2026 French Film Festival, Jan. 29 - Feb. 13

Images of the film posters

Presented in collaboration with Screen/Society and with the support of Albertine Cinémathèque

This year’s program features recent works by emerging French and Francophone filmmakers, alongside restored classics and politically engaged documentaries. Each film is introduced by a guest expert and followed by a discussion, creating a vibrant forum for critical thinking and exchange.

Themes include memory, identity, resistance to authoritarianism, and the complexity of desire. A particularly resonant thread throughout the program is music: from Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, where every line is sung, to Annette, a rock opera by Leos Carax and the Sparks, and Johan Grimonprez’s Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, which uses jazz as a language to explore the history of colonization.

The festival has become a cherished event for both the university and the broader Durham community. Students engage in conversations that cross disciplines and generations, conversations that often continue beyond the theater and back into the classroom.

I strongly encourage you to invite your students to attend. Many colleagues at peer institutions offer extra credit for participation in events like these, which aligns beautifully with our commitment to interdisciplinary, experiential learning. Even one screening can spark valuable connections to course themes and open new avenues for inquiry.

Below is the full festival schedule with links to trailers and short film descriptions.

Wishing you a wonderful and inspiring start to the semester,
Anne-Gaëlle

  • Thu Jan 29 – Misericordia (link opens in a new window/tab) (Alain Guiraudie, 2024, 103 min)

    The teasingly entwined ambiguities of love and death continue to fascinate Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake), who returns with a sharp, sinister, yet slyly funny thriller. Set in an autumnal, woodsy village in his native region of Occitanie, his latest follows the meandering exploits of Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), an out-of-work baker who has drifted back to his hometown after the death of his beloved former boss, a bakery owner. Staying long after the funeral, the seemingly benign Jérémie begins to casually insinuate himself into his mentor’s family, including his kind-hearted widow (Catherine Frot) and venomously angry son (Jean-Baptiste Durand), while making an increasingly surprising, and ultimately beneficial, friendship with an oddly cheerful local priest (Jacques Develay). In Guiraudie’s quietly carnal world, violence and eroticism explode with little anticipation, and criminal behavior can seem like a natural extension of physical desire. The French director is at the top of his game in Misericordia, again upending all genre expectations. 
     
  • Fri Jan 30 – Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (link opens in a new window/tab) (Johan Grimonprez, 2024, 150 min) 

    United Nations, 1960: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, jazz musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe, and the U.S State Department swings into action, sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from CIA-backed coup. Director Johan Grimonprez explores a moment when jazz, colonialism, and espionage collided, constructing a riveting historical rollercoaster that illuminates the political machinations behind the 1961 assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. The result is a revelatory from mercenaries and CIA operatives, speeches from Lumumba himself, and a veritable canon of jazz icons. Sundance award winner Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat interrogates colonial history to tell an urgent and timely story that resonates more than ever in today’s geopolitical climate. 
     
  • Thu Feb 5 – Vingt Dieux/Holy Cow (link opens in a new window/tab) (Louise Courvoisier, 2024, 90 min) 

    Vingt Dieux follows 18-year-old Totone, who spends his days partying and drinking with friends in the Jura countryside. But when he's left orphaned and to care for his 7-year-old sister, the illusion of freedom quickly fades. Determined to turn his life around, he throws himself into an unexpected pursuit: making the best Comté cheese in the region, with hopes of winning gold at the agricultural competition—and the €30,000 prize that comes with it. Premiering in the Un Certain Regard section at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, Vingt Dieux went on to receive four César nominations, winning Best First Film and Best Female Revelation for Maïwene Barthelemy. A grounded debut, the film blends raw energy with quiet resilience, capturing a rural coming-of-age marked by love and loss 
     
  • Fri Feb 6 – Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot/Meeting with Pol Pot (link opens in a new window/tab) (Rithy Panh, 2024, 112 min)

    Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) – 1978. Three journalists are invited by the Khmer Rouge to conduct an exclusive interview of the regime’s leader, Pol Pot. The country seems ideal. But behind the Potemkin village, the Khmer Rouge regime is declining and the war with Vietnam threatens to invade the country. The regime is looking for culprits, secretly carrying out a large-scale genocide. Under the eyes of the journalists, the beautiful picture cracks, revealing the horror. Their journey progressively turns into a nightmare. Freely inspired by journalist Elizabeth Becker’s account in When The War Was Over. 
     
  • Sat Feb 7 – Les Parapluies de Cherbourg/The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (link opens in a new window/tab) (Jacques Demy, 1964, 92 min; new 4K restoration) 

    An angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a handsome garage mechanic, played by Nino Castelnuovo. When the boy is shipped off to fight in Algeria, the two lovers must grow up quickly. Exquisitely designed in a kaleidoscope of colors and  told entirely through the lilting songs of the great composer Michel Legrand, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most revered and unorthodox movie musicals of all time. 
     
  • Tue Feb 10 (Rescheduled from Jan 31) – Les Fantômes/Ghost Trail (link opens in a new window/tab) (Jonathan Millet, 2024, 106 min) 

    Ghost Trail follows a Syrian exile in France, played by Adam Bessa, as he quietly tracks the man who once tortured him in Sednaya Prison. Premiering in the Critics’ Week section at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and competing for the Caméra d’Or, the film marks Jonathan Millet’s fiction feature debut. With measured pacing and restrained intensity, Millet crafts a psychological thriller that navigates the long aftershocks of dictatorship's violence and the blurred boundaries between justice, memory, and obsession. 
     
  • Fri Feb 13 – Annette (link opens in a new window/tab) (Léos Carax, 2021, 139 min; music by Sparks) 

    Annette (2021) marks Leos Carax’s English-language debut. The rock opera, whose story and music were written by Ron Mael, Russell Mael (the Sparks) and lyrics co-written by Carax, follows a stand-up comedian (Adam Driver) and his opera singer wife (Marion Cotillard), and how their lives are transformed when they have their child, Annette. Annette, which Carax tenderly dedicates to his daughter Nastya, emerges as a formally daring, tonally unpredictable, and unexpectedly poignant tragicomedy.