From March 6 through April 2, the Gene Siskel Film Center welcomes you to the “18th Annual European Union Film Festival,” a colorful and diverse European escape from the Chicago winter. This largest showcase in North America for the cinema of the European Union nations presents Chicago premieres of 61 new feature films from 27 nations, providing an in-depth portrait of Europe from east to west including ten French and French-speaking films.

This March, Cinema St. Louis and its partners presents the Seventh Annual Classic French Film Festival celebrating St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy.The festival will include significant feature restorations, and will span across three weekends at Webster University's Winifred Moore Auditorium.

Winner of the "Un Certain Regard" prize at Cannes Film Festival in 2013, this animated movie by writer and director Rithy Panh recreates a missing picture of the atrocities commited by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion on how to rebuild the social bound after traumatic events such as the Cambodian genocide that happened 40 years ago.

Organized by the Cultural Service at the Consulate General of France in Chicago in partnership with the Cambodian Association of Illinois and the Cambodian American Heritage Museum & Killing Fields Memorial.
 

In his first stop on a US tour, Oscar-nominated director Abderrahmane Sissako comes to the Walker Art Center to present a short retrospective of his work. His films are distinguished not only by great formal beauty and poetic imagery but also by humor, profound sympathy with human suffering, and an almost philosophical inquiry into relations between West Africa and the rest of the world.

Supported by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York & Chicago and the Institut Français in Paris.

Indiana University Cinema welcomes one of the world’s leading filmmakers, Abderrahmane Sissako from Mauritania/Mali, an artist whose transnational poetic vision is grounded in precise, everyday acts and humanity. This retrospective highlights Sissako’s transnational cinematic practice and aesthetics, produced by an allegiance to home mediated by expatriation. Sissako is a particularly compelling filmmaker because his artistic practice has developed in relation to key epochal shifts  that challenge tidy chronologies and national borders.

Supported by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York & Chicago and the Institut Français in Paris.

With the goal of enriching the Cleveland community with the newest and best films the globe has to offer, the Cleveland International Film Festival annually presents an impressive collection of feature and short films from around the world, including France. This year, the festival will represent 68 countries and present over 10 French speaking films.

Burkina Faso and Mali are two of the major film-producing nations on the African continent. In fact, a strong case could be made that Burkina Faso is actually the center of African film culture, for the oldest and most important Pan-African film festival, FESPACO, has been held in its capital city of Ouagadougou since 1969. This series consists of a new documentary about FESPACO (which stands for Festival Panafricain du Cinéma de Ouagadougou) and four celebrated classics from these two nations.

See thought-provoking documentaries, oddball comedies, moving dramas, and visionary avant-garde cinema—all at the Wisconsin Film Festival. Visit every corner of the globe, from local supper clubs to Timbuktu. This years festival includes 14 french films from some of the leading french directors with a special series Films de Femmes, which highlights emerging women directors in french cinema!

Presented every April, the MSPIFF is the largest spring arts event in the region, exhibiting more than 200 films from some 70 countries each year and drawing audiences of 40,000+.

The Kalamazoo World Languages Film Festival is dedicated to the presentation of original creative cinema from around the world to the communities of Western Michigan University and greater Kalamazoo as well as educators across Michigan and the surrounding Midwestern states. The Festival presents 6 french-language films including Tumbuktu by Abderrahmane Sissako and Aya de Yopougon by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie.

The Alliance Française de Chicago presents a day to celebrate francophone film! The films Aya de Yopougon, Academy Award nominated Timbuktu, and An American Dream will all be screened. Special guest Actor Damien Robitaille of An American Dream will be in attendance!

Contemporary and classic French films are shown on Midwest campuses throughout the spring as part of the 2015 Tournée French Film Festival Program.

March 10 - 25, 2015 - Ashland University - Ashland, OH

March 16-31, 2015 - Western Kentucky University - Bowling Green, KY

March 27 - April 16, 2015 - Ohio Wesleyan University - Delaware, OH

Apr 2 - May 7, 2015 - Northern Kentucky University - Highland Heights, KY

Clever, amusing, plain funny or downright hilarious, the retrospective features the best of contemporary French comedies, a genre Molière invented, with the new option to attend on some Saturday afternoons. Also new : a live stand-up comic to warm up the room before selected screenings. Leave your Netflix subscription, your smart phone and your i-pad at home… and come have fun!

