IFI French Film Festival 2021

The IFI French Film Festival 2021 runs from November 17th to 28th, with a blended festival in-cinema at the IFI in Temple Bar, and online on IFI@Home.

In-cinema multi-film passes available: 5-film pass for €50; 10-film pass for €90. Available from the IFI Box Office/ by phone on 01-6793477.

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: MADELEINE COLLINS

Judith (Virginie Efira) is leading a double life. In France, she is married to the renowned orchestra conductor Melvil (Bruno Salomone), with whom she has two sons. Claiming to travel…

Wednesday 17th Nov 2021 20.00 Sunday 21st Nov 2021 17.30

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: SHOULD THE WIND DROP

Frenchman Alain (Grégoire Colin), an international auditor, has come to assess the airport in landlocked Nagorno Karabakh, a self-proclaimed republic in the Caucasus, with a view to approving its reopening.…

Thursday 18th Nov 2021 16.10

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: PETITE MAMAN

8-year-old Nelly has just lost her beloved grandmother and is helping her parents clean out her mother’s childhood home. She explores the house and the surrounding woods where her mother,…

Thursday 18th Nov 2021 18.30

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: EARWIG

This hypnotic adaptation of Brian Catling’s Earwig is set in a desolate, motionless world, a sort of abstract apartment somewhere in mid-20th century Europe. Solitary Albert Scellinc is employed to…

Thursday 18th Nov 2021 20.20

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: PARIS 13TH DISTRICT

Emilie (Lucie Zhang), an outspoken young telesales operative from a Taiwanese family, meets handsome Camille (Makita Samba), a high school teacher who applies to be her lodger, and quickly becomes…

Friday 19th Nov 2021 20.30 Sunday 28th Nov 2021 15.50

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: THE LAST SHELTER

The Caritas Migrant House is in the Malian city of Gao, in the semi-arid Sahel region, on the edge of the Sahara Desert. It is a temporary home for thousands…

Friday 19th Nov 2021 16.20

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: THE NIGHT DOCTOR

Mikaël (Vincent Macaigne) is a doctor on night call. He looks after patients from underprivileged neighbourhoods, as well as those who nobody else will treat, primarily drug addicts. His world…

Friday 19th Nov 2021 18.30 Tuesday 23rd Nov 2021 20.30

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: MADAME DE…

Madame de…, Ophüls’s romantic masterpiece, was his third French-made film after he returned from Hollywood in 1950. An adaptation of Louise de Vilmorin’s 1951 novel, it stars Darrieux as the…

Saturday 20th Nov 2021 13.00

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: THE SUMMIT OF THE GODS

Patrick Imbert’s brilliant, immersive animated film is adapted from the eponymous Japanese Manga by Jirô Taniguchi and Baku Yumemakura. Could it be that George Mallory and Andrew Irvine were in…

Saturday 20th Nov 2021 13.20

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: OUR MEN

A division of the French Foreign Legion are on a dangerous and politically delicate tour of duty in Mali in west Africa. Set around the Legion base in Corsica, Rachel…

Saturday 20th Nov 2021 17.50 Saturday 27th Nov 2021 15.10

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: MY BEST PART

Jérémie, a struggling actor in his thirties, is going through an existential crisis. Pathologically jealous, he is plagued by romantic, professional, and familial misadventures. His seemingly incurable afflictions make life…

Saturday 20th Nov 2021 20.20 Thursday 25th Nov 2021 18.20

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: PROMISES

Clémence Collombet (Isabelle Huppert), the fearless mayor of a deprived town on the outskirts of Paris, is completing the final term of her political career. With faithful right-hand man Yazid…

Saturday 20th Nov 2021 15.30 Thursday 25th Nov 2021 20.40

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT

In The Young Girls of Rochefort (follow up to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), Darrieux, in her first collaboration with Demy, plays Yvonne, a coffee shop owner and single mother of twin sisters Delphine…

Sunday 21st Nov 2021 13.00

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: JANE BY CHARLOTTE

For her first experience behind the camera, celebrated actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg focuses on her relationship with her mother, the legendary Jane Birkin. From a concert in Tokyo in…

