
Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2018
Rendez-Vous with French Cinema returns in March with another edition that exemplifies the variety and vitality of contemporary French filmmaking.
Raymond Depardon
2017|
France|
87 minutes|
French with English subtitles
Continuing a 30-year collaboration with sound recordist and producer Claudine Nougaret, renowned photographer and documentarian Raymond Depardon has made a startling, face-to-face look at mental illness and the French legal system.
Maryam Goormaghtigh
2017|
France / Switzerland|
80 minutes|
French and Persian with English subtitles
Three thirty-something Iranian friends embark on a late summer road trip through the sunny South before one of them heads back to Iran in this endearingly wry and perceptive travelogue about what it means to be an outsider in a foreign country.
Olivier Nakache & Éric Toledano
2017|
France / Canada / Belgium|
117 minutes|
French with English subtitles
The behind-the-scenes planning of an elaborate wedding makes for a deliciously deadpan comic soufflé from the directors of the smash hit The Intouchables.
Vincent Macaigne
2017|
France|
91 minutes|
English and French with English subtitles
One of France’s most distinctive rising talents, Vincent Macaigne directs this daringly iconoclastic chamber drama about the clash between France’s haves and have-nots.
Gilles Bourdos
2017|
France / Belgium|
105 minutes|
French with English subtitles
Drawing from Richard Bausch’s short stories, Renoir director Gilles Bourdos delivers an explosive emotional epic about the tangled relationships among parents, children, husbands, wives, and lovers.
Xavier Beauvois
2017|
Switzerland / France|
138 minutes|
French with English subtitles
A resilient young woman weathers the turbulence of World War I in the quietly affecting new film from Of Gods and Men director Xavier Beauvois.
Bruno Dumont
2017|
France|
105 minutes|
French with English subtitles
The ever-unpredictable Bruno Dumont (Slack Bay) takes another thrilling hairpin turn with this audacious heavy metal musical about the spiritual awakening of a young Joan of Arc.
Guillaume Brac
2017|
France|
68 minutes|
French with English subtitles
Two languorous summer days, two tales of romantic misunderstanding: this deceptively breezy diptych channels the spirit of Rohmer as it explores the thorny relationships between men and women.
Carine Tardieu
2017|
France / Belgium|
100 minutes|
French with English subtitles
Life gets complicated for a middle-aged man when he discovers his father is not his father—and his girlfriend may be his half-sister—in this witty, winning seriocomic charmer.
Nobuhiro Suwa
2017|
France / Japan|
103 minutes|
French with English subtitles
Living legend Jean-Pierre Léaud stars in this self-reflexive ghost story—a playful consideration of cinema, mortality, and the actor’s own status as an emblem of film history.
Emmanuel Finkiel
2017|
France|
127 minutes|
French with English subtitles
Marguerite Duras’s autobiographical memoir—a heartrending reflection on wartime grief—receives a haunting and hypnotic adaptation starring a profoundly moving Mélanie Thierry.
Léonor Serraille
2017|
France|
97 minutes|
French with English subtitles
A newly single young woman attempts to restart her life in this refreshingly complex portrait of an all-too-human heroine veering between instability and strength. Winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes for best first film.
Tonie Marshall
2017|
France|
110 minutes|
English and French with English subtitles
Emmanuelle Devos stars as an ambitious businesswoman navigating a sexist corporate minefield as she attempts to crash the boardroom boys’ club in this timely feminist drama from Tonie Marshall (Venus Beauty Institute).
Rachid Hami
2017|
France|
102 minutes|
French with English subtitles
A violinist is tested when he signs on to teach music to a class of middle-school students on the multicultural outskirts of Paris in this refreshingly naturalistic ode to the transformative power of music.
Jean-Paul Civeyrac
2018|
France|
137 minutes|
French with English subtitles
A movie-mad jeune homme discovers the pleasures and perils of the bohemian life when he moves to Paris in this bittersweet ode to cinema and the heady days of youth.
Hubert Charuel
2017|
France|
90 minutes|
French with English subtitles
A farmer’s desperate attempts to save his cows from a deadly epidemic yields a surprisingly tense thriller rooted in everyday life.
Albert Dupontel
2017|
France / Canada|
117 minutes|
French with English subtitles
This spectacularly surreal comic caper—in which an ex–World War I soldier and artist embark on an audacious get-rich-quick scheme—is a whimsical wild ride through Jazz Age Paris.
Noémie Lvovsky
2017|
France|
91 minutes|
French with English subtitles
As her mother steadily loses her grip on reality, a young girl escapes into a fantasy world of her own in this alternately enchanting and cathartic family portrait from acclaimed actress-director Noémie Lvovsky.
Eugène Green
2017|
France|
76 minutes|
French with English subtitles
Six strangers confront their uniquely 21st century anxieties with the help of a sorcerer in this playful performance art consciousness-bender-cum-ghost story about the search for meaning in the age of social media.
Laurent Cantet
2017|
France|
113 minutes|
French with English subtitles
The Class director Laurent Cantet returns with a tense, provocative exploration of contemporary French society as seen through the eyes of the next generation.
Free Talks
Director Tonie Marshall—whose latest film, Number One, depicts how women still have to struggle to climb the social ladder—will join special guests for a special talk about issues around female empowerment and the place of women in the French film and corporate industries.
What does it take to make a first feature? And how is it different to do so in France, as opposed to the U.S.? First-time filmmakers and emerging producers–featuring Marine Francen (The Sower), Xavier Legrand (Custody), Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men, Jeremiah Zagar (We the Animals), Amy Lo (Mental Pictures), and Jean-Louis Livi (Ava)–will discuss strategies and challenges in producing and directing a successful debut film.
Rendez-Vous with French Cinema returns in March with another edition that exemplifies the variety and vitality of contemporary French filmmaking. The films on display, by emerging talents and established masters, raise ideas both topical and eternal, and many take audiences to entirely unexpected places. Highlights from recent Rendez-Vous with French Cinema editions include Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama, François Ozon’s Frantz, Bruno Dumont’s Slack Bay, Robin Campillo’s Eastern Boys, Justine Triet’s Victoria, and Benoît Jacquot’s 3 Hearts. Co-presented with UniFrance Films, the 23rd edition of Rendez-Vous will demonstrate that the landscape of French cinema is as fertile, inspiring, and distinct as ever.
Organized by Florence Almozini and Dennis Lim
Are you an aspiring or emerging cinephile in love with French cinema? During the 23rd edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema on March 8-18, UniFrance and the Film Society of Lincoln Center invite any attendee under 40 years of age to write a review in our “Salut les Jeunes Critiques” contest, and you could win a trip to Paris. See more details here.
Through the festival, stop by the Furman Gallery for the photography exhibit Face to Face with French Cinema. It is impossible to sum up an entire national cinema in a single image, but the unique sensibility of French film comes through in these photographs of faces. Each of these actors or directors has given audiences around the world their own rendez-vous with French cinema. UniFrance is delighted to present the elegant photography of Jean-Baptiste Le Mercier.































