Kore-Eda Hirokazu / France / Drama / Subtitles / 107 minutes / 2019 / Colour

“Fabienne (a magnificent Catherine Deneuve) is a film-star diva and legendary actress. When she publishes her memoirs, her scriptwriter daughter, Lumir (Juliette Binoche) returns to Paris from New York accompanied by husband Hank (Ethan Hawke) a TV actor and their daughter Charlotte (Clémentine Grenier). The reunion quickly turns to confrontation when Lumir finds her mother’s autobiography to be riddled with omissions and embellishments. It also brings back dark memories, including the death of a close friend. Resentments, regrets, and love are all confessed through conversations between mother and daughter. Film legends Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche star in master director Kore-Eda Hirokazu’s first film directing outside his native Japan. Asking actresses what is acting? What makes a family? What is truth? And how to choose between a cruel truth and a kind lie? These are the questions Kore-Eda, a master of family observation, brings to light in this serious but also light-hearted film, where drama and comedy coexist.” (Marie-Pierre Richard)

“One of Deneuve’s greatest performances, with Kore-eda transforming the magisterial persona…into something more complex, tragic and yet defiant. She deserves awards for it. And so does the film.” The Times UK

Opening Film, Venice International Film Festival 2019; Toronto International Film Festival 2019

Filippo Meneghetti / France-Luxembourg-Belgium / Comedy-drama / Subtitles / 95 minutes / 2019 / Colour

“Nina (Barbara Sukowa) and Madeleine (Martine Chevallier) two pensioners, secretly in love, conceal an intimate relationship for decades. To the outside world (and to Madeleine’s children), they are just two retired, and kindly neighbours who live opposite each other on the top floor of an apartment building. Planning to sell up to move to Rome where they can live together, Madeleine organises a visit from a property agent. But when Nina later bumps into the agent, she learns Madeleine is not in fact planning to sell. When Madeleine’s health takes a turn, the two of them find themselves disconnected. Now they must find a way back to each other. Filippo Meneghetti’s directorial debut is quite unforgettable. Beautifully tender, it is an absorbing and moving examination of female love and intimacy. With nuanced performances from Sukowa and Chevallier, their characters face extraordinary raw emotions, vulnerability and inner conflict.” (Marie-Pierre Richard)

“A romance this convincingly lived-in is rare indeed. Director Filippo Meneghetti’s incredibly deft feature debut is cause for celebration.” Screen International

Toronto International Film Festival 2019; BFI London Film Festival 2019

Jean-Luc Godard / France / Comedy-drama / Subtitles / 110 minutes / 1965 / Colour

In tribute to Anna Karina (1940-2019), legendary figure of the French New Wave, muse of Jean-Luc Godard, and style icon, we screen Pierrot le Fou to celebrate Anna, the unforgettable Marianne Renoir.

“Godard had already shot five films with Anna Karina including Band of Outsiders (1964) and Alphaville (1965); and with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Breathless (1960), A Woman is a Woman (1961) (also starring Karina), before turning to this dazzling masterpiece. Loosely based on Lionel White’s American novel Obsession, Ferdinand (Pierrot le Fou) is an unhappily married man who flees Paris for the South of France with Marianne, his babysitter and ex-girlfriend, who is on the run from gangsters. Filmed in glorious widescreen colour by cinematographer Raoul Coutard, red and blue dominate the image. Quotations, meta-references, and improvisation fill the screen. Godard transforms cinematic conventions with wild editing, breaks in continuity and sound. A road-movie, pop art in celluloid, Pierrot le Fou is free-spirited, impulsive, glib and lyrical. As Samuel Fuller, famously defining cinema, says in a cameo appearance in the movie: “A film is like a battleground: love, hate, action, violence, death — in one word, emotion.” (Marie-Pierre Richard)

