In Waves / Fjord / De Gaulle / Minotaur

Source: The American French Film Festival

In Waves / Fjord / De Gaulle / Minotaur

Cannes prize-winners and international Oscar submissions Minotaur and Fjord, animation In Waves and wartime double feature De Gaulle are among the features that will screen at the 30th anniversary edition of The American French Film Festival (TAFFF, November 3-8) in Los Angeles. 

TAFFF is presented and produced by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a partnership between the DGA, MPA, SACEM and WGAW, in association with France’s CNC, with all screenings taking place at the DGA Theater Complex in Hollywood. 

Phuong Mai Nguyen’s California-set In Waves about love, loss and surfing will open TAFFF. The film previously screened at Cannes’ Critics’ Week and the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Netflix has rights outside France and will release the film theatrically for an awards-qualifying run in the US in December before streaming on the platform. 

In Waves will also anchor TAFFF’s high-school programme of free screenings and Q&As for 3,000 students from 60 schools.

Anthony Marciano’s comedy drama The American Dream will close the festival. 

Scroll down for full line-up

Animation is a broader focus for this year’s festival, with Louis Clichy’s Iron Boy, released by Sony Pictures Classics in North America, and Dimitri Planchon and Jean-Paul Guigue’s Blaise joining In Waves alongside four shorts.

Overall, TAFFF has programmed 19 titles from this year’s Cannes Film Festival, including Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Grand Prix winner and French Oscar selection Minotaur and Lukas Dhont’s First World War drama and Belgian submission Coward. Mubi has North America rights to both titles.

Neon brings Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner and Romanian Oscar entry Fjord starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Japanese submission All Of A Sudden.

Laïla Marrakchi’s Strawberries, Morocco’s Oscar entry, is also screening. 

Further Cannes titles include Pierre Salvadori’s The Electric Kiss, Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster, Bertrand Mandico’s Roma Elastica and Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s A Woman’s Life.

TAFFF will host the first US screening of Antonin Baudry’s two-part De Gaulle, with Part I: Resistance and Part II: Liberty screening back-to-back. The films have been box-office hits in France. Baudry and star Simon Abkarian are scheduled to attend. Samuel Goldwyn Films holds US rights.

Seven films are in the running for TAFFF’s first feature award, including Marine Atlan’s La Gradiva, which won the Critics’ Week prize in Cannes, Zou Jing’s A Girl Unknown and Rafiki Fariala’s Congo Boy, which screened in Un Certain Regard. 

Marc Fitoussi’s industry satire All About Corinne, starring Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Kiberlain, will receive its US premiere, with Fitoussi and Huppert expected to attend. Cohen Media Group holds US rights. Menemsha Films will present Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache’s Just An Illusion starring Camille Cottin, Louis Garrel and Pierre Lottin.

Guillaume Canet’s Karma starring Marion Cotillard will receive its North American premiere. Stéphane Brizé’s workplace drama A Good Little Soldier with Alba Rohrwacher and Vincent Lindon, which debuted at the Venice Film Festival, is also screening. 

“This year’s selection is a cinema of resistance,” said TAFFF deputy director Anouchka van Riel, citing A Good Little Soldier, Minotaur and Strawberries, alongside legal drama Women On Trial starring Charlotte Gainsbourg as lawyer and activist Gisèle Halimi, and Vincent Garenq’s Forsaken, about the murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty.

TAFFF executive producer and artistic director François Truffart said the festival’s mission was to support filmmakers “from their earliest short films to eventual Oscar recognition”.

TAFFF’s previously announced series competition includes Alice: Pioneer Of Cinema starring Bérénice Bejo as Alice Guy, Studiocanal prison drama A Prophet, Isabel Coixet’s Someone Should Ban Sunday Afternoons and Series Mania best French series winner All Shapes Of Us.

Feature films

  • All About Corinne, dir. Marc Fitoussi
  • All Of A Sudden, dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi
  • The American Dream, dir. Anthony Marciano
  • The Better Me, dirs. Nicolas Charlet, Bruno Lavaine
  • Blaise, dirs. Dimitri Planchon, Jean-Paul Guigue
  • Congo Boy, dir. Rafiki Fariala
  • Coward, dir. Lukas Dhont
  • De Gaulle – Part I: Resistance, dir. Antonin Baudry
  • De Gaulle – Part II: Liberty, dir. Antonin Baudry
  • The Electric Kiss, dir. Pierre Salvadori
  • Fjord, dir. Cristian Mungiu
  • Forsaken, dir. Vincent Garenq
  • Gentle Monster, dir. Marie Kreutzer
  • A Girl Unknown, dir. Zou Jing
  • A Good Little Soldier, dir. Stéphane Brizé
  • The Green Eyes, dirs. Fanny Liatard, Jérémy Trouilh
  • In Waves, dir. Phuong Mai Nguyen
  • Iron Boy, dir. Louis Clichy
  • Jupiter, dir. Alexandre Smia
  • Just An Illusion, dirs. Olivier Nakache, Éric Toledano
  • Karma, dir. Guillaume Canet
  • La Gradiva, dir. Marine Atlan
  • Madame, dir. Hélène Rosselet-Ruiz
  • Minotaur, dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev
  • The Money Maker, dir. Jean-Paul Salomé
  • One Minute To Midnight, dir. Nicolas Pariser
  • A Place For Her, dir. Mélisa Godet
  • Roma Elastica, dir. Bertrand Mandico
  • Strawberries, dir. Laïla Marrakchi
  • A Woman’s Life, dir. Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet
  • Women On Trial, dirs. Lauriane Escaffre, Yvo Muller

 Documentaries

  • Inside Gaza, dir. Hélène Lam Trong
  • Rebounds: A History Of Electro Dance, dirs. Loïc Phil, Marianne Getti
  • We Are The Orchestra, dir. Philippe Béziat
  • Whispers In The Woods, dir. Vincent Munier

 Series

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