IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2015

The 2015 IFI French Film Festival ran from November 18th to 29th 2015. Director Jacques Audiard was the festival's Guest of Honour.

Troubled teenager Malony (Rod Paradot) has been in and out of detention facilities, counselling centres, and even prison, since the age of six, despite the tireless efforts of his social…

Wednesday 18th Nov 2015 20.00 Sunday 22nd Nov 2015 20.00 Friday 27th Nov 2015 15.30

Aspiring writer Romain (Mathieu Spinosi) finds himself the calm centre of his chaotic family in this pleasant dramedy. His father Michel (Michel Blanc) has just retired and is slipping into…

Thursday 19th Nov 2015 18.20 Sunday 22nd Nov 2015 16.20

Beginning like a spy-film, travelling anthropologist Paul Dédalus (Mathieu Amalric) returns from a posting in Tajikistan to take up a job for the French government in Paris. Facing interrogation, he…

Thursday 19th Nov 2015 20.10 Friday 27th Nov 2015 20.30

Director Jacques Audiard will partake in a post-screening Q&A. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Audiard’s latest film tells the story of Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan), a former Tamil Tiger…

Friday 20th Nov 2015 18.15

MACADAM STORIES

In this quirky and endearing urban dramedy six characters are linked by the desolate no man’s land of a housing project, with one broken-down elevator. Cutting between narratives, each character…

Friday 20th Nov 2015 20.50 Monday 23rd Nov 2015 19.50

Visionary director Jean-Pierre Melville, precursor of the French New Wave [Bob le Flambeur (1956)], is cited as an influence for filmmakers John Woo, Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese. The Red Circle is Melville’s…

Saturday 21st Nov 2015 13.30

Celebrated screenwriter Thomas Bidegain – a long-time collaborator with Jacques Audiard – establishes himself as a new voice in French cinema with this bracing debut feature. The story kicks off…

Saturday 21st Nov 2015 18.00

THE WHITE KNIGHTS

Joachim Lafosse’s (Our Children, 2012) latest gripping work brings to the screen the highly publicised true story of the Zoe’s Ark controversy – a French NGO whose members were arrested…

Saturday 21st Nov 2015 20.40 Friday 27th Nov 2015 18.10

Fatima is an immigrant from Morocco living in Lyon; separated from her husband and making a living as a cleaning lady, she struggles to connect with her two daughters, both…

Saturday 21st Nov 2015 16.15 Wednesday 25th Nov 2015 19.45

This film screened on Friday 13th November 2015. Malik (Tahar Rahim), an illiterate 19-year-old of Algerian descent, is sentenced to six years in prison. On arrival, he is quickly targeted…

Sunday 22nd Nov 2015 13.00

In this courtroom drama, the great Fabrice Luchini (Potiche, In the House) plays Michel Racine, a feared but respected judge in the Criminal Courts with a reputation for handing down…

Sunday 22nd Nov 2015 18.10 Saturday 28th Nov 2015 20.55

IN THE SHADOW OF WOMEN

With luscious black and white compositions recalling his Nouvelle Vague roots, Philippe Garrel evokes a luminous bohemian Paris, through the complex love story of Pierre (Stanislas Merhar) and Manon (Clotilde Courau) – long-term…

Monday 23rd Nov 2015 18.10

Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu are reunited in this playfully self-referential piece which screened to much acclaim at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Director Guillaume Nicloux toys with notions of reality and fiction…

Tuesday 24th Nov 2015 18.10 Thursday 26th Nov 2015 17.15 Saturday 28th Nov 2015 19.10

Jerome Bonnell, who’s Just A Sigh opened the IFI French Film Festival in 2013, revisits his favourite themes of love and emotion in this light-hearted drama where the central love triangle calls to…

Tuesday 24th Nov 2015 20.00

Vincent (Thomas Salvador) is a calm and silent individual, blessed with remarkable superpowers – his strength and reflexes dramatically increasing in contact with water! To explore these powers, Vincent moves…

Wednesday 25th Nov 2015 18.10

HALF SISTER, FULL LOVE

Marion Vernoux (Bright Days Ahead, 2013) reimagines Seattle filmmaker Lynn Shelton’s Your Sister’s Sister (2011), in the landscapes of Brittany. Pierrick (Grégoire Ludig), still mourning his brother’s recent death, accepts…

Thursday 26th Nov 2015 20.45 Sunday 29th Nov 2015 17.45

THE MEASURE OF A MAN

Vincent Lindon (winner of this year’s Best Actor prize in Cannes) gives a towering performance as 51-year-old Thierry, a laid-off factory worker unemployed for over a year, struggling to keep…

Thursday 26th Nov 2015 19.00 Sunday 29th Nov 2015 19.45

WE WON’T GROW OLD TOGETHER

Married filmmaker Jean (Jean Yanne) and the considerably younger Catherine (Marlène Jobert) have been lovers for 6 years, meeting clandestinely in hotel rooms, in cars, during holidays or at weekends. Almost everyday Jean…

Saturday 28th Nov 2015 13.00

Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) has moved from Belgium to the south of France with his 5-year-old son Sam. The two now live with Ali’s sister and her partner, and he soon…

Saturday 28th Nov 2015 15.00

Thirty-year-old Sandrine (Louise Bourgoin) is down on her luck; unemployed, she is forced to return home to live with her mother (Anne BenoÎt) and family, who have their own issues,…

Saturday 28th Nov 2015 17.20

This film screened on Sunday 29th November 2015. This year’s choice for younger audiences is a striking and powerful animation. When 12-year-old Adama’s elder brother Samba leaves their isolated West African village in…

Sunday 29th Nov 2015 11.00

THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED

This film screened 31st January 2010. A remake of James Toback’s Fingers, The Beat That My Heart Skipped sees Romain Duris as Thomas, torn between his life of crime and…

Sunday 29th Nov 2015 13.20

Alain Corneau’s daring and fast-paced adaptation of the classic American novel Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson, transposes the story to a sinister Parisian suburb, entrusting screenwriter Georges Perec with the dialogue.…

Sunday 29th Nov 2015 15.30