What makes a ‘good man’? Benjamin loves Aude, they both want a child - and Benjamin is pregnant. In A GOOD MAN, Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar shifts the axes of body, gender and family and tells a queer love story that begins where social categories fail. Intimate, quiet and radical, the film asks a simple but explosive question: Who decides what a life should look like?
Benjamin is a trans man who interrupts his transition to carry a child. The film accompanies him without explanation - through medical rooms, suspicious glances, bureaucratic violence and private doubts. It is not about sensation, but about everyday life: about queer parenthood, self-definition and the moment when a body becomes both intimate and political.
Tender and uncomfortable at the same time, A GOOD MAN was intensely discussed at international festivals: the film was part of the official selection at Cannes 2020 (Label Cannes), screened in Deauville in the L'Heure de la Croisette series, was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival and was present at numerous international queer film festivals. Debates about representation, visibility and the telling of trans* stories accompanied the film from the outset - not as a disturbance, but as a space for resonance.
Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar describes her film as an attempt to talk less about gender and more about love, responsibility and the right to choose a family. Carried by strong performances, above all by Noémie Merlant and Soko, A GOOD MAN deliberately remains open-ended. It provides no answers, but invites us to ask further questions: Who is allowed to be a parent? Who owns a body? And what does a future look like in which queer life is not explained, but lived?