Sunday 21st Nov 2021 13.10 Friday 26th Nov 2021 16.10

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

Marianne Winckler (Juliette Binoche), a successful writer, goes undercover as a contract cleaner in Caen in northern France to research her next book, an exposé of France’s employment crisis, the…

Sunday 21st Nov 2021 20.30 Wednesday 24th Nov 2021 18.10

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: FRENCH TECH

Alexandre (Denis Podalydès) is unemployed, and has two months to prove to his wife, who is on a top-secret nuclear submarine mission, that he can care for their children and…

Sunday 21st Nov 2021 15.20 Sunday 28th Nov 2021 20.20

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: RETURNING TO REIMS

Freely adapted from the eponymous 2009 memoir by Didier Eribon, which delineated the author’s return to the hometown he had abandoned thirty years earlier, Returning to Reims tells a personal…

Monday 22nd Nov 2021 18.10

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: FRANCE

France de Meurs (Léa Seydoux) is an egocentric, fame-obsessed TV news anchor, whose stylised reporting from conflict zones and slick studio discussions have made her enormously popular. Her frenetic, glamorous…

Monday 22nd Nov 2021 20.10 Saturday 27th Nov 2021 20.30

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: IRMA VEP

Hong Kong action-movie star Maggie Cheung, as a version of herself, is invited to play Irma Vep in a remake of Les Vampires, Louis Feuillade’s classic crime serial (1915-16). Unstable…

Tuesday 23rd Nov 2021 18.10

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: I WANT TO TALK ABOUT DURAS

Swann Arlaud plays the real-life figure of Yann Andréa, a man thirty-eight years younger than his novelist partner, the renowned Marguerite Duras, an Oscar-nominee for her screenplay for Alain Resnais’s…

Wednesday 24th Nov 2021 16.00 Saturday 27th Nov 2021 13.00

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: THE RESTLESS

Damien (Damien Bonnard) is a successful artist and painter who is married to Leïla (Leïla Bekhti), a furniture restorer. They share an unconventional, bohemian existence with their young son, Amine,…

Wednesday 24th Nov 2021 20.30 Sunday 28th Nov 2021 15.30

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: THE BRAIN

Is it possible to replicate the human brain on a computer? Can science fiction become a reality? Research aimed at understanding the functioning of our biological brain is being matched…

Thursday 25th Nov 2021 16.00

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: HOLD ME TIGHT

Mathieu Amalric’s sixth turn as director is an adaptation of Claudine Galea’s play I Am Coming Back From Far. Clarisse (played beautifully by Vicky Krieps), a mother and wife, abruptly…

Friday 26th Nov 2021 18.10 Sunday 28th Nov 2021 18.10

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: TITANE

Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) has a titanium plate in her head, the legacy of a childhood car crash. She makes a living as a dancer and is forced to take extreme…

Friday 26th Nov 2021 20.50

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: BEATING HEART

Young runaway orphan Arlette (Danielle Darrieux) shows up in Paris at Monsieur Aristide’s (Saturnin Fabre) renowned professional school for pickpockets, and later becomes the centre of a sentimental plot. Henri…

Saturday 27th Nov 2021 13.10

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: TRALALA

Mathieu Amalric stars as Tralala, a modern-day troubadour on the streets of Paris. One night he meets a beautiful young woman who gives him an enigmatic message before disappearing: ‘above…

Saturday 27th Nov 2021 17.30

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: FAMILY FILM: MICA

The power of sport to transform lives is at the heart of this warm family tale of 10-year-old Mica who lives in a slum area on the outskirts of Meknes,…

Sunday 28th Nov 2021 11.00

IFI FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL 2021: THAT MAN FROM RIO

Belmondo is Adrien Dufourquet, a French soldier on leave in Paris to visit fiancée Agnès (Françoise Dorléac), daughter of a famous ethnologist. Agnès is kidnapped by a gang of South…

Sunday 28th Nov 2021 13.20