Share This Page

New Orleans Film Society

French Film Fest


15th Annual New Orleans French Film Festival
August 10-16, 2012, at the Prytania Theatre (5339 Prytania Street)

Presented by the New Orleans Film Society and the Consulat General de France a la Nouvelle-Orleans
All tickets are $10 for NOFS members / $11 general admission (with the exception of Funny Face, which is $5.75 for everyone). NOFS members can purchase a 6-Film Pass for $50. Tickets are currently on sale now at the Prytania box office and online at the Prytania’s website.

All films are in French with English subtitles (except Funny Face, which is in English). Download a complete poster with all films and screening times by clicking here.

Friday, August 10th
7:30PM Beloved (135 Minutes)

Saturday, August 11th
1:00PM Farewell, My Queen (100 Minutes)
3:00PM Delicacy (108 Minutes)

Sunday, August 12th
10:00AM Funny Face (103 Minutes)
1:00PM Children of Paradise (190 Minutes)
4:30PM A Burning Hot Summer (95 Minutes)

Monday, August 13th
Noon Farewell, My Queen (100 Minutes)
7:30PM The Well-Digger’s Daughter (107 Minutes)

Tuesday, August 14th
Noon Children of Paradise (190 Minutes)
7:30PM Elles (99 Minutes)

Wednesday, August 15th
10:00AM Funny Face (103 Minutes)
Noon Beloved (135 Minutes)
7:30PM Sleepless Night (103 Minutes)

Thursday, August 16th
Noon Delicacy (108 Minutes)
________________________________________________________________________

Beloved (Les Bien-Aimes)
Friday, August 10, at 7:30 p.m. and Wednesday, August 15, at noon
About the film: Starring Catherine Deneuve and (her real-life daughter) Chiara Mastroianni, this sly and exquisitely romantic musical drama from Christophe Honore (Love Songs, Dans Paris) spans over three decades as it follows a mother and daughter’s misadventures in love. In the ’60s, Madeleine (Ludivine Sagnier) leaves Paris to re-join her Czech husband Jaromil (Rasha Bukvic) in Prague, but his infidelities and the arrival of Russian tanks in the city lead her back to France. Thirty years later we follow the romance of Madeleine’s daughter, Vera, who falls in love with a musician (Paul Scneider) in London who is incapable of devoting himself to her. Meanwhile in Paris, a re-married Madeleine (Deneuve) has rekindled her love affair with Jaromil (Milos Forman). Louis Garrel and Paul Schneider also star in this light-hearted but ultimately moving exploration of the changing nature of relationships, with music by Alex Beaupain (Love Songs). Beloved was the closing night selection of last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

A Burning Hot Summer (Un Ete Erulant)
Sunday, August 12, at 4:30 p.m.
About the film: The latest searing drama from French master Philippe Garrel (Regular Lovers) loosely evokes Godard’s Contempt, as a once-happy marriage between a brooding painter (Louis Garrel, the director’s son) and his movie-star wife (Monica Bellucci) hits the rocks. When another young couple joins them on a Roman holiday, tensions and passions flare. A Burning Hot Summer also contains one of director Garrel’s spectacular dance sequence, this time with Garrel fils and Bellucci doing a terpsichorean turn to the Dirty Pretty Things’ “Truth Begins.” With a score by the Velvet Underground’s John Cale, and the legendary Maurice Garrel (the director’s father, Louis’s grandpere) in his final role. “Philippe Garrel is the proverbial underrated genius. He is the closest thing to a poet functioning today in French cinema.”——- Olivier Assayas.

The Well-Digger’s Daughter (La Fille du Puisatier)
Monday, August 13, at 7:30 p.m.
About the film: Daniel Auteuil (star of Claude Berri’s adaptations of Marcel Pagnol’s Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring) makes his directorial debut with this affectionate remake of a Pagnol classic. The sun-soaked melodrama stars Auteuil as Pascal Amoretti, a hard-working well-digger who is raising six girls on his own, after the death of his wife. Holding a special place in his heart is his beautiful eldest daughter, 18-year-old Patricia (the luminous Astrid Berges-Frisbey), who has come home from school in Paris to help care for her sisters. Patricia soon catches the eye of Jacques (Nicolas Duvauchelle), the playboy son of a rich storekeeper. Their attraction quickly blossoms into something more, and when Jacques, a pilot, is suddenly called away to fight in the Great War, Patricia is left alone to face the consequences of their passion. Upon learning that he is about to become a grandfather, Pascal is torn between honor and his love for his daughter. Beautifully shot in the Provence countryside, the film captures all the warmth and humanist spirit of Pagnol’s original work.

Elles
Tuesday, August 14, at 7:30 p.m.
About the film: “Juliette Binoche, surely one of the most inquisitive and daring actors working in cinema today, plays Anne, a wife, mother and—most importantly—a journalist currently researching an article about student prostitution for the French edition of ELLE magazine. Anne finds herself drawn to two young women: a down-on-her-luck Polish student (Joanna Kulig) and a French girl (Anais Demoustier) who comes from one of Paris’ many anonymous housing projects. Both women have entered the sex trade for different reasons, and as they open up to Anne, we are allowed glimpses of the reality of their work. Meanwhile, Anne is forced to confront the bourgeois reality of her own life, where her husband seems married to his cellphone and her son to his PlayStation. The sordid scenes of various sexual deviations and couplings play out against the humor and naturalness that both girls bring to their encounters with Anne, where they talk with complete frankness about their lives. A bold mix of Bunuel’s Belle de Jour and Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her—the result being entirely new—Malgoska Szumowska’s film dares to explore a precarious region where perhaps only Catherine Breillat has ventured before.” —Piers Handling, Toronto International Film Festival. Rated NC-17.

