We’re delighted to support once again the Glasgow Film Festival 2020! Discover the selection of French & Francophone movies you can’t miss this year!

Les Miserables
Tuesday 3 & Wednesday 4 March

Winner of the Prix du Jury at 2019’s Cannes Film Festival and Oscar-nominated for this year’s Best International Feature Film, Ladj Ly’s powerful debut is a pulse-racing tale of social injustice within Montfermeil. Three plainclothes policemen work the beat through the Paris suburbs, but their unorthodox tactics threaten to inflame tensions within a variety of local youth gangs. Racial and ethnic tensions reach boiling point in this searing drama, inspired by the French riots that ripped through the country in 2005. A tour-de-force that will stand alongside La Haine as a classic of contemporary French Cinema.

The Truth
Tuesday 3 & Wednesday 4 March

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first film made outside Japan boasts a dream team cast and a typically wise understanding of human nature and family ties. Catherine Deneuve is on top form as Fabienne, an imperious, old school movie diva who has just published far from reliable memoirs that depict her as a devoted mother. Her estranged daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche) arrives at the family home in Paris with her husband Hank (Ethan Hawke) and their daughter. The stage is set for confrontation, home truths and long nurtured resentments as everyone edges towards a version of the truth.

The Translators
Friday 28 & Saturday 29 February

Régis Roinsard (Populaire) has devised a fiendishly clever whodunnit with a fantastic all-star international cast. To ensure absolute secrecy for the global publication of a bestseller, nine skilled translators are invited to a remote location. They are given a number of pages to translate each day. There is no contact with the outside world. Then the publisher receives a blackmail demand, threatening to release the manuscript on line. Discovering who is behind this and who is pulling the strings becomes the basis of a stylish, entertaining thriller.

Deerskin
Friday 6 & Saturday 7 March 

Clothes maketh the man in Deerskin, a delirious, unhinged delight from director Quentin Dupieux. Jean Dujardin’s Georges spends a small fortune on a vintage, Italian made, 100% deerskin jacket. The seller throws in a digital camera with the purchase. Georges takes refuge in a remote country hotel and declares himself to be a filmmaker. Soon, he is creating his masterwork; an epic account of his war on inadequate jackets and the fools who choose to wear them. There are echoes of Peeping Tom and Dead Of Night in this expertly tailored, winningly offbeat dark comic gem.

And the Birds Rained Down
Sunday 1 & Friday 6 March

Louise Archambault’s beautiful adaptation of the bestselling novel is a poignant tale of love, loss and the price of independence. Three elderly men live off the grid in woodland cabins in the Quebec countryside. Their lifestyle is threatened by age and infirmity. Gertrude (Andrée Lachapelle) has spent her adult life unjustly locked up in an institution. Liberated by a sympathetic nephew, she is entrusted to these sympathetic strangers who grant her a first chance at life. Expertly acted by its veteran cast this is a tale full of warmth, understanding and compassion.

Marona’s Fantastic Tale
Tuesday 3 & Wednesday 4 March

It’s a dog’s life in Anca Damian’s utterly charming animated feature. Using cut-outs, 2D and 3D techniques, she has created a film filled with character and emotion. A dog looks back on a life filled with unconditional devotion to its passing owners. The final puppy in a litter of nine, our heroine is an inky bundle of black and white who becomes a companion to an acrobat, a construction worker and a little girl who calls her Marona.

Our Lady of the Nile
Monday 2 & Tuesday 3 March

Atiq Rahimi’s adaptation of Scholastique Mukasonga’s bestselling novel brilliantly blends the personal and the political. In the Rwanda of 1973, a Belgian-run Catholic boarding school prides itself on being an ‘institute for the elite’. Prejudice still flourishes among these privileged girls as anti-Tutsi sentiments are fanned into bitter conflict. Confronting racism, tribalism, coming of age and the legacy of colonialism, Our Lady of the Nile is a haunting, beautifully crafted immersion in events that foreshadowed the 1994 genocide. The cast of young Rwandan actors are all exceptional.

Olivia
Tuesday 3 March

Famed for her elegant literary adapations, director Jacqueline Audry worked at the front rank of post-War French cinema. Hailed as a ‘landmark of lesbian representation’, Olivia is set in a girls finishing school near Fountainbleau run by Julie (Edwige Feuillère) and her jealous, highly strung partner Cara (Simone Simon). New girl Olivia (Marie-Claire Olivia) quickly falls under the spell of the beguiling Julie but her declaration of undying love increases tensions in an already fraught household. A once controversial melodrama that sparkles afresh in this beautiful restoration.

In the Name of the Land
Thu 27 February & Sat 7 March

A box-office sensation in France, In the Name of The Land offers a deeply personal, desperately moving story from director Édouard Bergeon based on his own life growing up on a farm. In 1979, 25 year-old Pierre (a never better Guillaume Canet) returns home to France from a ranch in Wyoming. He marries Claire (Veerle Baetens from The Broken Circle Breakdown) and takes over the family farm. 20 years later, they have two children and a demanding business. Facing mounting debts and changing practices, their bright sunny future has become a nightmare.

Beyond the Horizon
Saturday 7 & Sunday 8 March

The summer of 1976 is fraught with change for 13-year-old Gus in this touching adaptation of the Roland Buti novel. Gus is spending the holidays on his parents’ farm, helping his father, reading comic books and running wild. His mother grows increasingly distant following the sudden arrival of her free-spirited friend Cecile. Their passionate affair leaves his father to fight for the farm’s survival and Gus is forced to grow up quickly as his world starts to fall apart.