Love Letters arrives quietly but insistently: a small, intimate drama that has spent the festival season nudging a big conversation about who counts as a parent.
Alice Douard’s feature debut centers on Céline (Ella Rumpf), who must navigate imminent parenthood from the non-gestational side of the relationship. Rather than staging grand gestures, Douard mines everyday moments—offhand remarks, waiting-room silences, a hand on a hospital sheet—to reveal how intimacy, law and identity collide when institutions don’t mirror a couple’s private life. Monia Chokri plays Nadia, the film’s warm, grounded counterpoint; together the two leads create a precise, lived-in chemistry that keeps the drama tactile and believable.
Festival buzz helped shape the film’s early life. Love Letters opened in Critics’ Week at Cannes and later screened at NewFest in New York, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for International Narrative Feature. Those appearances drew critics and buyers alike, and built momentum for a wider release. Wolfe Video—marking its 40th anniversary year—picked up distribution, planning a theatrical window followed by a digital rollout to reach both festivalgoers and home audiences.
What makes the film feel urgent is its focus on the non-gestational parent’s viewpoint: scenes show the friction between private commitment and public recognition. Douard’s script places the couple in encounters with medical staff, paperwork and bureaucratic moments that reveal how legal frameworks can exclude someone who is fully invested in parenthood. The stakes here aren’t only emotional; the film quietly foregrounds practical consequences—access to decision-making, parental leave, and other protections that hinge on recognition.
Critics have praised the movie’s restrained tone and the clarity of its performances. Reviews often point to Douard’s refusal to overstate—she trusts small gestures to carry weight—and to Rumpf and Chokri’s ability to turn domestic detail into moral and legal questions. That restraint, along with the festival awards, has amplified industry interest and helped secure further screenings as the film prepares for commercial release.
In short: Love Letters is a character-driven exploration of belonging and legitimacy. It asks who gets to be called “parent,” how institutions respond when family structures shift, and what intimacy looks like when legal status lags behind private reality. With its festival pedigree, award recognition and a planned theatrical-plus-digital release through Wolfe Video, the film looks set to fuel conversations about contemporary families as it reaches broader audiences.