In his 2025 Lumière winning film, French director François Ozon translated a work by the renowned

Albert Camus to the screen. Ozon’s “The Stranger” will make its U.S. premiere at Lincoln Center on April 3 before a nationwide expansion of the film.

The original novel written by the same name was published in 1942. Written initially in French as “L’Étranger,” the novel had a global reach getting translated into 68 different languages. The book has been implemented into the French and English curriculum and is regarded as a masterpiece in 20th century literature.

The book follows Meursault, a man riddled with indifference in his life, who is on trial for murder. The book shows the events leading up to the murder in the first half before switching to his trial and eventual death.

Overall, Camus wrote a philosophical story of absurdity, existentialism and societal alienation.

Though many have tried to create a film adaptation of the novel, they have gotten their ideas rejected by Camus’ daughter, Catherine Camus, who holds legal rights over his work.

The Guardian reported that Ozon had to work to convince her to trust him with adapting the novel.

“I was aware of the responsibility that fell on me,” he said.

From the very start of the film, Ozon transported the audience to 1930s Algeria under French Colonial rule through the black-and-white color grading choice to an old-school cinema aesthetic of filming with a 4:3 film format.

The black and white gave the film a certain amount of purity.

From the trailer alone, it was clear Ozon stayed true to the scenes described by Camus in his novel. Many users commented that the film’s snippets the trailer showed was exactly the way they pictured various scenes playing out in their heads, right down to the sun glare of the knife into Meursault’s eyes.

While Camus’ daughter disagreed with the ending of the film, describing it as “appealing to wokeism,” it added an extra layer to the story outside of Meursault and his fate. The final scene of the book is about Meursault’s acceptance of death.

Ozon goes beyond that.

A major factor of Meursault’s trial was that he wasn’t being punished for the murder he committed, despite that being the reason he was on trial at all. Instead, the jury cares more about who he is as a person, which is the truth they cannot stand.

His indifference to death, specifically to his mother, is rejected by the jury, who represents society. The ending drives the point that even after Meursault is gone, there are still open wounds from the woman who has to mourn her murdered brother without true justice being served. Ozon put a refocus on how French Colonialism affected Algeria and the invisibility of the indigenous.

Ozon also changed Marie Cardona’s character, Meursault’s love interest. In the books, readers don’t know much about Marie as an actual character that has reasons behind what she does.

Questions about her reasons for wanting to pursue a marriage with the indifference to her love, Meursault, go unanswered.

In an interview with The Ticker, Marie’s actress Rebecca Marder explained that because Marie is mostly a physical interaction character. The crew had to reinvent her character to understand who she was.

“We know she’s a secretary and so she’s a modern woman and it was all about giving her a soul because she’s described as flesh and she’s in really sensual scenes,” Marder said. Marder had the ability to work directly with Ozon to build up Marie’s character.

In Ozon’s adaptation, he made the two feminine characters, Marie and the mourning sister Djemila, “the guardians of empathy,” Marder said.

Benjamin Voisin, who played Meursault, and Marder played two characters in the same scenes who were exact opposites. Every lively emotion Marder displayed was met with a distance from Voisin.

The only time the two were on the same page was during their physical scenes.

In a press release interview with Music Box Films, Ozon shared that he viewed Meursault’s character as a filmmaker. “He looks around him; he sees characters, actors. The others are acting their lives. But not him, he refuses to play along. He never lies. Life is a stage play from which he is absent,” he said.

Overall, Ozon created a true adaptation of the novel that proved why the book remains prevalent even today.