The Queer Film Society (QFS) present Cinema Q V, the fifth annual film series focusing this year on extraordinary LGBT historical figures including bisexual French feminist writer Violette Leduc directed by Martin Provost with Emmanuelle Devos on May 14. 

The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, in partnership with UniFrance Films and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, presents Young French Cinema, a series of eight films showcasing an exciting new generation of French filmmakers. Sophie Letourneur, director/star of MACARONI AND CHEESE, will appear in person on June 26 & 27.

JCC Chicago Film Festival provides narrative and documentary; vintage and foreign; feature length and shorts; films that reach across age groups for families, young adults, and seniors for a no-holds barred approach to diversity and the strong Jewish contributions to world culture which includes the French films Friends from France (Les Interdits) by Anne Weil and Philippe Kotlarski (2013) and 24 Days (24 jours) by Alexandre Arcady (2014).

Supported by the Institut Français

A collection of films—which includes works rarely considered alongside one another—lends another perspective to the major exhibition International Pop  by examining cinema as an extension of Pop practice around the world including films by Jean Luc-Godard, Guy Debord, Alain Resnais, René Viénet and Niki de Saint Phalle.

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. Leave your Netflix subscription, your smart phone and your i-pad at home… and come have fun!

Dominique Benicheti’s Cousin Jules appears to be an understated documentary set over a single day, depicting an elderly farmer and his wife going about mundane tasks in the French countryside. In fact, Benicheti and cinematographer Pierre William Glenn shot the film over five years and employed technology that hadn't been used before in documentary filmmaking—namely CinemaScope and stereophonic sound. It's a truly meditative filmgoing experience, one in which the pounding of a hammer is as rhythmic and moving as the flick of a pen, the stroke of a brush, or the rolling of a camera. The director was in the process of restoring his film—frame by frame, and by hand—when he died suddenly in 2011. This lost masterpiece of cinema has been restored and now audiences can finally enjoy it as it was meant to be seen.

Co-Presented by Chicago Filmmakers and Beguiled Cinema

Winner of three prizes in the Cannes Directors' Fortnight sidebar and three Cesars, Thomas Cailley's debut feature Les Combattants is an expertly handled and brilliantly performed feel-good comedy with an original twist. It's a funny and entertaining comedy about falling in love - and surviving.

05/29/15: Music Box Theatre Chicago, IL

06/05/15: St. Anthony Main Minneapolis, MN

Featuring a superb performance from Mortensen, JAUJA (the name suggests a fabled city of riches sought by European explorers) 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.

05/14/15: Wexner Center for the Arts Columbus, OH

06/13 - 06/16: Gene Siskel Film Center Chicago IL

Wim Wenders’ mastery of the documentary form is again on display in The Salt of the Earth, a stunning visual ode to the photographer Sebastiao Salgado, co-directed by the shutterbug’s docu-helmer son Juliano Ribeiro Salgado.

05/01 - 05/21: Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts Grand Rapids, MI

05/8 - 05/21: Film Streams Omaha, NE

06/4 & 6: Indiana University Cinema Bloomigton, IN

06/12 - 06/18: Gene Siskel Film Center Chicago, IL

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.

05/05 - 05/14: Ragtag Cinema Columbia, MO

Opening 05/09: Fort Wayne Film Center, IN

05/15 - 05/28: Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts Grand Rapids, MI

05/15 - 05/21: Capital City Cinema Jefferson City, MO

06/19 -06/29: Gene Siskel Film Center Chicago, IL

Dior and I brings the viewer inside the storied world of the Christian Dior fashion house with a privileged, behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Raf Simons’ first haute couture collection as its new artistic director.

Thoughtful, unpredictable, and overall gripping, Robin Campillo’s drama about a businessman and an eastern European hustler is part love story, part neo-Dickensian immigrant thriller.

A stylish, 70's-period crime thriller inspired by true events, The Connection tells the story of real-life Marseille magistrate Pierre Michel (Academy Award® Winner Jean Dujardin) and his relentless crusade to dismantle the most notorious drug smuggling operation in history: the French Connection.

A follow-up to Luis Buñuel’s 1967 classic Belle de Jour, this elegant, autumnal work is at once a wry tribute to Buñuel, a moving evocation of the passage of time, and a knowing acknowledgement of the eternal mysteries of the human psyche.

May 14, 2015: Cleveland Cinematheque - OH

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.

May 9-10, 2015: Cleveland Cinematheque, OH

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.

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.

05/05 - 05/08: St Anthony Main Theater Minneapolis, MN

05/08: Wexner Center for the Arts Columbus, OH

05/28 - 05/30: IU Cinema Bloomington, IN

Michel Houellebecq, possibly the most widely read living French writer, was believed kidnapped on September 16, 2011. But was he really? After a flurry of media reports of his abduction, the story goes cold and Houellebecq, famously reclusive, refuses to set the record straight. Now he goes one step further by starring as himself in a film that purports to tell the tale.

