The Tournées French Film Festival will be held at Judson College in Marion, AL from April 6-15th.
Judson College’s Art Department and English Department received a nationally competitive collegiate grant from the French American Cultural Exchange (in partnership with the cultural services of the French Embassy) for the acquisition and screening of six recent French-language films on campus.
The films selected for the festival and their screening times are as follows:
Monday, April 06 at 1:00 pm: Ernest et Célestine
Tuesday, April 07 at 6:30 pm: Copie Conforme
Wednesday, April 08 at 8:00 pm: 2 Automnes, 3 Hivers
Thursday, April 09 at 6:30 pm: À Bout De Souffle
Sunday, April 13 at 6:30 pm: À Perdre La Raison
Tuesday, April 15 at 6:30 pm: L’Image Manquante
All screenings will take place in the Adams-Armstrong Lecture Hall in the Lowder Science Building at Judson College. Admission is free.
Speaking on behalf of the festival organizers, Jamie Adams, Head of the Art Department, said: “We are thrilled to be hosting the Tournées French Film Festival for a fourth consecutive year, and I feel quite certain that everyone who attends will be able to find something that speaks to them. This year’s festival has a little bit of everything: a quirky romance, a beloved animated film, a political documentary, a tragic story ripped from recent headlines, and even a historic masterpiece that helped launch the French New Wave.”
Ernest et Célestine, directed by Philippe Falardeau, is an animated film depicting a world in which the Bears live above ground in their cities and the rodents live in their underground ones in mutual fear and hate of each other. However, Celestine, an apprentice mouse dentist, finds at least momentary common cause with Ernest, a poor street Bear musician, that gets them rejected from both their respective worlds. In spite of this misfortune, the exiles find a growing friendship between themselves as their respective talents flower because of it. Despite this, their quietly profound challenge to the founding prejudices of their worlds cannot be ignored as the authorities track them down. When that happens, Ernest and Celestine must stand up for their love in the face of such bigotry and achieve the impossible.
For his playful and provocative romantic drama, Copie Conforme, directed by Abbas Kiarostami, Juliette Binoche won the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Binoche plays a gallery owner living in a Tuscan village who attends a lecture by a British author on authenticity and fakery in art. Afterward, she invites him on a tour of the countryside, during which he is mistaken for her husband. They keep up the pretense and continue on their afternoon out, discussing love, life and art and increasingly behaving like a long-married couple. But are they play-acting on a whim or is there more to their seemingly new relationship than meets the eye?
In 2 Automnes, 3 Hivers, directed by Borja Cobeaga, Arman is 33 and ready to make a change, starting with a run in the park. When he literally bumps into the slightly-cynical-but-nevertheless-lovely Amélie on the jogging path, he’s dead-set on making a connection with her. As a bit of contrived fate brings them together, Arman’s best friend Benjamin suffers an unexpected stroke, relegating him to the hospital for weeks where he falls for his doting young physical therapist. Over the course of two autumns and three winters, Arman, Amélie and Benjamin share the incidental moments, unexpected accidents, unconventional love stories and unforgettable memories that will define who they are.
À Bout De Souffle is the film that burst director Jean-Luc Godard onto the film scene in 1960. A masterpiece of the French New Wave, this jazzy, free-form homage to various American film genres tells the story of a small-time thief who steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he reunites with a hip American journalism student and attempts to persuade her to run away with him to Italy.
À Perdre La Raison is a psychological drama directed by Joachim Lafosse based on a true-crime committed in Belgium. Murielle and Mounir love each other passionately. Ever since he was a boy, the young man has been living with Doctor Pinget who provides him with a comfortable life. When Mounir and Murielle decide to marry and have children, the couple’s dependence on the doctor becomes excessive. Murielle finds herself caught up in an unhealthy emotional climate that insidiously leads the family towards a tragic outcome.
L’Image Manquante is a Cambodian-French documentary film directed by Rithy Panh about the Khmer Rouge. Panh uses clay figures, archival footage and his narration to recreate the atrocities that Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979. It was screened at the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it won the top prize.
This is the fourth year that Judson College has hosted the Tournées Festival, which over the last 18 years has been held at over 350 American colleges and universities and has made it possible for over 450,000 students to discover French-language films. We look forward to enjoying these films with you!