Winner of 3 Césars including best actress and best supporting actress!

Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, and Chloë Grace Moretz light up this scintillating showbiz drama from acclaimed director Olivier Assayas (Carlos). A bewitching tale of backstage rivalry, Clouds of Sils Maria is propelled by tour-de-force performances from three actresses at the top of their game.

Set in contemporary Tel Aviv, six diverse best friends gather to watch the wildly popular UniverSong competition. Appalled by the Israeli entry, they decide to create their own and record it on a mobile phone. Unbeknownst to them, their performance is seen by the UniverSong judges and selected as Israel’s entry for next year’s competition. With a soundtrack provided by Babydaddy from Scissor Sisters, this hilarious comedy is a refreshing ode to music and friendship.

An astonishingly beautiful and gripping Western that begins in a remote outpost in Patagonia during the late 1800s. Featuring a superb performance from Mortensen, JAUJA is the story of a man’s desperate search for his daughter, a solitary quest that takes him to a place beyond time, where the past vanishes and the future has no meaning.

An international operative wants out of the game, so he can settle down with his longtime love. The organization he works for has other plans in mind.

Hacker’s Game is a love story between two hackers, Soyan and Loise. The pair embarks upon an intense but dangerous romance, playing an elaborate game of deception.

An Israeli woman seeking to finalize a divorce from her estranged husband finds herself effectively put on trial by her country’s religious marriage laws in this powerhouse courtroom drama from sibling directors Shlomi and Ronit Elkabetz.

March 27 - April 2: The Ross Theatre - Lincoln (NE)

April 2, 3, 4: Flint Institute of Arts (MI)

April 3 -12 : Detroit Film Center (MI)

April 3 -12 : The Ryder - Bloomington (IN)
 

2015 Best Actress Oscar Nomination for Marion Cotillard

For the first time, Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne team up with a major international star, Marion Cotillard, to create a universal story about working-class people living on the edges of society.

March 20, 21, 22: Flint Institute of Arts (MI)

April 17-23, 2015: Gene Siskel Film Center - Chicago (IL)

May 1-2, 2015 : DeBartolo Performing Arts Center - South Bend (IN)

Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and winner of 7 Césars including Best film and Best Director!

Abderrahmane Sissako's latest is a brilliant portrait of a place ruled by religion and a people traumatised by division. It is a portrait of the country of his childhood, the west African state of Mali, and in particular the city of Timbuktu, whose rich and humane traditions are being trampled by fanatical jihadis, often from outside the country. The story revolves around the death of a cow, affectionately named "GPS" – an appropriate symbol for a country that has lost its way.

Find a screening near you!

Farid, an Algerian turned informant for the French police, is found murdered in a small French town. Two offbeat and unethical female investigators (a fiercely authoritarian Isabelle Huppert paired with an inquisitive and voyeuristic Sandrine Kimberlain) are brought in to investigate the possibility of police involvement with the murder.

April 17 & 19, 2015 : Cleveland Museum of Art - Cleveland (OH)

A documentary focused on the commercial fishing industry filmed in the very waters where melville's pequod gave chase to moby dick, leviathan captures the collaborative clash of man, nature, and machine. Shot on a dozen cameras - tossed and tethered, passed from fisherman to filmmaker - it is a cosmic portrait of one of mankind's oldest endeavors.

April 3 & 7, 2015 : Gene Siskel Film Center - Chicago (IL)

Chosen to open the 2014 Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight, Girlhood bristles with energy and moves under the vital girl power of its young cast. Fed up with her abusive family situation, lack of school prospects and the “boys’ law” in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls.

March 20-26, 2015:  Film Streams - Omaha (NE)

Mar 27 – Apr 9, 2015: Urban Inst. for Contemporary Arts - Grand Rapids (MI)

April 3, 6 & 9, 2015: Anthens International Film + Video Festival (OH)

In January of 2006 a beautiful young woman walks into a Parisian cellphone shop, looks around, and asks for the sales attendant’s number. Later, she calls asking to meet. Who could have known Ilan, the 23 year old man, was flirting with death? The next time his family hears from him is through a cryptic online message from kidnappers demanding ransom. For 24 days, the Police, insistent upon handling the case as a normal for-ransom kidnapping, fail to recognize the anti-Semitic hatred of his abductors.