Ladj Ly/ France / Drama, Action / Subtitles / 102 minutes / 2019 / Colour

“French-Malian director Ladj Ly’s first feature, Les Misérables, is adapted from his 2017 award-winning short film of the same name. Ly grew up and still lives in Montfermeil, a North Paris suburb, where the film is set, and a suburb best known as the location of Victor Hugo’s classic novel. Set in the wake of France’s unifying 2018 World Cup victory, the film centres on three policemen, one of them recently recruited to the Montfermeil anti-crime brigade. Inspired by the 2005 riots, a three-week period of civil unrest characterised by violence, looting and cars burning, Ly examines tensions between neighbours and the police brutality that helped inflame rioting and an uprising against the anti-crime brigade. Ly’s work talks of the invisible and marginalised in Paris’ suburbs. The film is in Ly’s words, a call for action: “I made it mostly for the politicians because they are responsible for this situation that they’ve left to rot for about 40 years”. (Marie-Pierre Richard)

“Occasionally recalling the more urgent, ragged work of Spike Lee in its feverish, on-the-ground formal energy, Les Misérables is aptly galling as a study of everyday power structures tested and exploited to breaking point…” Variety

Jury Prize, Cannes International Film Festival 2019; French Official Oscar Nomination, Academy Award for International Feature 2020

Quentin Dupieux / France / Drama, Action, Comedy, Horror / Subtitles / 77 minutes / 2019 / Colour

Quentin Dupieux / France / Subtitles / 77 minutes / 2019 / Colour

“At 44 years old and recently-divorced, Georges (Jean Dujardin) is in midlife crisis. He abandons everything, buys a long-fringed deerskin jacket, and hits the road. Instantly, there is chemistry between Georges and his jacket, which takes on a life and character of its own. When Georges meets a local bartender Denise (Adèle Haenel) in a small town in the French Alps, he pretends to be a big Hollywood filmmaker and convinces her to help him document his ‘great plan’: to ensure that his jacket is the only jacket left in the world. But when the jacket starts talking to Georges, his film degenerates into craziness and bloodshed… Director Quentin Dupieux creates a unique, free-form horror movie. Weird, slick, stylish and ridiculous, it is all at once gory, scary, tragic and hilarious! Dujardin impeccably portrays Georges as an obsessive loner, blending matter-of-fact dialogue with burst of bloody violence, and stretches our notions of madness, absurdity and masculinity.”  (Marie-Pierre Richard)

“Jean Dujardin is the sort of leading man who likes to mix it up, and in Deerskin he gives an adventurous downbeat performance that tosses vanity – and sanity – right out the window.” Variety

Robert Guédiguian / France-Italy / Drama / Subtitles / 107 minutes / 2019 / Colour

“Mathilda (Anaïs Demoustier) works as a retail assistant while partner Nicolas (Robinson Stévenin) is an Uber taxi driver. They are broke and struggle to make ends meet. On the birth of their daughter Gloria, grandmother Sylvie (Ariane Ascaride) sends a letter to Daniel (Gérard Meylan), the biological grandfather, currently serving a term in prison. When Daniel returns to Marseilles on his release, Mathilda is not interested in meeting her ex-convict father. Winner of Best Actress Award at Venice (Ariane Ascaride), veteran director, Robert Guédiguian (Marius and Jeannette; The House by the Sea) delivers a tense contemporary melodrama with unique emotional richness.” (Marie-Pierre Richard)

“I have always thought that cinema should move us… In short, we need both comedies and tragedies to continue to question our lifestyles… And we must continue to question ourselves more than ever in these troubled times so that we do not succumb to the illusion that there is something natural about the societies we live in.” Robert Guédiguian

”Robert Guédiguian reunites his regular repertory for a heartfelt, gently scathing take on the gig economy and the generational divide.” Variety

Safy Nebbou / France-Belgium / Comedy-drama / Subtitles / 101 mins / 2019 / Colour

