#MeToo, counterfeit cash and reproductive rights tackled at 2026 French Film Festival
The packed programme features Monica Bellucci, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Jean Gabin, plus the first film in 13 years from Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet
The French Film Festival UK has announced full details of its 34th edition, with screenings at more than 40 venues across the UK from Wednesday 4 November–Wednesday 9 December. Promising a suite of ‘award-winning films, compelling new voices and landmark classics,’ the celebration of French and francophone cinema includes big hitters at Cannes, searing documentary, pioneering animation, heralded classics, and a tribute to the many women who’ve helped make France’s film output world class.
One of the major highlights of the programme is All Of A Sudden, the latest feature from Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose leading actresses Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto shared the Best Actress award at Cannes. Also screening is Violette, the eagerly anticipated return to cinema of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director of Amélie, after a 13-year absence. The programme also features The Birthday Party, Léa Mysius’ unsettling thriller starring Monica Bellucci and Benoît Magimel, and The Money Maker, Jean-Paul Salomé’s historical crime drama about a Polish master counterfeiter.
Included in the Femmes First strand is Jeanne Herry’s Another Day, starring Adèle Exarchopoulos as a talented young actress confronting addiction and anxiety; Agnès Jaoui’s Crescendo, a drama about power, accountability and generational conflict in the world of opera, which riffs on the #MeToo movement; and Women On Trial (pictured above), which revisits the landmark 1972 case involving lawyer Gisèle Halimi and the fight for women’s reproductive rights in France. The strand also features A Woman’s Life, starring Léa Drucker as a dedicated hospital surgeon whose carefully ordered existence begins to unravel.
The Panorama strand will explore the breadth of French filmmaking, taking in literary adaptations and historical epics, as well as crime, fantasy and comedy. Included in the strand is Rays And Shadows, Xavier Giannoli’s sweeping examination of collaboration and propaganda during the German Occupation; When The Night Falls, directed by Daniel Auteuil, which recounts the largely overlooked rescue of Jewish children from the Vénissieux internment camp in 1942; and The Phantom Of The Opera, which relocates Gaston Leroux’s celebrated story to contemporary Paris.
Legendary actor Jean Gabin will take centre stage in the Classics strand, with Henri Verneuil’s stylish crime film Any Number Can Win, co-starring Alain Delon, and Jean Grémillon’s atmospheric maritime drama Stormy Waters offer audiences the chance to rediscover Gabin’s extraordinary screen presence.
As well as documentaries and animation, filmgoers will also be given the chance to play catch up with a selection of films from previous editions of the festival.
Festival director Richard Mowe said: ‘With the phenomenal success of the two De Gaulle films at home and abroad, French-language cinema has been on a roll as never before over the last few months. Its richness, diversity and sheer originality is reflected in the official selection of the one and only French Film Festival UK which proudly is made in Scotland but shared across the nations. The films all speak for themselves: there is nothing left to say apart from our rallying cry over the decades: Vive le cinéma!’
Beyond the French Film Festival, the central belt is playing host to a large number of film festivals throughout winter, including the Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival (currently running until Saturday 7 November), Scottish Queer International Film Festival (currently running until Saturday 24 October), International Film Festival Glasgow (Thursday 10–Sunday 15 November), and the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival (currently running until Thursday 5 November).
French Film Festival UK, various venues across the UK, Wednesday 4 November–Wednesday 9 December.