‘Six Days in Spring’ San Sebastian Review: Family Secrets in the Sunlight

Nobody likes having to cancel a vacation, least of all when it has been promised to children. That is the situation facing Sana, a woman whose plans to take her twin children on holiday collapse due to lack of money and poor planning. Yet Sana refuses to disappoint them or to drag the children back home, so she makes a risky choice—one that becomes the narrative core of the new film from Belgian director Joachim Lafosse.

Separated from her husband, Sana (Eye Haïdara) is left scrambling for an alternative. The twins propose a solution: why not spend the holidays at the luxurious villa their paternal grandparents own on the French Riviera? For Sana, the idea is fraught with doubts. Is it appropriate for her to go there now that she is divorced? Should she inform her ex-husband or, perhaps more prudently, avoid telling him altogether? What she decides is both daring and evasive: she will take the children, along with a “friend” (Jules Waringo), to the villa—but secretly, without letting anyone notice they are staying there.

This decision demands a certain discretion. No loud noises, few lights on at night, a general air of invisibility. At first, the plan works surprisingly well. The twins swim in the sea, play on the beach, and enjoy what seems to be the dream vacation. And when the family crosses paths with acquaintances, the encounters pass smoothly: everyone knows them, so their presence in the house goes unquestioned. For a while, the summer idyll holds.

But inevitably, cracks appear. The children push the limits of discretion, a prickly neighbor (played with characteristic intensity by Damien Bonnard) begins to ask questions, and the secret holiday starts to feel less like an escape and more like an intrusion. The atmosphere shifts, gently but unmistakably, from lighthearted to uneasy.

The deeper tension, however, lies within the family itself. The twins are still struggling to fully accept their parents’ separation, and one of them soon realizes that “mom’s friend” is not merely a friend. That discovery unsettles their fragile equilibrium and opens new wounds. Between the pressures of being discovered in the villa and the slow unraveling of family secrets, Six Days in Spring transforms from a serene getaway in a paradise setting into a fragile coming-of-age tale, one that signals—especially for the children—the end of a certain innocence.

Lafosse, the director of Our Children, A Silence, and The Restless (which premiered in competition at Cannes in 2021), has established himself as a specialist in tense family dramas, stories that combine intimacy with undercurrents of unease and suspense. Six Days in Spring may be a smaller, quieter film than some of his earlier works, but the thematic core is unmistakably his. Once again, he probes the difficult negotiations of love, separation, and trust, and continues to explore the many ways—sometimes fragile, sometimes improvised—in which families can be built.