March 17-19, 2015: Michigan Theater - Ann Arbor (MI)

London’s National Gallery, one of the world’s foremost art institutions, is itself portrayed as a brilliant work of art in this, Frederick Wiseman’s 39th documentary.

March 29, 2015: Indiana University Cinema - Bloomington (IN)

Essential 3D

Jean-Luc Godard has altered the entire trajectory of cinema countless times and now, in his 43rd feature, he pushes the boundaries of 3D filmmaking. Starring Godard’s own beloved dog, the film tracks a couple in the midst of an affair as they discuss the modern world.

March 25, 2015: Wexner Art Center - Columbus (OH)

New Restoration!

Based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, this wildly satirical feature follows a chimney sweep and shepherdess on the run from a tyrannical king. A masterpiece of traditional hand-drawn cell animation, it is credited by celebrated Japanese animators Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata as inspiring the creation of their own studio, the now world-famous Studio Ghibli.

March 19, 2015: Film Streams, Omaha (NE)

4K Digital Restoration!

Alain Resnais' first fiction feature is a dreamy portrait of a brief love affair and long conversation between a French actress and a Japanese architect that sets memories of war and past loves against a city still reeling from the atomic bomb. A catalyzing film for the French New Wave noted for its innovative approaches to narrative and editing, Hiroshima Mon Amour is a unique and profoundly affecting masterpiece.

March 16-18, 2015: The Art Theater Co-Op - Champaign (IL)

April 17-19, 2015: Detroit Film Theater (MI)

New 4K Digital Restoration!

A factory worker reflects on the circumstances of love, rivalry, and betrayal that have led to his dire standoff in a police dragnet. This new restoration is the complete version, including censored footage removed by the Vichy Government during WW2 occupation of France.

April 17-19, 2015: Detroit Film Theater (MI)

New Digital Restoration!

Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006) was an award-winning Polish-born graphic artist, animator, and Surrealist who, mid-career, turned to making sensuous, stylish, live-action erotic films. Immoral Tales, perhaps the most taboo-breaking and successful of these, tells four different stories (of masturbation, incest, bloodlust, etc.) set in four different historical periods.

April 10 & 12, 2015: Cleveland Cinematheque (OH)

One of the most inventive and daringly surreal musical comedies ever made, René Clair’s À nous la liberté tells the story of Louis, an escaped convict who, through a series of indescribable events, becomes a wealthy and powerful industrialist. Unfortunately, his past returns (in the form of old jail pal Emile) to upset his carefully laid plans.

April 11, 2015: Detroit Film Theater (MI)

Never before shown at the Cinematheque (or any place else in Cleveland for at least the past 30 years), this rarity by the great Max Ophüls was the last film the exiled German director made in France before emigrating to the U.S. during WWII. The movie chronicles the love affair between Archduke Franz Ferdinand, reluctant heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and the Czech Countess Sophie Chotek , whom many regard as unworthy of him. The star-crossed relationship begins with the two of them defying the Austro-Hungarian court and ends with their assassination and the start of the First World War.

April 25-26, 2015: Cleveland Cinémathèque (OH)

Radio France Internationale (RFI), the French current affairs radio station that broadcasts worldwide in French and 12 foreign languages, and AudioNow® Digital, a leading provider of in-language mobile apps for radio broadcasters, today announced the launch of “RFI by AudioNow® Digital” with audio content in twelve RFI broadcast languages.

Following the success of the program of short animated films Annecy presents the New Faces of the French Animation organized by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Canada in 2014, it was decided to extend this initiative to the United States. A new program was developed by Marcel Jean, artistic director of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. It is composed of nine best French short animated films from the 2014 Festival.

YOUNG FRENCH CINEMA is a program of UniFrance films, in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which aims to bring French films with no US distribution to art house cinemas, film societies, the Alliance Française network, and American universities.