas’s recent profiles. A drama that could also function as a cinematic essay, Non-Fiction profiles a small group of people inter-linked via their social circles in Paris. What binds them together is the world of book publishing, and even as their own lives experience small earthquakes, they find themselves consumed by the debate of whether the printed word will even survive another century. [Read more…]