French Film Festival includes major World War I doccumentary

The Alliance Française French Film Festival
February 19 – April 29

Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Dunedin, Hamilton, Tauranga, Havelock North, Timaru, Palmerston North, Nelson, Arrowtown

Alliance Française recently released the official film selection for the Alliance Française French Film Festival 2015 in New Zealand. The line-up is dynamic, engaging and entertaining, and this year marks the festival’s largest and most diverse film selection to date.

The selection, which features 32 feature films, includes successful French titles that have recently premiered at international film festivals, notably Toronto and Cannes.

“It has been a really exciting year for us from a film selection point of view,” notes festival director Sarah Reese, “We think New Zealand audiences are going to love discovering what we have in store.”

The festival’s opening night spot has been filled by Eric Lartigau’s The Bélier Family, starring Karin Viard, François Damiens and captivating newcomer Louane Emera.

Hot off the success of their Toronto Film Festival screenings, François Ozon’s The New Girlfriend, Stefan Liberski’s Tokyo Fiancée, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden, Abd Al Malik’s May Allah Bless France! and Anne Fontaine’s Gemma Bovery starring English superstar Gemma Arterton, will all première during the festival. The festival will close with an exclusive one-off screening of the eagerly-anticipated Samba from the directors of The Intouchables.

Other highlights include Cannes favourite The Blue Room by actor-come-director Mathieu Amalric, Mélanie Laurent’s Breathe and the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight winner, Love at First Fight by Thomas Cailley. Catherine Deneuve plays one of the main characters in “French Riviera,” which is set in Nice, mainly in the early 1970s and is loosely based on actual events. When her marriage falls apart, Agnès Le Roux (played by César Award-winning actress Adèle Haenal) moves back to the south of France from Africa to live with her mother, Renée (Deneuve), who is the owner of the renowned Palais de la Méditerranée casino in Nice. Agnès falls in love with Maurice Agnelet (Guillaume Canet), her mother’s business adviser, and becomes involved in a scheme to close the casino. Her infatuation with Maurice leads to an apparent crime which is still unresolved.

The 2015 selection will also feature a special category of films called La Grande Guerre, which will commemorate the centenary of the World War One. This category will consist of a digital restoration of Jean Renoir’s masterpiece Grand Illusion, and Bertrand Tavernier’s gritty drama Capitaine Conan, The Canadian producer, Josette D. Normandeau, will travel to New Zealand to present her new internationally-acclaimed series, Apocalypse WWI by Isabelle Clarke and Daniel Costelle.

Produced using more than 500 hours of remarkable and fully colourised archive footage, much of it previously unseen, Apocalypse WWI takes us into the heart of battle. From the trenches in the north of France to the lesser-known fronts of Russia, Serbia, Turkey, and Palestine, the film also reveals the everyday lives of civilians behind the lines. The narration brings to life the memories and the experiences of the men and women torn apart by World War I, by shedding light on the unseen histories of those affected by war.

She was recently awarded a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la France, and Apocalypse WWI has recently been nominated for five Canadian Screen Awards. Apocalypse WWI will screen in two parts during the Alliance Française French Film Festival. Part One will consist of the first two episodes (Fury and Fear), and Part Two will showcase the final three (Hell, Rage and Deliverance.). The film will have only single screenings in most of the film festival venues www.frenchfilmfestival.co.nz