“This trailblazing festival gives us an opportunity, in this globalised world of content, to present the sheer diversity of French cinema, and since it began, it has helped a huge number of talents, such as Alice Winocour, Guillaume Canet, Louis Garrel and Robin Campillo, to break out.”

“That gives the films the chance to reach a wider, and notably younger, audience and to attract a vast community of international film buffs. Incidentally, last year’s edition broke a record, with 200 territories involved.” At a press conference, Gilles Pélisson and Daniela Elstner, respectively president and managing director of Unifrance, did not attempt to hide their satisfaction or their ambitions for MyFrenchFilmFestival, the world’s first festival for French-language film held entirely online, which is back for its 14th edition, organised by Unifrance from 19 January-19 February. The event, which has racked up more than 92 million views since its creation (14 million of which were for last year’s iteration), will be accessible on MyFrenchFilmFestival.com as well as on more than 80 platforms.

The nine features in competition comprise films that boast seals of approval from Berlin (The Beast in the Jungle [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Patric Chiha
scheda film] by Patric Chiha and The Lost Boys [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Zeno Graton
scheda film] by Belgium’s Zeno Graton), Cannes (The Green Perfume [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Nicolas Pariser and the documentary Polaris [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ainara Vera
scheda film] by Spaniard Ainara Vera) and San Sebastián (Spare Keys [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Jeanne Aslan and Paul Saintillan), not to mention the animated flick No Dogs or Italians Allowed [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Alain Ughetto
scheda film] by Alain Ughetto (Jury Prize at Annecy), My Sole Desire [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Lucie Borleteau, Super Drunk by Bastien Milheau and Junkyard Dog [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Jean-Baptiste Durand.

As is customary, a top-notch jury of filmmakers (who will hand out the Grand Prix, endowed with €15,000, to the winning feature film) has been assembled, including France’s Katell Quillévéré, Austria’s Marie Kreutzer, Brazil’s Lillah Halla, Morocco’s Faouzi Bensaïd and Italy’s Pierfrancesco Favino. Three other prizes will be given out by the audience, the international press jury and, for the first time, a jury of international content creators.

Of note out of competition is the Canadian feature Stampede by Joëlle Desjardins Paquette and, in homage to the late Jane Birkin, Jane B. for Agnès V. by Agnès Varda in the heritage-film section, not to mention 15 shorts (nine of which will screen in competition).

The short films will be accessible free of charge around the world, while the features can be watched individually for €1.99 (or by paying €7.99 for a bundle). The festival will be entirely free of charge in Africa, in the Spanish-speaking territories of Latin America, in the Middle East, in South-East Asia, in Russia and the CIS countries, in Ukraine and in the Baltic states (excluding Latvia). The entire batch of films will be subtitled for the whole world in 11 languages: German, English, Arabic, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Mandarin Chinese and Ukrainian. Many of the movies will also be available in several other languages on certain partner platforms: Bahasa, Estonian, Georgian, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Polish, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese.