Holy Cow is A Wild Ride Through Cheese, Youth, and the French Countryside.
Totone, 18, spends most of his time drinking beers and partying in the Jura region with his friends. But when reality catches up with him (his 7-year-old sister needs care, and he needs to make a living), he sets his sights on an unlikely dream: making the best Comté cheese in the region. The prize? A gold medal at the agricultural competition and a check for 30,000 euros.
Do you know how to make Comté cheese? Neither does Totone — and that’s precisely Louise Courvoisier’s perfect excuse to take us on a delightful field trip to the French countryside to learn together.
When Parisian filmmakers create comedies about underprivileged characters facing real-life struggles, they often fall into the trap of the “bourgeois gaze.” What is the bourgeois gaze? Simply put, it’s when wealthy filmmakers tell stories about the poor in ways that are often condescending or out of touch.
That’s where Louise Courvoisier stands apart. She grew up in the Jura region (western France, right next to Switzerland), where her parents transitioned from careers in the arts to working in agriculture (and passed both worlds on to her). Holy Cow, her first feature film, isn’t autobiographical, but it’s rooted in the people and places she knows intimately. Years of observation have been distilled into a sharp, heart-filled script full of ups and downs, unexpected turns, and jokes around every corner.
It’s a film about coming of age, friendship, heroism, feminism, falling in love, hating your neighbors, drinking too much, and even robbery. It’s bold, original, and refreshingly free of clichés.
As if making a movie about modern cowboys and cheese weren’t ambitious enough, Courvoisier cast only local high schoolers instead of professional actors. Their genuine accents and unfiltered energy blur the line between fiction and documentary. Clément Faveau and Maïwène Barthelemy, the film’s lead performers, both received prestigious newcomer awards for their roles.
Louise assembled her production team from the friends she made at La CinéFabrique (currently the most prominent film school in Lyon). The collaboration has proven fruitful: together, they won the Cinéfondation First Prize at the Cannes Festival in 2019 for their short film Mano a Mano (2018, 23 min). Holy Cow went on to win Best First Film at the 2025 César Awards (the French Oscars) and the Prix de la Jeunesse at the 2024 Cannes Festival.
Holy Cow is a must-see. It’s currently available to rent on Apple TV, Mubi, and other major streaming platforms.
When is Courvoisier’s next film coming out? We don’t know, but we’ll be first in line.
Written by
Clément Roux
Born and raised in France, Clément recently moved to NYC to follow his dream of becoming a producer.