IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2024: PROGRAMME ANNOUNCED

The exciting programme for the 25th annual celebration of French film at the Irish Film Institute has been announced today. This 12-day celebration, of over 35 titles, will present works exploring a wide range of subjects by many renowned and established directors, as well as showcasing exciting new voices in cinema. With a lavish Opening Gala for this landmark year of festivities, a masterclass and slate of fantastic Q&As to discuss and explore the work, and a bespoke IFI Café Bar menu of French delicacies, this year is a standout cinematic experience. Female artists and filmmakers including Sonia Kronlund, Louise Courvoisier, Sophie Fillières, Agathe Riedinger, and Claire Burger feature strongly in the line-up, alongside retrospective tributes to female auteurs and filmmaking trailblazers Marguerite Duras and Agnès Varda. The programme will also include Jean-Luc Godard’s final two films and A Woman of Paris by Charlie Chaplin. Festival guests will include Stéphane Brizé, Philippe Lesage, Stéphane Demoustier, and Céline Sallette.

Booking now live via ifi.ie/frenchfest/

The day-to-day breakdown of the schedule can be found HERE.

Programme Festival Director and Programme Curator, Marie-Pierre Richard outlined what audiences can look forward to this November:

“Once again, we welcome wonderful guests at this year’s festival. Acclaimed director Stéphane Brizé joins us with his latest emotional romantic drama, Out of Season; Québécois director Philippe Lesage (winner at Berlin Film Festival) arrives with Who By Fire; director Stéphane Demoustier will bring his brilliant Borgo, about a woman prison guard who moves to Corsica; and the luminous actress Céline Sallette will present her debut feature as a director, Niki, a vibrant portrait of artist Niki de Saint Phalle.

Continuing our relationship with filmmakers who innovate within a more ‘classic’ framework, we will screen Alain Guiraudie’s fabulous Misericordia; Claire Burger’s tender teen drama Langue Étrangère; Olivier Assayas’s Suspended Time, a spirited auto-fiction chronicling Covid confinement; the late Sophie Fillières’s This Life of Mine starring Agnès Jaoui; the Larrieu brothers gripping portrait on love and fatherhood, Jim’s Story; and Christophe Honoré’s delightful meta comedy Marcello Mio, with Chiara Mastroianni, daughter of the iconic Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni and French star Catherine Deneuve, in a meta-comedic ode to her father.

We are thrilled to present first-time filmmakers with fresh, vibrant voices: Agathe Riedinger’s Wild Diamond, Louise Courvoisier’s Holy Cow, Antoine Chevrollier’s Block Pass, and Jessica Palud’s Being Maria on actress Maria Schneider.

Other gems are the full-speed The Successor; Across the Sea, a soulful journey from exile to freedom swayed by the sound of raï music, a form of Algerian folk music; further exploring these themes are two virtuosic films with urgent contemporary issues; Souleymane’s Story and Ghost Trail; and family audiences will enjoy the gorgeous stop-motion, Sauvages.

Documentaries not to be missed are The Many Lives of Edouard Louis, and Sonia Kronlund’s gripping romance scam, The Man with a Thousand Faces.

With A Woman of Paris, even Charlie Chaplin features at the festival! This brilliantly restored masterpiece from 1923 is acclaimed by Lubitsch and Scorsese.

We celebrate much adored and influential filmmakers Marguerite Duras and Agnès Varda, with a unique selection of their works in beautifully restored versions. Energy, modern ideas, and radical inventions define these remarkable, poetic filmmakers.

And finally, it is a great honour to present Godard’s last two films, a beautiful and poignant gift to cinema.”

 

Director of the IFI Ross Keane said: “As the largest celebration of French culture in Ireland, the programme at this year’s IFI French Film Festival is truly superb, reflecting one of the strongest years of French cinema in recent times. The selection is broad and varied, featuring many faces which will be familiar to fans of French film, alongside some remarkable, emerging new talents, both in front of and behind the camera.”

French Ambassador to Ireland, Céline Place added: “Join us in celebrating the 25th anniversary of the IFI French Film Festival! The French Embassy is proud to support this very special edition, featuring once again the best of contemporary French cinema. Dive into the vibrant stories and culture of France, bon festival!”

 

Some highlights include:


Opening Gala film Out of Season (Hors-Saison), directed by Stéphane Brizé, showcases two masterful performances from leads Alba Rohrwacher and Guillaume Canet.

 

The festival’s Opening Gala will be OUT OF SEASON (HORS-SAISON) by Stéphane Brizé at 8pm on Wednesday, November 13th. Stéphane Brizé will be in conversation with Paul Whitington for a masterclass on Saturday, November 23rd.

