Annual festival returns with six thoughtful French films
Six thoughtful and thought-provoking films exploring a wide range of perennial concerns – including love, aging, identity and survival in the aftermath of war and trauma – will be featured when Salve Regina hosts its annual French Film Festival Feb. 25 to March 8.
All films will be screened in the Bazarsky Lecture Hall. Salve Regina students, faculty and staff receive free admission to all screenings and events with a valid University ID. For all others, festival passes to all films and events are $35, Sunday films with receptions are $15 and weeknight films are $10.
Tickets and festival passes are available through the film festival website or at the door. For more information, call (401) 341-2197 or email frenchfilmfestival@salve.edu.
For full film descriptions and trailers, visit the film festival website. The following films will be featured during the festival:
Panique
4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 25. A wine and cheese reception will follow the film.
“Panique” was the first of several adaptations of “Mr. Hire’s Engagement,” a coal-black tale of the scapegoating of the eccentric bachelor Mr. Hire. Following the murder of a woman in his Paris neighborhood, Mr. Hire has the double misfortune of knowing too much for his own good and falling for the real murderer’s girlfriend.
Fatima
7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 27
Fatima is a middle-aged, divorced Algerian woman living in a French suburb, cleaning houses and offices from dawn to dusk to provide her spirited teenage daughters with a better future. It takes a workplace accident for Fatima to finally pay attention to her own needs and discover a powerful means of expressing them through poetry.
Eastern Boys
7 p.m. Thursday, March 1
When middle-aged gay professional Daniel spots the undocumented teenager Marek at a train station in Paris and invites him back to his place, he unwittingly makes himself the target of a home invasion by a gang of ruthless Eastern European youth. As Daniel learns more about Marek’s life in his native Chechnya, he decides to rescue him from the gang.
L’Avenir/Things to Come
3 p.m. Sunday, March 4. A coffee and pastry reception will begin at 2 p.m.
In the span of a few months, high school philosophy professor Nathalie is left by her husband of 25 years, buries her mother, and learns that the publishing imprint she edits is being terminated. Though her future might look bleak, Nathalie remains committed to her intellectual values and her personal mission to pass them on to her pupils.
Louise en hiver/Louise by the Shore
7 p.m. Tuesday, March 6
When elderly widow Louise misses the last train out of the seaside resort she summers in, she finds herself stranded in a ghost town of empty buildings and waxing and waning tides. She soon becomes a genteel Robinson Crusoe, building a hut on the beach and settling in with a raggedy talking dog and the memories of her childhood.
Voir du pays/The Stopover
7 p.m. Thursday, March 8
A French military unit arrives on the island of Cyprus for a three-day “decompression” stay in a five-star hotel before it heads home from Afghanistan. While tourists bask in the sun, these men and women of France’s armed forces participate in group therapy sessions to work through traumas suffered on the field and prepare for life back home.
