The 26th edition of the French Film Festival in Romania will take place between June 1-12, 2022, in Bucharest and in ten other cities across the country: Cluj-Napoca, Iași, Timișoara, Brăila, Brașov, Constanța, Sfântu Gheorghe, Sibiu, Suceava and Târgu Mureș.

The festival in Bucharest will open with a special event hosted by Creart-Teatrelli, where a Nicecream.fm DJ and the French band Labotanique will take the stage.

This year’s theme is called “Nos yeux grand ouverts” / “Our eyes wide open”, and revolves around an essential element in the art of cinema: watching. The audience is invited to discover, through the films in the program, the worldviews of their directors. The theme also fosters empathy for the destiny of each nation, especially in the current climate.

This year’s selection showcases 27 feature and short films, organized into four sections that reflect the topics of the festival theme:

The Young Talents Competition – Feature Film – highlights the emerging voices in French cinema. Five debut features will compete for the Audience Award: a EUR 1,000 fellowship offered by the French Institute to the director of the winning film, as well as financial support granted by TV5Monde to the Romanian distributor who chooses to take on the film and distribute it in local cinemas.

Among the films presented in this section are Bruno Reidal (dir. Vincent Le Por) and Les Amours d’Anaïs / Anaïs in Love (dir. Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet), which are part of this year’s Semaine de la Critique program in Cannes.

The Young Talents Competition – Short Film – includes five productions that have had an outstanding festival run.

Panorama – Here, the audience will have the opportunity to see some of the most popular titles in recent French cinema, such as Viens je t’emmène / Nobody’s Hero (dir. Alain Guiraudie) and L’événement / Happening (dir. Audrey Diwan), winner of the Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice Film Festival.

Regard vers l’Europe – celebrates filmmaking cooperation in Europe and France’s key role in this context. The program comprises eight prominent French-European co-productions, representative of each decade starting with the 1960s. Among them are Marco Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe / The Big Feast and Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession. The selection also includes R.M.N., the latest film by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, which marks another Romania-France collaboration.

The special guest of this section is French-Tunisian producer Saïd Ben Saïd, who will come to Bucharest to present Paul Verhoeven’s Elle, winner of the 2017 César Award for Best Film. The producer will also hold a masterclass.

In addition to the film program, the festival is organizing a training session in partnership with Le LABA, a center of expertise specializing in European funding. The workshop is dedicated to both established and emerging producers who want to improve their knowledge on European funding systems and develop a successful application for the project contests organized within the Creative Europe MEDIA program.

On June 11, UnTeatru Open-Air in Bucharest will host a cine-concert. Coeur fidèle, directed 100 years ago by Jean Epstein, will be screened to the accompaniment of accordionist Virgile Goller.

Tickets are available on Eventbook. For more details, visit the French Film Festival website.

Melissa Antonescu

Writer, photographer and videographer. For Films in Frame she writes news about the latest happenings in the film world and brings to the readers' attention the productions that can be seen at the cinema. When she's not writing articles, she's photographing people in a small studio or searching for new cake recipes.