Half a Life (film)
1982 film by Romain Goupil
Half a Life (French: Mourir à 30 ans) is a 1982 film directed by Romain Goupil. The film won the Caméra d'Or and Award of the Youth (French film) at the Cannes Film Festival, along with the César Award for Best Debut.
Plot
The film is a biographical black-and-white documentary about Michel Recanati, a militant leader during the May 1968 riots in Paris.
It tells the story of two friends through the left-wing groups in Paris between 1966 and 1978 when Michel goes missing and it is later discovered that he committed suicide. The film is both a personal tale and an in-depth look at the political scene in France during those years. It also documents the history of the CAL [Highschool Student Action Committee] and the LCR Revolutionary Communist League .
Main protagonists
Much of the original footage filmed over 10 years before the 1982 movie documentary was also filmed by Goupil. His father Pierre worked in the cinema and Romain armed with a super 8 camera took some footage of the student riots and meetings from that time in Paris.
There is footage of speeches by Alain Krivine a leader of the Trotskyist movement in France and a member of the Revolutionary Communist League known by the acronym LCR Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire.
Other key figures of the French Left are interviewed at various points in the documentary.
The public source identifies “Half a Life (film)” as 1982 film by Romain Goupil. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Half, Life and film.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3326144. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 1968, 1966 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Half a Life (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.