Crime, comedy and family dramas: your guide to the 2023 Alliance Française French Film Festival

Festival director Karine Mauris walks us through some of the highlights of this year’s program.

Opening night film, ‘Masquerade’. Source: Distributor

Karine Mauris, artistic director of the Alliance Française French Film Festival (AFFFF), has been in love with the magic of movies all her life. “I’ve been going since I was a child, first with my family, then with my friends, and then with boyfriends and by myself too,” she says. “I really love when I’m in a cinema with an audience and we can share that emotion together.”

This year’s AFFFF will mark her third program. It opens with Masquerade, the latest movie from La Belle Époque and OSS 117: From Africa With Love director Nicolas Bedos, a sundrenched crime caper set on the glamorous Côte d’Azur and featuring a glittering ensemble of French superstars including Isabelle Adjani, Pierre Niney, Emmanuelle Devos and François Cluzet.

“It’s so hard to choose an opening night movie, but we wanted to start with a comedy,” Mauris says. “It’s sexy, and so beautiful.”

Didier Barcelo’s Freestyle closes the festival with a joyous road trip starring Marina Foïs and Benjamin Voisin. Here are some more of Mauris’ recommendations.

The Innocent

'The Innocent' Source: Palace Films

If comedy plus crime is your jam, you might want to follow up festival opener Masquerade with this farce from director and Little Women actor Louis Garrel. He also stars as a man worried that his acting teacher mum (Anouk Grinberg) is marrying an inmate (Roschdy Zem) in the prison where she works. Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Tár star Noémie Merlant, who also directed Mi Iubita, Mon Amour, pops up as his best mate in this massive French box office hit.

“It’s such a fun film, and Noémie really makes it,” Mauris says. “It’s one of my favourites. You really don’t know how it’s going to finish. It’s hilarious.”

One Fine Morning

‘One Fine Morning’. Source: Palace Films

In a festival jam-packed with the brightest French stars, Bond lead Léa Seydoux’s central turn in this emotional drama from Bergman Island and Things to Come filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve is a glimmering highlight. She plays a widower trying to navigate the rapidly exacerbating illness of her father (Pascal Greggory) while raising her young daughter (Camille Leban Martins) single-handedly. She finds complicated support in the shape of Melvil Poupaud’s unhappily married dad.

“Léa is a superstar, she broke the mould,” Mauris says. “I love Melvil in this too. He’s one of our sexiest actors. And I love the cinema of Mia Hansen-Løve. My DNA is music, and the first film I saw from Mia was Eden, which was so cool, looking at the music of Daft Punk. On this film, she takes it to the next level.”

You can also catch Poupaud opposite La Vie en Rose star Marion Cotillard as warring siblings in Deception director Arnaud Desplechin’s fraught family drama Brother and Sister. “It’s a challenging but great movie, and you have to understand between the lines,” Mauris says.

Final Cut

‘Final Cut’. Source: Distributor

If you loved watching zombies take Paris in The Night Eats the World, chances are you’ll want to take a brain-sized chomp out of Oscar-winner Michel Hazanavicius’ latest, which opened last year’s Cannes Film Festival. The Artist director recruits his star from that film, Bérénice Bejo, alongside Romain Duris in this spin on Japanese director Shin’ichirō Ueda’s horror-comedy One Cut of the Dead.

“The beginning of the movie is very challenging, so much so that my partner wanted to leave, but we were in the same row as Michel, whose films I love, and all the actors, so I could not let him,” Mauris chuckles. “But 20 minutes in, everybody was laughing. It’s a bit like Triangle of Sadness that way. You can’t stop. You have to see it in the cinema.”

 

Saint Omer

‘Saint Omer’. Source: Palace Films

One of the most talked-about films released in France last year, documentary filmmaker Alice Diop’s dramatic feature debut is a gripping courtroom drama based on a startling true story about a Senegalese woman accused of murdering her infant daughter. Diop sat in on the case in Paris and casts Kayije Kagame as an observer not unlike herself, with an incredible Guslagie Malanda as the accused.

“It’s not an easy movie,” Mauris says. “It’s very intense, provocative, something we cannot imagine, but it is incredible and Guslagie and Kayije are both amazing.”

Paris Memories

‘Paris Memories’. Source: Distributor

Mustang co-writer Alice Winocour casts megastar Virginie Efira alongside The Piano Teacher lead Benoît Magimel in a powerful drama set in the days after the 2015 terrorist attacks in the heart of Paris, and the lasting impact on survivors of that terrible assault.

“Alice is one of my favourite directors, and her brother was in the Bataclan when it was attacked,” Mauris says, noting that while he survived, Winocour witnessed his emotional scars first-hand in the months to come. “Virginie is just incredible in it. The only thing her character can remember is a hand holding her, and she wants to know who this person was. Benoît is also one of my favourite actors. It’s a beautiful movie.”

In a similar vein, November, by director Cédric Jimenez, follows a terrorism response team during the investigation immediately following that devastating day, starring Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and Sandrine Kiberlain (Being 17).

Efira also turns up in Other People’s Children, the latest heartfelt drama from Grand Central director Rebecca Zlotowski.

Annie’s Fire

‘Annie’s Fire’. Source: Aurora Films/Local Films

Call My Agent star Laure Calamy again teams with director Marc Fitoussi, who helmed several of the hit show’s funniest episodes, in comedy Two Tickets to Greece alongside Olivia Côte and Kristin Scott Thomas in this year’s festival.

But Mauris rates Calamy’s turn in director Blandine Lenoir’s searing feminist drama Annie’s Fire, about the push for abortion rights in the ’70s, even more. “It’s a brilliant film about solidarity,” Mauris says. “It’s about how you can channel your life into something bigger than you.”

Winter Boy

‘Winter Boy’. Source: Jean Louis Fernandez

Queer director Christophe Honoré delivers his most insightful film yet with this semi-autobiographical heart-tugger about a young gay man (newcomer Paul Kircher) dreaming of following his older brother (Vincent Lacoste, who memorably starred in Honoré’s beautiful Sorry Angel) to Paris, only for his dreams to shatter. The incomparable Juliette Binoche plays his mum.

“Christophe is one of the best directors we’ve got,” Mauris says. “This is Paul Kircher’s debut, and he’s amazing. They saw more than 2000 teenagers, and he arrived on the last day. He forgot to give them his phone number. Christophe tried to find him for three weeks, finally tracking him down, thankfully. His relationship with Juliet is so beautiful and full of love.”

 

Tickets are now on sale for the festival, which runs across March and April across Australia. Find out more about the Alliance Française French Film Festival here. Watch the trailer now for some extra inspiration:

 

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