The Albertine Cinémathèque Festival of French Films is funded by the French government to allow colleges and universities to put on a French film festival. It’s a continuation of what had been known as the Tournées Festival of New French Film on Campus, which the departments of English and World Languages and Literatures held every spring semester at NKU from 2011 to 2015.
For six weeks beginning March 19th, we will be screening a different French movie (five recent features and one classic) every Thursday at 6:00 p.m. in the newly renovated and comfortable Budig Theater in the NKU University Center. The screenings are free and open to everyone. Following each movie, a faculty member will lead a discussion of the film.
Dates: 3/19, 3/26, 4/2, 4/9, 4/16, 4/23
Location: Otto M. Budig Theater, NKU University Center
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Budig Theater is located in the University Center off the main lobby.
Parking is free and available at the Kenton Drive Parking Garage located across Kenton Drive from Griffin Hall. Take a parking ticket to enter the garage and we will provide vouchers at the screening.
Directions
Walk across Kenton Drive towards the Student Union. Take the stairs or elevator inside the Student Union to the second floor, then exit onto the plaza. The University Center will be the first builiding on the right. We’ll have signs to help show you the way!
Directed by Louise Courvoisier
Discussion leader: Dr. Caryn Connelly
Link to film trailer:
Totone, 18 years old, spends most go his time drinking beers and partying in the Jura region with his group of friends. But reality catches up with him: he has to take care of his 7-year-old sister and find a way to make a living. He then sets out to make the best Comte cheese in the region, the one that would win him the gold medal at the agricultural competition and 30,000 euros.
Directed by Mati Diop
Discussion leader: Sara Drabik
Link to film trailer:
Winner of the coveted Golden Bear prize at the 2024 Berlinale, DAHOMEY is an immersive and astounding work of art from Mati Diop – director of the award-winning Atlantics. Delving into real perspectives on far-reaching issues surrounding appropriation, self-determination and restitution, this acclaimed documentary is a poetic look at a seldom-discussed history.
Taking place in November 2021, the film takes as its subject 26 royal treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey, which, along with thousands of others, were plundered by French colonial troops in 1892. As these artifacts are due to leave Paris to return to their country of origin: the present-day Republic of Benin, Diop questions how they should be received in a country that has reinvented itself in their absence, using ethereal voiceover and footage of debating students at the University of Abomey-Calavi to offer multiple perspectives.
By turns invigorating and thought-provoking, Diop’s latest uses compelling non-traditional storytelling techniques to powerfully bring the past into the present, offering an affecting though altogether singular conversation piece that is as spellbinding as it is essential.
Directed by Gints Zilbalodis
Discussion leader: Dr. Iliana Rosales Figueroa
Link to film trailer:
A wondrous journey, through realms natural and mystical, Flow follows a courageous cat after his home is devastated by a great flood. Teaming up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog to navigate a boat in search of dry land, they must rely on trust, courage, and wits to survive the perils of a newly aquatic planet. From the boundless imagination of the award-winning filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis (Away) comes a thrilling animated spectacle as well as a profound meditation on the fragility of the environment and the spirit of friendship and community. Steeped in the soaring possibilities of visual storytelling, Flow is a feast for the senses and a treasure for the heart.
Directed by Jonathan Millet
Discussion leader: Dr. Andrea Gazzaniga
Link to film trailer:
Hamid is part of a secret group pursuing the Syrian regime’s fugitive leaders. His mission takes him to France, on the trail of his former torturer whom he must confront. Based on true events.
Directed by François Ozon
Discussion leader: Dr. Jody Ballah
Link to film trailer:
After a tumultuous life in Paris, Michelle (Hélène Vincent) has retired to a quiet existence in Burgundy, tending her garden and attending services at her parish. The voracious hostility of her adult daughter Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier) remains Michelle’s great puzzlement: how can a child for whom she sacrificed so much treat her with such contempt and suspicion?When Valérie drops off her son for a week with his grand mother, Michelle sees an opportunity to repair the relationship, but a culinary accident soon undercuts whatever trust remains. With the help of her best friend Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), whose son (Pierre Lottin) has recently been released from prison, Michelle plots a path towards restoring the family life so long denied her. With a deceptively placid surface, master stylist François Ozon cooks up a twisty and destabilizing thriller where family ties remain the most mysterious ingredient of all.
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Discussion leader: Dr. John Alberti
Link to film trailer:
When Angela wants to have a baby, but finds her boyfriend Émile an unwilling participant, she goes to his friend Alfred, proving the lengths to which she’ll go to realize her dream. Festooned with enough eccentric musical moments to satisfy the most avant of gardists, including a Charles Aznavour song almost arbitrarily rocketing on and off the soundtrack and Michel Legrand’s pre-Umbrellas of Cherbourg score thundering into split-second breaks in dialogue, cinematic in-jokes galore, and plenty of anarchic humor, the legendary director Jean Luc Godard's A WOMAN IS A WOMAN is a cinephile’s dream film. A jeu d’esprit of the New Wave that won a jury prize from the Berlin Film Festival for its “originality, youth, audacity and impertinence,” while the enchanting Anna Karina (in her first major role) was named Best Actress.