Piano teacher Alice (Alba Rohrwacher) lives in a small seaside town. She and Mathieu (Guillaume Canet), a well-known actor living in Paris, have not seen each other since separating 15 years ago.  Reminiscent of classics such as Truffaut’s The Woman Next Door or Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, Stéphane Brizé (Another World; The Measure of Man) creates a timeless romance about the ghosts of love.

NIKI by Céline Sallette, Saturday, November 23rd

Director Céline Sallette mesmerises with Niki, a portrait of artist Niki de Saint Phalle with a star turn from Charlotte Le Bon.

In this vibrant and moving biopic – actress Céline Sallette’s directorial debut – French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (Charlotte Le Bon) leaves the US for Paris with her husband, writer Harry Mathews (John Robinson), joining the Parisian art scene of the fifties, the Nouveaux Réalistes group. De Saint Phalle (1930-2002) is best known for her monumental Nanas sculptures. Sallette depicts Niki’s psychological journey, as she mines her personal history for inspiration; her traumatic childhood, self-destructive behaviour, and her ultimate transformation, becoming an accomplished avant-garde artist and feminist icon.

Director Céline Sallette will attend the screening.

 

2 x SHORT FILMS BY JEAN-LUC GODARD: EXPOSÉ DU FILM-ANNONCE DU FILM ’SCÉNARIO’ (35 mins) + SCÉNARIOS (18 mins), Sunday, November 24th

At the time of Jean-Luc Godard’s assisted death on September 13th, 2022, he had been working on his final feature, Scénario, but in the days before this, Godard instructed his assistants Jean-Paul Battaggia and Fabrice Aragno to complete the feature in two segments: Scénarios (18 mins); and Exposé pour un film annonce du film ‘Scénario’ (36 mins). This gift of two more ‘last films’ from Godard layers paintings, collage, film, stills, texts and sounds, and includes a rare text from Sartre read on screen by JLG himself.

 

A WOMAN OF PARIS by Charlie Chaplin, Saturday, November 23rd

Having built his career as both an actor and director of silent cinema, Chaplin confounded audiences when he followed up his first feature, The Kid, with a serious melodrama, A Woman of Paris. Applauded by the press but rejected by the public, Chaplin himself pulled the film from distribution. Yet this brilliant film reveals his dramatic genius with understated acting and deft storytelling. It stands as one of Chaplin’s greatest directorial achievements, acclaimed by filmmakers from Lubitsch to Scorsese.

Restored in 4K in 2019 by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory, in association with Roy Export SAS as part of the Chaplin Project. Music by Chaplin, newly restored, orchestrated and conducted by Timothy Brock. Screening in its original version with English-language intertitles.

 

Family Film: SAUVAGES by Claude Barras, Saturday, November 16th & Sunday, November 24th

From Claude Barra, the director of the memorable, award-winning stop-motion, Ma Vie de Courgette, comes this gorgeous environmental-themed fable, set in the rainforest of Borneo, a lush, fertile land, where nature and the life of the indigenous Penan people are under threat. When 11-year-old Keria rescues an abandoned baby orangutan, she is spurred to save the animal and campaign against the destruction of the forest, along with her forestry worker dad and her indigenous cousin, who has sought refuge in their home.

After the screening on Sunday 24th join us in the IFI Foyer for a fun environmental-themed craft workshop. To encourage young animators (Next Gen 15-19) on Saturday 16th, a stop-motion workshop in association with National Talent Academy Animation will take place before the screening. Places are limited, contact ctobin@irishfilm.ie to reserve.

 

BOOKING INFO 

Tickets are on sale from 11am, Wednesday 8 October, via https://ifi.ie/frenchfest/

Tickets to the Opening Gala are €17.00. All screenings are €15.00 (unless otherwise indicated). Masterclass tickets are €7.50. Family screening tickets are €7.00 Single, €23.00 Family of 4.

IFI Membership is required for all films. If you are not an IFI Member then a membership fee of €1.50 will be added to each IFI French Film Festival ticket price, and/or a Festival Membership fee of €7.50 will be added to each IFI French Film Festival ticket bundle.

TICKET BUNDLES

10-Film Deal: €110.00 (IFI Member) / €117.50 (Non-Member)

5-Film Deal: €65.00 (IFI Member) / €72.50 (Non-Member)

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The IFI would like to pay special thanks to DS Automobiles who are partnering with the Festival for the third year. We would also like to thank the French Embassy in Ireland for their continued support and involvement. Film is an integral part of cooperation and our cultural relationship.

The IFI French Film Festival is supported by The Irish Times, RTÉ Supporting the Arts, Alliance Française Dublin, Europa Cinemas, UniFrance, Institut Français, the Embassy of Canada in Ireland, and Air Canada.

IFI is principally funded by the Arts Council.