The Tournées French Film Festival will be held at Judson College in Marion, Ala., from April 13 through April 17.
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 five recent French-language films on campus.
The films selected for the festival and their screening times are as follows:
Sunday, April 13 at 7:00 pm: MONSIEUR LAZHAR
Monday, April 14 at 7:00 pm: LE BONHEUR D’ELZA
Tuesday, April 15 at 1:00 pm: LE CHAT DU RABBIN
Wednesday, April 16 at 8:00 pm: AMOUR
Thursday, April 17 at 1:00 pm: LE HÉRISSON
All screenings will take place in the Adams-Armstrong Lecture Hall in the Lowder Science Building at Judson College. Admission is free.
Dr. Chris Hokanson, English DepartmentHead, said: “This year we are thrilled to be able to host on campus the director of Le Bonheur d’Elza, Mariette Monpierre. She will lead a post-screening discussion of her film on Monday night and a post-screening discussion after Tuesday afternoon’s film on how to make and produce an independent film and about her experiences as a woman breaking into the film industry.”
Monpierre’s film, which has won several awards, including the Paul Robeson Award, is the first feature length film by a female director from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, an overseas region of France. It tells the story of Elza, a young woman who returns to Guadeloupe from Paris in search of the father who rejected her and her mother.
Monsieur Lazhar, directed by Philippe Falardeau, is a moving exploration of education and grief in which an Algerian immigrant to Quebec interacts with his new students following the suicide of their previous teacher.
Le Chat du Rabbin, directed by Antoine Delesvaux and Joann Sfar, is set in 1920s Algiers and tells the story of a philosophical, talking cat who is preparing for its bar mitzvah and asking probing questions about its faith. Le Chat du Rabbin won the 2012 César Award for best animated film.
Amour, the 2012 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language film, by director Michael Haneke, examines the lives of octogenarians, Georges and Anne, retired music teachers in Paris who must face the difficulties of aging and caregiving.
Mona Achache’s film, Le Hérisson, an adaptation of the best-selling novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary, tells the story of Paloma, a morbid girl bored with her bourgeois life who plans to kill herself on her next birthday until she befriends a host of eccentric characters in her Parisian apartment building.
This is the third year that Judson College has hosted the Tournées Festival, which over the last 18 years has been held at over 350 American universities and has made it possible for over 450,000 students to discover French-language films.