From the director and star of AMELIE (Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Audrey Tautou) comes a very different love story. Based on the acclaimed novel by Sebastien Japrisot, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT takes place in France near the end of World War I-in the deadly trenches of the Somme, in the gilded Parisian halls of power and in the modest home of an indomitable provincial girl.

A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT tells the story of a young woman's relentless, moving and sometimes comic search for her fiance, who disappeared during World War I, as one of five French soldiers believed to have been court-martialed under mysterious circumstances and pushed out of an allied trench into an almost-certain death in no man's land.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's painstaking quest for visual and narrative perfection is evident in every exquisite scene, from the bucolic provincial countryside, to a bustling post-war Paris, to the brutal truth of a deadly battleground. What unfolds is a fascinating investigation into the arbitrary nature of secrecy, the absurdity of war and the enduring passion, intuition and tenacity of the human heart. -AFIFEST

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet; written by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant; produced by Aline Bonetto. France, UK, USA, 2004, 134 min, Color RATED R