Director: Noémie Merlant
A Marseille heat wave, three curious roommates, and one very bad night collide in The Balconettes, Noémie Merlant's 2024 genre mashup.
What is The Balconettes about?
Three women share a cramped apartment overlooking a busy Marseille courtyard, and as a summer heat wave settles over the neighborhood, they pass the sweltering evenings watching the comings and goings of their neighbors from the balcony. Gossip, flirtation, and idle speculation fill their nights until one late-night encounter with a man across the way spirals into something violent and irreversible. From that point the film pivots hard, folding horror and dark comedy into what began as a breezy hangout story, forcing the trio to reckon with the consequences of a single reckless evening while their building, and their friendship, threaten to come apart around them.
Cast & crew
Souheila Yacoub, Sanda Codreanu, and director Noémie Merlant herself play the three roommates at the film's center, with Lucas Bravo appearing as the neighbor whose late-night visit changes everything. Nadège Beausson-Diagne, Christophe Montenez, Annie Mercier, and Henri Cohen round out the supporting cast.
Context & significance
The Balconettes is a French production that mixes comedy, horror, and fantasy tones rather than settling into one lane, a hybrid approach that mirrors Merlant's background as an actress who has moved into directing with a distinct, unruly voice. The Marseille setting and its oppressive summer heat function almost as a fourth character, pushing tempers and impulses past their usual limits. At roughly a hundred minutes, the film moves briskly between its two halves, never lingering too long in either the sun-drenched comedy of the opening stretch or the tangled aftermath that follows.
Where & how to watch
The Balconettes streams on K-Time with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles available, inside a Farsi-language browsing experience built for Persian-speaking audiences. This page is free to read; watching the film simply requires logging into a free K-Time account.