French

Amazing, abstracted, razor-sharp homage to 70s Italian horror movies. “A delirious, enigmatic, almost wordless death-dance of fear and desire… An outrageous and intoxicating cinematic head-trip.” — New Directors/New Films

“French New Wave alumnus Jacques Rivette offers a ramshackle road trip across France’s Languedoc region with an underperforming circus troupe in this effervescent miniature.” — Time Out. With Jane Birkin.

An extraordinary three-part epic of the rise and fall of Carlos the Jackal. “Edgar Ramirez inhabits the title role with the arrogant charisma of Brando in his prime. It’s an astonishing film.” — indieWIRE

Best Actress Award Cannes 2010. “An intriguing, not-quite love story featuring French superstar Juliette Binoche, English opera singer William Shimell and the spectacular Tuscan countryside.” — Salon.com

A band of out-of-work Moscow musicians travels to Paris posing as the celebrated Bolshoi Orchestra in this lavish, shamelessly entertaining comedy-drama from the director of Live and Become. With Mélanie Laurent.

Irreverent and wry, this engrossing documentary hybrid observes 20th-century European upheaval from the field kitchen, casting startling new culinary perspectives on warfare. “Fascinating.” — Variety

Flagrantly attention-seeking but famously anonymous, Brit street-artist/prankster Banksy has now put his name to this energetic, headily entertaining item of art-world provocation. “A head-spinning, wild ride.” — Salon.com

This tense, atmospheric, true Cold War spy movie centres on a disillusioned KGB colonel who risked everything in the early 80s to let the West know just how thoroughly Soviet spies had infiltrated American security.

This moving family drama from a young woman writer/director takes shape around the absence of a charismatic, workaholic film producer husband and father. “Vividly authentic… an extraordinarily humanistic drama.” — LA Times

A quintessential French icon gets his big-screen bio. Sixties singer Serge Gainsbourg mixed pop outlawry with low-down lechery to blaze his own hipster manifesto, seducing Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin along the way.

Actor/writer/director Xavier Dolan was 20 when he made this fiery, funny picture of a teenage boy and his single mother bound together by their intense dislike of each other. “A tour de force.” — Screendaily

This compelling, superbly acted psychological drama of a rebellious teenage boy’s obsessive pursuit of his birth mother is based on a true story. “A fascinating drama… tremendously effective.” — Screendaily

A portrait of one of the world’s great ballet companies by one of the world’s great documentarians. “Sumptuous in its length and graceful in its rhythm… this is one of the finest dance films ever made.” — NY Times

Lourdes takes viewers deep inside the famous religious shrine while providing a subtle drama about hope, faith and the random nature of miracles. “As magically, richly ambivalent as life itself.” — Financial Times

In this sweetly grotesque comedy from the directors of Louise-Michel, an elephantine Gérard Depardieu retires and takes to the road on his old motorbike. “Droll, often outrageous and completely fresh.” — Hollywood Reporter

In this intense contemplation of the singer’s art, Pedro Costa films Jeanne Balibar painstakingly rehearsing and recording. “A startling and lucid lesson in filming musical performance and a cinephilic marvel.” — New Yorker

Jacques Audiard’s dense, involving, Oscar-nominated crimeworld drama is one of the year’s standout films. “Lean, dangerous, urgent… Instantly takes its place among the greats of the prison and crime genres.” — The Times

A father’s world collapses when he loses his job as a pool attendant to his son, while his central African country is torn apart by civil war. Winner Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival.

Startling doco about academic views of tribal life in the Amazon. “The field of anthropology goes under the magnifying glass in this fiery investigation of the seminal research on Yanomami Indians.” — Sundance Film Festival

Based on a cult Belgian TV series that centres around three plastic toys named Cowboy, Indian and Horse, this anarchic, crudely animated stop-motion flight of surreal lunacy is the nuttiest film in our programme.

François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard’s love for cinema brought them together; politics and aesthetics drove them apart. This expertly documented and riveting exploration of the New Wave is unmissable for anyone fascinated by film art.

Isabelle Huppert is mesmerising as a French coffee plantation owner refusing to budge from a West Africa riven with civil war in Claire Denis’ immersive new drama. “Gripped me from start to finish.” — Sight & Sound