10/10/2005

Return of the French Film Party, which takes place in Portugal throughout the month of October. This non-competitive event, organised for 6 years now by the French-Portuguese Institute, extends this time to four cities (Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Faro) to present 29 feature films directed by French filmmakers or co-produced by French production companies.

The Party, whose eclectic programme, includes films already bought for local distribution (Cédric Klapisch's Les Poupées Ruses, Arnaud Desplechin's Kings and Queens [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Michael Haneke's Caché [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Margaret Menegoz
interview: Michael Haneke
film profile] or the Christian Carion's French candidate to the Oscars' running, Merry Christmas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Christian Carion
interview: Christophe Rossignon
film profile]; all of them already bought by Atalanta), acts, too, as a promotional event for emerging directors or work as yet unknown. So, the Portuguese public will have the chance to discover the recent films by Costa-Gavras (Le Couperet) and by Anne Fontaine (In his hands [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Jean-Paul Salomé's first feature film (Douches Froides [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), the documentary The March of the Penguins [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Luc Jacquet and the story of an actress rediscovering love Quand la mer monte, directed by Yolande Moreau and Gilles Porte. Combining art-house films with more mainstream projects, the programme also reveals the former student film, about the intimacy of a couple, by Patrice Chéreau (Gabrielle [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]), a film about Mitterrand's last days (The Walker of the Champ de Mars by Robert Guédiguian), the adventures of the thief Arsène Lupin (by Jean-Paul Salomé) and the ffith feature film directed by Michel Piccoli, Ce n'est pas tout à fait la vie dont j'avais rêvé. But, because French film are not always in French, the programme also includes the screenings of Kilomètre Zero [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by the Kurd director Hiner Saleem and the second feature by Spanish Benito Zambrano, Habana Blues [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

In parallel to this programme in 4 cities, the national Film Archives has also organised a tribute to Fanny Ardant. Instead of an extensive retrospective of her films, the actress suggested a double screening featuring one film in which she participated and another one she is simply fond of. On the 27th October, the Film Archive will screen in the presence of the actress, Franco Zefirelli's Callas Forever [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Once we were warriors that Lee Tamahori directed in 1994.