Delicacy (La Delicatesse)
Saturday, August 11, at 3:00 p.m. and Thursday, August 16, at noon
About the film: In the French romantic comedy Delicacy, Audrey Tautou (Amelie) is Nathalie, a beautiful, happy and successful Parisian business executive who finds herself suddenly widowed after a three-year marriage to her soul mate. To cope with her loss, she buries herself and her emotions in her work to the dismay of her friends, family and co-workers. One day, inexplicably, her zest for life and love is rekindled by a most unlikely source, her seemingly unexceptional, gauche, and average-looking office subordinate, Markus (French comic star Francois Damiens, Heartbreaker). At first stunned by Nathalie’s unexpected attention, Markus comes to gradually believe in her feelings and shifts into romantic high gear. As their relationship goes from awkward to genuinely loving, Nathalie and Markus will have to overcome a host of obstacles including everyone else’s judgmental perceptions as well as their own self-doubts.

Farewell, My Queen (Les Adieux a la Reine)
Saturday, August 11, at 1:00 p.m. and Monday, August 13, at noon
About the film: Farewell, My Queen marks the return of acclaimed director Benoit Jacquot (A Single Girl, Seventh Heaven, Sade, Deep in the Woods) and brilliantly captures the passions, debauchery, occasional glimpses of nobility and ultimately the chaos that engulfed the court of Marie Antoinette in the final days before the full-scale outbreak of the Revolution. Based on the best-selling novel by Chantal Thomas, the film stars Lea Seydoux as one of Marie’s ladies-in-waiting, seemingly innocent but quietly working her way into her mistress’s special favors, until history tosses her fate onto a decidedly different path. Diane Kruger gives her best performance to date as the ill-fated Queen and Virginie Ledoyen is the Queen’s special friend Gabrielle de Polignac. With the action moving effortlessly from the gilded drawing rooms of the nobles to the back quarters of those who serve them, Farewell, My Queen is at once accurate and sumptuous in its visual details and modern in its emotions.

Sleepless Night (Nuit Blanche)
Wednesday, August 15, at 7:30 p.m.
About the film: Sleepless Night tells the story of Vincent, a respected and dedicated police officer—-or so it seems. After stealing a massive bag of cocaine from drug dealers that work for Marciano, a powerful mob boss/nightclub owner, Vincent quickly finds himself trapped in a situation that no parent would envy- his son has been kidnapped with the promise of being executed if he doesn’t immediately deliver the bag back to its rightful owner. As Vincent heads to the nightclub in the outskirts of Paris to trade the drugs for his son, he soon gets caught in an intense, claustrophobic cat-and-mouse game that quickly spirals into madness as the tables are constantly turned multiple times throughout the evening. The night to come might not only be the longest but also the last one of his life… and his young son’s as well. Recently voted the #1 indie theatrical release of 2012 to date; and IFC.com declared “If the Oscars added a category for Best Action Film, Sleepless Night would be a Shoo-in.”

Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis)
Sunday, August 12 at, 1:00 p.m. and Tuesday, August 14, at noon
About the film: Poetic realism reaches sublime heights with Children of Paradise, the ineffably witty tale of a woman loved by four different men. Deftly entwining theater, literature, music, and design, director Marcel Carne and screenwriter Jacques Prevert resurrect the tumultuous world of nineteenth-century Paris, teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers. NOFS is proud to present this masterpiece – repeatedly declared the greatest French film of all time – in a restored DCP taken from the original camera negative.
“From the time it was made until now, decade after decade, this film holds up as a masterpiece.” – Woody Allen

Funny Face
Sunday, August 12, at 10:00AM and Wednesday, August 15, at 10:00AM
About the film: “I’ve been to Paris, France and Paris, Paramount. I prefer Paris, Paramount,” so said the director of one of the great early thirties Paris, Paramount film comedies, Trouble in Paradise. No doubt, Herr Lubitsch’s declaration can charitably be attributed to a moment of hyperbolic celluloid intoxication; however, there is definitely something to be said about the pleasures afforded by Paris, Paramount and especially so in a dazzling song and dance sequence from Stanley Donen’s (Singing in the Rain) 1957 fashion industry film ( you fashionistas can not afford to miss this one), Funny Face. When the likes of Fred Astaire, the never-more-exquisite (or gamine) Audrey Hepburn, and Kay Thompson kick up their heels in the ebullient “Bonjour, Paris” sequence, well, you can see how swell a place Paris, Paramount once was. Recently revived at New York’s Film Forum and now being shown at this year’s festival in the new digital DCP restoration that brings back the look of spectacular 1957 Technicolor and VistaVision. Notoriously grouchy Village Voice critic J. Hoberman has dubbed Funny Face “the last great Hollywood musical, a playful, sometimes ecstatic confection.”

________________________________________________________________________

French Film Festival Co-Presented by:

- ——- ——-
________________________________________________________________________

PREVIOUS FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL LINE-UPS

The 14th Annual French Film Festival took place July 8-14, 2011, at the Prytania Theatre.
Films screened included:

The 13th Annual French Film Festival took place August 6-10, 2010, at the Prytania Theatre.
Films screened included:

The 12th Annual French Film Festival took place July 10-12, 2009, at the Prytania Theatre.
Films screened included:

The 11th Annual French Film Festival took place July 11-13, 2008 at the Prytania Theatre.
Films screened included:

NOFS thanks the Consulat General de France a la Nouvelle-Orleans for their generous ongoing support.