With or Without Kids? lands on Netflix on May 29, 2026. In French cinemas on February 19, 2025, this Elsa Blayau comedy follows a group of friends gathered for a wedding where kids weren’t invited—yet they end up showing up anyway. A film our editors checked out.
With or Without Children?
Film | 2025
Cinemas release: February 19, 2025
Streaming on Netflix on May 29, 2026
Comedy | Runtime: 1h26
Directed by Elsa Blayau | Screenplay: Elsa Blayau, Antonin Fourlon, Alexis Rault
Starring Bertrand Usclat, Syrus Shahidi, Adèle Galloy
Original title: With or Without Children?
Country: France
Pio and Anaïs announce their wedding to friends with a clear rule: the celebration will be child-free. The plan seems straightforward—a long weekend of catch-ups, partying, and Prosecco. But the guests—now parents—arrive with their kids, hoping to hide them from the couple. The ensuing chaos centers on an event that was meant to bring the group back together, just like old times.
Elsa Blayau's feature debut, With or Without Kids? uses a comedic premise to explore a familiar topic: how parenthood reshapes friendships, schedules, priorities, and everyone's place within a group. The director co-wrote the film with Antonin Fourlon and Alexis Rault, drawing on an idea born from the changes observed in friendships after children arrive.
One of the film's strengths is its ensemble casting, balanced enough to bring each member of the group to life without overshadowing the central couple. Syrus Shahidi and Adèle Galloy portray Pio and Anaïs with precise, nuanced timing, two soon-to-be-married, child-free partners who strive to hold onto their idea of the celebration as firmly as their friendships. He injects a buoyant lightness that is quickly tempered by frustration; she gives Anaïs a more sensitive energy, caught between nostalgia for the old nights and a need to protect their relationship.
Around them, Bertrand Usclat, Rayane Bensetti, Tiphaine Daviot, Joséphine Draï, Julien Pestel and Nadia Roz form a crew of overwhelmed parents—sometimes petty or morally flexible, but rarely reduced to caricatures. The film works best when it tunes into the small frictions of daily life: the kids’ strict schedules, the fatigue, old confidences that no longer fit quite the same, or that longing to go back to how things were, even though nothing really is the same.
On paper, With or Without Kids could fall into the trap of a gimmicky concept comedy built on a simple clash between parents and non-parents. Elsa Blayau largely sidesteps this Manichean setup. The parents aren’t simply depicted as overwhelmed adults, and the child-free aren’t the selfish guardians of a lost freedom: each side fights for its own space, its constraints and its contradictions, which gives the film some of its sharpest, most perceptive moments.
The comedy still slips into some familiar beats, with a few expected situations and jokes that push the envelope, but it lands a pleasantly balanced tone between shared energy and a warmer, more intimate look at adult friendship. The direction supports this dynamic with fluid storytelling, favoring group scenes and brisk exchanges, while bright cinematography and a sunlit color palette heighten the wedding atmosphere — a festive aside that also brings tensions to the surface.
With or without children? doesn’t reinvent the French ensemble comedy, but it nods to its conventions with a real focus on the points of friction between the characters. Behind the premise of a marriage spiraling out of control, the film is mainly about that moment when personal paths no longer align as easily as they used to, and friendship must learn to reinvent itself.
The film was also in the feature-length competition at the Alpe d’Huez International Comedy Film Festival 2025.
Trailer for With or Without Children?:
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