The Albertine Cinémathèque Festival of French Films is funded by the French government to allow colleges and universities to put on a French film festival. It’s a continuation of what had been known as the Tournées Festival of New French Film on Campus, which the departments of English and World Languages and Literatures held every spring semester at NKU from 2011 to 2015.
Under its new name, the festival is back at NKU. For six weeks beginning March 14th, we will be screening a different French movie (five recent features and one classic) every Thursday at 6:00 p.m. in Griffin Hall’s Digitorium. The screenings are free and open to everyone. Following each movie, a faculty member from one of those departments will lead a discussion of the film.
Dates: 3/14, 3/21, 3/28, 4/4, 4/11, 4/18
Location: Griffin Hall Digitorium
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Directed by Nabil Ayouch
Discussion leader: Dr. Iliana Rosales Figueroa
Link to film trailer: https://youtu.be/sOfieIK4o8Y
Director Nabil Ayouch (Razzia, Horses of God) drew on his own experience opening a youth cultural center in Casablanca for this story of a former rapper named Anas who takes a job teaching hip hop in an underprivileged neighborhood. Despite differences in identity, religion, and politics, Anas encourages his students to bond together and break free from the weight of restrictive traditions in order to follow their passion and express themselves through the arts. Featuring a dynamic ensemble of first-time actors, many of them students of the real-life cultural center where the film was shot, Casablanca Beats is a vibrant and inspiring coming-of-age hip hop musical with a decidedly feminist edge. Mixing intimate yet high stakes drama with infectious musical sequences, the film transports audiences to a lively and contemporary Casablanca, far from the clichés about the Arab world. Morocco’s official submission to the 94th Academy Awards® offers a refreshing dose of youthful inspiration alongside a powerful message about the liberating power of self-expression.
Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski
Discussion leader: Dr. Jody Ballah, Foreign Language Dept, UC Blue Ash
Link to film trailer: https://youtu.be/qT4So01MJL0
When dedicated high school teacher Rachel (Virginie Efira) falls in love with Ali (Roschdy Zem), it’s not long before she also falls for his daughter Leila. The lustful giddiness of Rachel and Ali’s late night rendezvous evolves into the familiar warmth of family picnics and after-school pickups. Although she feels like a mother, Rachel is not allowed to forget that Lelia is another woman’s daughter. She begins to long for a child of her own, but as a forty-something woman, she is abundantly aware that she has limited time to begin a family. Rachel must decide whether to embrace the inherent entanglements of her current situation, including coparenting with Ali’s ex-wife Alice(Chiara Mastroianni), or strike out again on her own. Other People’s Children becomes a soulful, sexy, and resolutely grown-up story of the elusive quest for agency and belonging.
Directed by Leyla Bouzid
Discussion leader: Dr. Caryn Connelly
Link to film trailer: https://youtu.be/CExXvrNEX9w
Saint Omer court of law. Young novelist Rama attends the trial of Laurence Coly, a young woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. But as the trial continues, the words of the accused and witness testimonies will shake Rama’s convictions and call into question our own judgement.
Directed by Louis Garrel
Discussion leader: Dr. Andrea Gazzaniga
Link to film trailer: https://youtu.be/A2kjh2Z1K0A?si=SqcBErrwgTayTMfw
Part crime thriller, part family farce, Louis Garrel’s The Innocent shows with panache and pathos the dangerous lengths two men go, and the outlandish lies they tell, for the women they love. Garrel stars as Abel, a museum educator and widower whose mother, Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), marries Michel (Roschdy Zem), one of her drama pupils in the local penitentiary. Once on parole Michel attempts to start a legitimate life for Sylvie’s sake but soon reverts to his old ways, with the suspicious Abel continually — and ineptly — spying on his step-father until roped into one of the ex-con’s schemes. Complicating matters is Clémence (Noémie Merlant), the brazen coworker who convinces Abel to break out of his emotional and romantic shell by taking part in Michel’s planned heist. Directing from his own screenplay (as co-written by Tanguy Viel and Naïla Guiguet), Garrel explores the comedic results of playacting’s intrusion into real life, as well as real life’s comedic tendency to transform us into what we never thought we could be, but perhaps always were.
Directed by Xavier Giannoli
Discussion leader: Dr. Gisèle Loriot-Raymer
Link to film trailer: https://youtu.be/ZgBxByrgGj4
Lucien is a young unknown poet in 19th-century France. He has great expectations and wants to forge a destiny. He leaves the family printing business in his native province to try his luck in Paris, on the arm of his protector. Soon left to his own devices in the fabulous city, the young man will discover the backstage of a world dedicated to the law of profit and pretense. A human comedy where everything is bought and sold, literature as well as the press, politics as well as feelings, reputations as well as souls. He will love, he will suffer, and survive his illusions.
Directed by Claire Denis
Discussion leader: Dr. John Alberti
Link to film trailer: https://vimeo.com/796713710
Claire Denis drew on her own childhood experiences growing up in colonial French Africa for her multilayered, languorously absorbing feature debut, which explores many of the themes that would recur throughout her work. Returning to the town where she grew up in Cameroon after many years living in France, a white woman (Mireille Perrier) reflects on her relationship with Protée (Isaach De Bankolé), a Black servant with whom she formed a friendship while not fully grasping the racial divides that governed their worlds.
