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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Grandmother's Footsteps

A still from Grandmother’s Footsteps, directed by Lola Peploe.

Streaming on Arte

The Peploes have been entrenched in the worlds of art and cinema for more than a century. Clotilde “Cloclo” Peploe raised her daughter and son, Clare and Mark, in London’s Belgravia while painting canvases of the cypress-filled coastline of the Cyclades islands. Both children became influential contributors to films by Michelangelo Antonioni and by Clare’s husband, Bernardo Bertolucci. Now Mark’s daughter, Lola, is carrying on the Peploe name with her own film, Grandmother’s Footsteps, a meditative study of Cloclo’s adventurous life. Shot in 2018, while Lola was heavily pregnant with her son, the film sees her slip on Cloclo’s leather brogues and travel to the Cyclades islands, where her grandmother spent the last two decades of her life painting, on a spiritual and artistic pilgrimage. Walking through Grandmother’s Footsteps is a warm and existential family vacation worth cherishing. —David Stewart

Photo: © Babylone Irie