CURATOR CLAIRE DIAO ATTENDING
After a first season of French Films screened in Africa (Algeria, Senegal, Rwanda + Reunion Island) and a second season of African flms screened in France (13 movie theaters, 700 viewers), this third season of French Films travels across the US, France and Africa with a collection of films touching on the topic of “L’amour à la française” (French Love).
“Paris, ohlala” ! “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ?” Declaimed in the language of Molière, these sentences do not fail to impact when speaking of France abroad. Love is part of the French culture, and flmmakers emerging in France do not fail to deal with it. Through the sexual confusion and the male environment of Yohann Kouam’s The Return, through dance bodies and timidity in Jean-Charles Mbotti Malolo’s The Sense of Touch, through the complexity of traditional weddings in Zangro’s Destino and also through the diffculty to love that Alice Diop interrogates in Toward Tenderness, the short flms of this 3rd Season shake, move and amaze audiences by seizing a French--and universal--feeling.
The Return: It's been a year since his big brother left, and Willy, 15, can't wait for him to return. Willy thought he knew everything about Theo, but when he arrives back in the block, Willy discovers a secret about him...
Director(s): Yohann Kouam | Runtime: 22 min
The Sense of Touch: Chloe and Louis are deaf and mute. They are secretly in love but they don’t admit it. Their gestures substitute for words. They dance, each word is choreography.
Director(s): JC Mbotti Malolo | Runtime: 15 min
Destino: Two young guys from the neighborhood (Loïc and Mehdi) have set up a little business filming arabic wedding celebrations and then editing them in their mini van, their ‘audiovisual laboratory’. But when Mehdi starts to film the wedding of Leila, his pretty ex-girlfriend... Destiny happens.
Director(s): Zangro | Runtime: 26 min
Towards Tenderness: An intimate exploration of a masculine territory in a French suburb. Following a group of men’s vagrancy, we stride a universe where female bodies are nothing more than ghostly and virtual silhouettes.
Director(s): Alice Diop | Runtime: 40 min
CURATOR BIOGRAPHY
French-Burkinabè Cinema journalist specialized in African cinemas and French emerging filmmakers, Claire Diao is correspondent for Screen Africa (South Africa) and writes for SoFilm, Le Monde Afrique, Bondy Blog and Courrier International (blog L'Afrique en films). In 2015, she launched AWOTELE, a Panafrican online film critic magazine. She regularly curates and moderates cinema panels worldwide and is setting up a professional online platform to connect filmmakers and film festivals from Africa and the Diaspora.
PRESENTED WITH SUPPORT BY
This program is organized and supported by the Cultural services of the French embassy in New York and Chicago.