Released to mixed reviews in 1977, maverick filmmaker John Cassavetes’ Opening Night is now regarded as one of his most important films.

French auteur Cyril Teste’s adaptation grants it a new life.

Starring the acclaimed screen star Isabelle Adjani, Opening Night depicts an actress in crisis. Her love affair with her co-star has ended, an ardent young fan has died, and now, during an out-of-town season for a Broadway show, she finds she can no longer bear to live a life devoted to feigned emotions and action directed by others.

Opening Night is her response: a takeover, a transformation, a rebellion.

Just as Cassavetes’ film erased the live between art and life, so Teste, a pioneer in the genre of performance-filmique, blurs the distinction between theatre and film, the rehearsed and the improvised. Every performance is unique and every night Adjani takes new paths into the territory between fiction and reality – a landscape haunted by the ghosts of some of her best known roles and of Cassavetes’ intense relationship with his own Opening Night leading lady, Gina Rowlands.