Irish Film Institute programmer David O’Mahony introduces this year's installment of the IFI's popular French Film Festival, which kicks off tonight.
Each year France produces over 200 films, a prodigious output that marks it as one of Europe’s, if not the world’s, leading exporters of film. Its film culture remains brilliantly diverse and endlessly creative, and every November the Irish Film Institute is proud to present the finest cinema that our European neighbour has to offer.
With 38 screenings of 26 films across 12 days, the annual IFI French Film Festival is no small undertaking. When an audience sits down to watch a film at the festival, it’s the culmination of months of careful planning and organising. There are many challenges in putting the festival together – sometimes you can’t get the film you really want, and other times you have too many films, forcing you to make tough decisions as to what goes and what stays. Getting all the films to Dublin in time for the festival is a behind the scenes headache for the programming team as they are often screening in other festivals across the globe, so the logistics can be tight.
An important part of programming for any season or festival here at IFI is ploughing through a long list of titles that are up for consideration. We know the IFI audiences are discerning so we need to cast our nets wide and try to view as many films as possible in order to present a fine selection of the best each year has to offer. It’s difficult to put a figure on the number of films that don’t make the final programme, but most of the films that don’t are rejected on the basis that they just don’t fit the schedule.
Gérard Depardieu and Benoît Poelvoorde in Saint Amour, screening at the IF French Film Festival
Programming for this event, the largest festival in the IFI’s calendar, is a year-round process, but the process gets underway in earnest with the Berlin Film Festival in February, which is where I saw the hilarious Saint Amour from festival favorites Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern. The primary opportunity for seeing new French cinema is still the Cannes Film Festival, and a significant number of titles in this year’s programme were launched at Cannes: Anne Fontaine’s The Innocents, The Stopover, Slack Bay, Sacha Wolff’s Mercenary, and The Death of Louis XIV starring legendary actor Jean-Pierre Léaud to name but a few.
It’s always very difficult to pick out stand-outs in the programme, but probably my favourite film in the festival this year is André Téchiné’s Being 17, which has stayed with me since I saw it in Berlin back in February. I’ll also recommend News From Planet Mars and Into The Forest together as we have the director and screenwriter for both - Dominik Moll and Gilles Marchand – in Dublin to present the films and take questions afterwards. The Stopover is a highly original exploration of post-traumatic stress disorder as it effects women in the military; it’s a very compelling film from the Coulin sisters, who are also at the IFI to present their film.
Undoubtedly, the most fun and rewarding thing about any festival is talking to the audience after the screenings, getting a sense of what films they enjoy. And bringing international guests to audiences to talk about their films and take questions - facilitating that access for IFI audiences to the talent is a real pleasure.
The 2016 IFI French Film Festival begins tonight - tickets for the festival are available here.