“Disquieting yet alluring Claire Millaud (Juliette Binoche), a 50 year old university professor and single mother of two, creates a fake social media profile: ‘Clara Antunes’, a young and beautiful woman half her age. Claire tells us her stories through conversations with her therapist, Catherine Bormans (Nicole Garcia). Immersing herself and floating in the virtual world of exchanges, middle-age Claire becomes young imaginary Clara, full of ‘dangerous liaisons’ and manipulation games. Adapted from Camille Laurens’s novel Who You Think I Am (Celle que vous croyez), this vertiginous drama and entertaining thriller perfectly captures Laurens’s notion that “Love is living in another person’s imagination”. Shot in a contemporary Paris of recent architecture and urban areas with modern high-rise, surrounded by windows, a sort of glass box when at nightfall Claire’s body reflection appears in windows, taking on a ghostly dimension.” (Marie-Pierre Richard)

“Satisfying and compulsively watchable. Almost Hitchcockian. Binoche is superb.” Screen Daily

Special Gala Screening, Berlin International Film Festival 2019

Dominik Moll / France-Germany / Thriller, Drama / Subtitles / 116 minutes / 2019 / Colour

“Evelyne Ducat (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) has disappeared mysteriously during a blizzard in the isolated Causse Méjean plateau in Southern France. Five stories ensue and intertwine, spanning continents as we follow five characters, all unexpectedly caught up in the mystery. Those familiar with the work of director Dominik Moll (Harry, he’s hereto help; Lemming) will know the types of twist to expect in this intense study of human behaviour and the emotional despair that drives it. Each character reveals their secrets, fantasies, disappointment and disillusionment, all with fascinating connections. Based on Colin Niel’s novel, which evokes our modern world and the global interconnectedness that can bind a person from rural France to another from the Ivory Coast; two worlds that seem opposed at first glance.” (Marie-Pierre Richard)

“Edgy, elusive and enthralling at the outset, Moll flirts with Rashomon-style perspectives in a remote French farming community to bracing effect.”  Screen International

Venice International Film Festival 2019; BFI London Film Festival 2019

Cédric Klapisch / France / Romance, Comedy-drama / Subtitles / 110 minutes / 2019 / Colour

“30-somethings Rémy (François Civil) and Mélanie (Ana Girardot) both live alone in Paris. They take the same métro, shop in the same grocery store, going home to their apartments in two adjacent buildings, yet they have never met. Collaborating with young cinematographer Elodie Tahtane, Klapisch delivers a stylised, nuanced film with vibrant performances by the leads and a strong supporting cast of Camille Cottin, François Berléand and Simon Abkarian. French director Cédric Klapisch, is renowned for his astute contemporary social comedies Good Old Daze (Le Péril jeune); ‘Erasmus’ trilogy: Pot Luck (L’Auberge espagnole); The Russian Dolls (Les Poupées russes); and Chinese Puzzle (Casse-tête chinois). Fondly recalling his delightful early film When the Cat’s Away (Chacun cherche son chat), he returns to Paris to film this tender before-love story, an examination of urban isolation and what it means for a young generation to be single in our times of social media.” (Marie-Pierre Richard)

“An ambitious narrative gamble lies at the heart of Someone, Somewhere… An artfully filmed therapy drama with emotional wallop.” The Sunday Times

Fipresci Award, Toronto International Film Festival 2019; Special Jury Prize, San Sebastian International Film Festival 2019; Rotterdam International Film Festival 2020

Renaud Barret / France/ Documentary / Subtitles / 95 minutes / 2019 / Colour

“This raw, vibrant documentary directed by French-born Renaud Barret (Brenda Bilili!), captures the fascinating street art scene in the mega-city of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite being one of Africa’s richest countries in terms of natural resources, it is a country plagued by civil wars and corrupt governments, and is one of its poorest in terms of living standards. Visual artists, musicians and performers – Freddy Tsimba, Béni Baras, Kongo Astronaute, Géraldine Tobe, Was Llunga and Majestikos, Strombo Kayumba, Flory and Junior, Kokoko – invade the streets through paintings, performances, and interventions using recycled objects and their own bodies to express their anger but also their dreams for change, to critique government corruption and Western exploitation. Ever-resourceful, these artists waste nothing, transforming scrapped computers, TV sets, plastic, rubber, bullets shells and machetes from the civil war, into monumental installations and kinetic performance pieces.” (Marie-Pierre Richard)