Tickets For The 2013 Alliance French Film Festival On Sale

Haute Cuisine (Les saveurs du palais), an appetising comedy based on the extraordinary true story of Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch, private chef to President François Mitterrand, has been selected to launch the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, commencing on the 5th March, 2013.

Screening courtesy of Transmission Films and starring César award-winning actress, Catherine Frot, Haute Cuisine tells the tale of Hortense Laborie who, upon her appointment as personal chef to the President at the Elysée Palace, is faced with the challenge of creating culinary art in a world of political intrigue. It has also been announced that Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch will be a guest-of-honour at the Festival’s opening night in Sydney.

Closing the festival will be Marcel Carné’s 1945 classic, Children of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis), a sweeping, period romance generally acknowledged as one of the greatest French films of all time, which has been meticulously restored from the original camera negative.

 

The 2013 Festival will screen a banquet of 43 features and documentaries with courses to satisfy the most discerning cinematic tastes. Artistic Director, Emmanuelle Denavit-Feller, has selected the most critically acclaimed and entertaining films to emerge from France’s thriving movie industry throughout the last 12 months, which will be showcased across eight distinct categories encompassing such themes as the universality of love, art and cinema, suspense, tales from our past, stories beyond fiction and inspiring women.

The 24th Festival’s extensive highlights, many of which have received 2013 César Award nominations, include Laurence Anyways, After May, Augustine, The Big Night, Camille Rewinds, Ernest & Celestine, Farewell My Queen, FEU by Christian Louboutin, Happiness Never Comes Alone, In the House, The Invisibles, Journal de France, Louise Wimmer, The Man Who Laughs, Our Children, Renoir, Sister, Thérèse Desqueyroux, and Marcel Carné’s 1945 masterpiece, Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis), which will screen on closing night via a gorgeously restored version.
 

AFTER MAY (Après Mai)

Directed by Olivier Assayas and starring Lola Créton, Clément Metayer & Félix Armand - A loosely autobiographical and evocative drama about a young French artist caught-up in a whirlwind of politics, art and sex in the wake of the electrifying events of May 1968.

ANOTHER WOMAN’S LIFE (La vie d’une autre)

Directed by Sylvie Testud and starring Juliette Binoche, Mathieur Kassovitz & Aure Atika - This charm-filled romantic comedy about second chances tells the story of twenty-something Marie (Binoche), who meets and falls madly in love with Paul (Mathieu Kassovitz). After spending the night with him, Marie wakes to find she has skipped a decade of her life!  She is now married to Paul with a son and a successful career. What happened?  Has she deliberately forgotten her missing years? If so, why?

FLY ME TO THE MOON (Un plan parfait)

Directed by Pascal Chaumeil and starring: Diane Kruger & Dany Boon - Isabelle has a successful career and a loving boyfriend, but her family is plagued with a curse: every first marriage ends in divorce. So when her long-term boyfriend, Pierre, proposes, there’s only one thing to do. Isabelle decides she needs to find a total stranger, marry him and divorce him – all before her actual wedding!

IN THE HOUSE (Dans la maison)

Director: Francois Ozon and starring: Fabrice Luchini, Kristin Scott Thomas & Emmanuelle Seigner - A disillusioned high-school literature teacher finds his passion for teaching re-awakened, when he reads a story by one of his students, that is both compelling, yet voyeuristic. His subsequently offers the boy private tuition, but as the line between his new stories and reality blur, he starts to wonder just whom he has let into his house?

THÉRÈSE DESQUEYROUX (Thérèse Desqueyroux)

Directed by Claude Miller and starring Audrey Tautou, Gilles Lellouche, Anaïs Demoustier & Catherine Arditi - Based on François Mauriac’s famous novel, famed director Claude Miller’s final film is an elegant drama that tells the story of Thérèse (Audrey Tautou), an intelligent young woman, married off to Bernard Desqueyroux (Gilles Lellouche), the chauvinistic son of another local bourgeois dynasty. Thérèse’s avant-garde ideas clash with the local conventions, which lead her to dream of escaping her staid existence, at almost any cost.

THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (L’homme qui rit)

Directed by Jean-Pierre Améris and starring Gérard Depardieu, Marc-André Grondin & Emmanuelle Seigner - Based on the acclaimed Victor Hugo novel, The Man Who Laughs tells the story of Gwynplaine, a disfigured man with a scarred mouth, which gives him a permanent smile. But on discovering he is the heir to a fortune, he becomes seduced by a life of luxury, forgetting the two people who have always loved him for himself.

THE INVISIBLES (Journal de France)

Directed by Sébastien Lifshitz - This documentary explores the lives of the so-called “invisibles” – homosexual men and women born in the interwar period (1919 to 1939).  Eleven people from a range of backgrounds share their experiences re struggling to live openly within society, with all the joy, love, sex, homophobia and aggression they have experienced throughout their long lives.

National dates and venues for the 2013 festival are:

Sydney: 5-24 March – Chauvel Cinema, Palace Norton Street, Palace Verona and Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace

Melbourne: 6-24 March – Palace Balwyn, Palace Brighton Bay, Palace Cinema Como, Palace Westgarth and Kino Cinemas

Canberra: 7-26 March – Palace Electric Cinema

Brisbane: 14 March – 4 April – Palace Barracks Cinemas and Palace Centro Cinemas

Adelaide: 19 March – 7 April – Palace Nova Eastend Cinemas

Perth: 19 March – 7 April – Cinema Paradiso, Luna on SX and Windsor Cinema

For booking and session details, visit http://www.affrenchfilmfestival.org/