Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2024

[Chris Knipp]

FILMLEAF REVIEW THREAD

Unifrance and Film at Lincoln Center present
29TH RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA

February 29- March 10, 2024

Opening Night—New York Premiere of Thomas Cailley's The Animal Kingdom
starring Romain Duris, with Cailley in person

Featuring films starring Marion Cotillard (in person), Melvil Poupaud, Virginie Efira, Noée Abita, Laetitia Casta, Anders Danielsen Lie, Léa Drucker, Romain Duris, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Vincent Lacoste, Françoise Lebrun, Pierre Niney, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, and Sofiane Zermani

Little Girl Blue (Charades Films); All to Play For (Curiosa Films); The Animal Kingdom (Magnolia Pictures); Les Indésirables (Goodfellas); First Case (Be for Films)

New York, NY (January 25, 2024) – Unifrance and Film at Lincoln Center announce the lineup for the 29th edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Taking place from February 29 through March 10, this popular annual festival showcases the verve, creativity, and depth of contemporary French cinema in a variety of genres.

The 2024 Opening Night selection is Thomas Cailley’s French box office hit The Animal Kingdom, the director’s long-awaited follow-up to Love at First Fight (a highlight of Rendez-Vous 2015) and most recently nominated for 12 César Awards, including Best Director and Best Film. Cailley, who most recently won Best Director at the 29th Lumière Awards, envisions a mysterious infection that selectively mutates the bodies of ordinary people into animal hybrids at unpredictable speeds in a darkly imaginative exploration of a human ecosystem undergoing inexplicable—but potentially liberating—transformation.

This year's edition of the Rendez-Vous with FRench Cinema at Lincoln CCenter opens with French critical and box-office hit The Animal Kingdom, with director Thomas Cailley in attendance. So reports Daniela Elstner, executive director of Unifrance, who heralds the "vitality and diversity" and "mix of new and established filmakers" as well as the presence of the greet star Marion Of the 21 feature films, lstner notes, more than half are directed by women and eight were made by first-time filmmakers. The series lasts tend days.

Highlights of the 21-film lineup include the North American premiere of Pascal Bonitzer’s Auction, which follows a modern art appraiser (Alex Lutz) whose routine is unexpectedly disrupted by the discovery of a long-lost work by Egon Schiele; Robin Campillo’s Red Island, which draws on the director’s personal history to evoke a sumptuously visualized 1970s childhood spent on one of the last remaining French colonial bases on Madagascar; Marie Amachoukeli’s 2024 Sundance Spotlight selection Àma Gloria, the portrait of a young girl beginning her life and a caretaker re-entering hers; Michel Gondry’s portrait of his own wild creative process The Book of Solutions; Vanessa Filho’s César-nominated Consent, which unflinchingly examines a case of sexual predation hiding in plain sight; Ladj Ly’s Les Indésirables, an another deiction of racial and social tensions in contemporary France; Marguerite’s Theorem, Anna Novion’s portraitof a young woman seeking a new perspective on her vocation and on life; Erwan Le Duc’s César-nominated sophomore feature No Love Lost, a bold and eccentric look at the ties that bind; Héléna Klotz’s Spirit of Ecstacy, a personal and professional coming of age; Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s The Temple Woods Gang, a fresh look at the heist genre included in Cahier du Cinéma's 10 best of 2023d; athan Ambrosioni’s Toni, a portrait of a former pop star and her five children adapting to a new reality; and Thomas Lllti's A Real Job, where the busy young stgar Vincent Lacostte plays Benjamin, a freshly accredited substitute teacher.

Two features starring the ever-vibrant and brilliant actor Virginie Efira are writer-director Delphine Deloget’s feature debut All to Play For, a carefully observed perspective on the struggles of a loving parent contending with a bureaucratic system; and writer-director Valérie Donzelli’s César-nominated, tensely effective erotic thriller Just the Two of Us, featuring a virtuosic Efira in a double role as twin sisters.

Notable documentaries in this edition of Rendez-Vous are two César-nominated features: Nicolas Philibert’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner On the Adamant, about a day care facility for neurodivergent adults on a floating barge in Paris; and Mona Achache’s Little Girl Blue, starring Marion Cotillard, blurs the line between truth and fiction to produce a work as fittingly unsettling and unforgettable as her subject—her own mother.

Finally, four highly anticipated debut features round out this year’s features: Senegalese-French writer-director Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s Banel & Adama, a young couple’s relationship is tested by pressures from their village; writer-director Victoria Musiedlak’s First Case, a tense and thoughtful film buoyed by a captivating and textured performance from Noée Abita; Iris Kaltenbäck’s stylish, César-nominated feature The Rapture, a portrait of a young midwife who sublimates her emotional life into the pregnancy of her best friend; and Nora El Hourch’s Sisterhood, which casts an unflinching eye on the everyday sexual harassment faced by young women, anchored by vivid, fiery, and entirely unexpected turns.

Confirmed to appear in person at the festival are: Mona Achache, Marie Amachoukeli, Nathan Ambrosioni, Pascal Bonitzer, Thomas Cailley, Robin Campillo, Marion Cotillard, Jean-Pierre Daroussin, Delphine Deloget, Valérie Donzelli, Nora El Hourch, Vanessa Filho, Iris Kaltenbäck, Héléna Klotz, Erwan Le Duc, Thomas Lilti, Ladj Ly, Victoria Musiedlak, Anna Novion, Nicolas Philibert, Ramata-Toulaye Sy, and Maud Wyler.

Free talks, spotlighting directors and filmmakers in intimate and engaging conversations, will be announced at a later date.

Voting for the fifth annual Rendez-Vous Audience Award will be open to all moviegoers attending the festival. A jury of six students pursuing film and French studies degrees from New York City colleges will choose their favorite first or second feature for the Best Emerging Filmmaker Award, which calls attention to the unique views of emerging filmmakers and their interpretations of France’s new and diverse identities. The two awards will be announced shortly at the close of the festival.

Students from New York City–area schools will be invited to attend free screenings of Toni, A Real Job, and Nicolas Philibert’s 2002 documentary To Be and to Have.

Organized by Florence Almozini and Madeline Whittle, in collaboration with Unifrance.Rendez-Vous with French CInema is sponsored by Villa Albertine, TV5 Monde, Maison Occitanie, FIAF, The Plaza, New York.

Tickets go on sale Thursday, February 1 at noon, with pre-sale for Film at Lincoln Center Members beginning on Tuesday, January 30 at noon. Tickets are $17; $14 for students, seniors (62+), and persons with disabilities; and $12 for FLC Members. Opening Night tickets for Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom are $25 for the general public and $20 for all FLC Members.