Director: André Téchiné
Lucie has arranged her life around routine and a job most of her neighbors would rather not think about too closely, and My New Friends is about what happens when that routine gets interrupted by people she cannot simply keep at a professional distance. André Téchiné directs this 2024 French drama as a slow unsettling of one woman's certainties.
What is My New Friends about?
A police officer living alone next door to an empty apartment, Lucie keeps mostly to herself until a young couple and their small daughter move in. Their warmth is disarming, and Lucie finds herself drawn into their world in small, ordinary ways — shared meals, favors, the kind of neighborly closeness she has not let herself have in years. The friendship deepens before she learns the full picture of who the father actually is: someone deeply and openly opposed to the police, the very institution that defines how Lucie sees herself and her place in the world. The film does not turn this into a shouting match or a plot twist to be solved; instead it sits with the slow, awkward recalibration that follows, watching how affection, loyalty, and identity pull against each other once the easy version of a friendship is no longer available. Rather than picking a side, the story stays close to Lucie as she tries to figure out what, if anything, can survive once the people closest to her turn out to see her uniform as the problem.
Cast & crew
Isabelle Huppert plays Lucie with the kind of restraint that lets small shifts in her face carry entire scenes, while Nahuel Pérez Biscayart brings a conviction to the activist father that never tips into caricature. Hafsia Herzi appears as the mother caught between the two, and Romane Meunier plays their young daughter, with Stéphane Rideau and Moustapha Mbengue in supporting roles that widen the neighborhood around them.
Context & significance
My New Friends belongs to a strand of French drama more interested in quiet moral friction than in courtroom or action-driven confrontation, closer in spirit to Téchiné's earlier work about ordinary people whose private lives get complicated by larger social divides. Rather than framing police and activist as opposing symbols, the film keeps both grounded as people first, letting the tension come from everyday interaction rather than speeches.
Where & how to watch
My New Friends can be streamed on K-Time with a free account login and no download step required. Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles are both available, and the platform's Farsi-language interface makes it simple for Persian-speaking viewers to find and follow a quieter, character-driven drama like this one.