05/12 - 05/27: Ryder Film Series Bloomington, IN

06/26 - 06/28: Cleveland Museum of Art, OH

A successful but burnt-out Swiss architect (Rongione) journeys with his disenchanted wife (Prot) to Italy, where he researches the work of his idol Francesco Borromini and encounters an intense young brother and sister who might reawaken his passion for art and love.

05/15 & 05/17: Cleveland Cinematheque, OH

06/ 12 - 06/18: Gateway Film Center Columbus  OH

06/19 - 07/11: Ryder Film Series Bloomington, IN

 Inspired by Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 kids’ classic The Red Balloon, Director Hou’s movie tells of a Taiwanese film student in Paris who is hired by a frazzled single mom (Binoche) to be nanny to her seven-year-old son.

06/19: Cleveland Cinematheque, OH

This film surveys drawings and other artworks that were secretly created by prisoners in concentration camps during World War II, giving an unvarnished record of realities there. It also features interviews with some of the surviving artists.“A meditation on suffering and beauty and how art can bridge the gap between the two.”—Hollywood Reporter.

05/22 - 05/23: Wexner Center for the Arts Columbus, OH

06/17 & 21: Cleveland Museum of Art, OH

Wim Wenders celebrates the groundbreaking work of his friend and fellow German Pina Bausch (1940-2009), a modern dancer and choreographer. This magnificent, Oscar-nominated movie captures Bausch and members of her company performing some of their most celebrated works both on stage and around the German city of Wuppertal, home of Bausch’s dance theatre since 1972.

06/13: Cleveland Cinematheque, OH

Winner of the 2014 César Award for Best Documentary!

From the dangerous savannahs of Kenya to the winding trails of the Atlas mountains in Morocco, from the suffocating heat of Southern India to the vast, dizzying plateaux of Patagonia, these children are all united by the same quest, the same dream: knowledge and education. A film about four pupils forced to confront and overcome countless, often dangerous obstacles on their journey to the classroom.

05/8 & 05/10: Cleveland Museum of Art, OH

05/27: Gene Siskel Film Center Chicago, IL

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.

Opening May 22: Ragtag Cinema Columbia, MO

05/22 - 05/31: Ryder Film Series Bloomington, IN

06/04 - 06/07: Flint Institute of Art, MI

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.

May 15 & 17, 2015: Cleveland Museum of Art - Cleveland, OH

May 30 & 31, 2015: Doc Films - Chicago, IL

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.

May 21, 2015: Wexner Center for the Arts - Columbus, OH

Loosely adapted from the memoirs of André Devigny, a French resistance fighter held in a German prison during World War II, this masterpiece of this unrivaled director Bresson strikingly mixes the tedium of jail with the nail-biting suspense of the preparations for escape. This is perhaps the only film about death row that throws away all questions of guilt and asks, what does it mean to be saved from certain death?

May 28, 2015: Block Cinema- Evanston, IL

THE MARQUISE OF O... marked a departure in Rohmer’s career, and it remains one of his most intriguing and provocative films.During the Napoleonic Wars, a virtuous German widow (Clever) is rescued from rape by a dashing Russian officer (Ganz). Nevertheless, she finds herself mysteriously pregnant, and her protestations of innocence do not spare her from family ostracism and social disgrace.

May 30 & June 3, 2015: Gene Siskel Film Center - Chicago, IL

On trial for heresy, Joan of Arc’s captors use interrogation, torture, and death threats to force her to sign a confession. Dreyer’s 1928 restaging of the trial of Joan of Arc is famous for its exquisite cinematography, specifically its use of closeups. It is a testament to the beauty and power of the human face. The Passion of Joan of Arc portrays the suffering and helplessness of victims abused by power.

June 4, 2015: Block Cinema - Evanston, IL

Based on a story by Isaak Dinesen, The Immortal Story is Orson Welles' second-to-last completed feature starring Jeanne Moreau. Timeworn and lonely, Mr. Clay (Orson Wells) hires a handsome sailor to reenact a tall tale of the seven seas with Clay's make-believe wife (Jeanne Moreau). However, some stories are not meant to be brought to life.

05/20: Doc Films Chicago, IL

The Institut Français has launched a new and improved IFcinéma website. IFcinema is a great resource for the non-commercial distribution of film around the world. Whether is it used as a tool in the classroom or in the community, IFcinema is a great way to promote and share the uniquess and diversity of French cinema.

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.

Curated by Marcel Jean, artistic director of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, this program is composed of nine of the best French short animated films from the 2014 Festival.

Offereing a selection of Francophone short film programs suitable for various age groups, Facets in Chicago welcomes school groups to schedule a screening, either at the theater or in your school!

French Animation is always the crème de la crème. The shorts in these programs explore a diversity of techniques, from stop motion to cutout animation, to computer animation, all at the highest visual level. The messages are both uniquely French, while being universal at the same time.

Applications are now open for universities to apply to host the Tournées French Film Festival for the year 2015-2016. Tournées Film Festival is a program of the FACE Foundation, in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which aims to bring French cinema to American college and university campuses. Tournées Festival participants choose a total of six films: 5 contemporary + 1 classic. The grant to support the screening of six films is $2,200.