THIS EVENT HAS ENDED
Sun November 10, 2013

French Cinema Now

SEE EVENT DETAILS
at CLAY THEATRE (see times)
This year’s cinema à la Française traverses the globe, from the wilds of Lapland and rural Quebec to a stately family mansion in Italy. Returning French Cinema Now filmmakers including Axelle Ropert and Alain Guiraudie join SF International Film Festival brethren Nicolas Philibert and Sébastien Betbeder for a stellar line-up of the best in current Francophone films.

Opening Night Party

Join the San Francisco Film Society and TV5 Monde in celebrating new works of international francophone cinema at French Cinema Now opening night with FIPRESCI prize winning director Sebastian Betbeder’s film 2 Autumns, 3 Winters. A limited number of tickets are available for a post-screening reception at 1300 On Fillmore (1300 Fillmore at Eddy). Join us for French inspired bites and sponsored wine from 9:15–11:00 pm.

2 Autumns, 3 Winters

Sébastien Betbeder, whose debut Nights with Theodore was the winner of the FIPRESCI prize at this spring’s SFIFF, returns with this offbeat story of thirty-somethings navigating whatever crisis comes between quarter- and mid-life. Arman and Benjamin are friends from art school. Arman first meets Amélie when he bumps into her, literally, while jogging. His casual attempts to meet her again fail until one night when dramatic circumstances reunite them, intertwining the lives of all three. Playfully told, despite the serious nature of some of its events, 2 Autumns, 3 Winters applies indie charm to the vagaries of life.

A Castle in the Sky

In her third film, director, actress and cowriter Valeria Bruni Tedeschi continues to mine her own experience to portray the lives and crises of the bourgeoisie. Here she plays Louise, an actress tiring of her profession and longing for motherhood. When she runs into younger actor Nathan (VBT’s former real-life beau Louis Garrel) on a film set, he pursues her relentlessly, but he’s not particularly interested in fathering a child. As she has done in her prior work, Bruni Tedeschi presents the problems of the rich and famous without apology but with refreshing nuance and humor, and surrounds herself with a formidable cast.

Rendezvous in Kiruna

Ernest is working on a major architectural project at his firm when he receives an unwanted call from Sweden. His biological son whom he has never met has died in a boating accident and, with the mother away, Ernest must come to Lapland and identify the body. Although he protests that he has no emotional connection to the dead youth, he ends up on a long drive north during which he picks up Magnus, a young Swedish man on his way to visit his grandfather. Director Anna Novion’s interest in Bergman and her own Swedish heritage add a quiet flair to this story of unavoidable emotional ties.

Michael Kohlhaas

Arnaud des Pallières’ austere and visually splendid medieval-era drama tells the story of Michael Kohlhaas (Mads Mikkelsen), a horse trader who is one day forced by a ruthless Baron to give over two of his prize steeds. When the nobleman’s subsequent mistreatment of the horses is revealed, Kohlhaas demands justice. But when a nobility-favoring court rules against him, and the Baron and his henchmen commit other hideous acts, Kohlhaas turns to the sword and crossbow for his revenge. Though the themes and moral conflicts will be familiar to Game of Thrones fans, the remarkable style recalls Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac.

Miss and the Doctors

With the same playful humanism she exhibited in The Wolberg Family (FCN 2009), Axelle Ropert’s latest film details the romantic and professional travails of sibling bachelor doctors Boris (Cédric Kahn) and Dimitri (Laurent Stocker). Attending to a precocious diabetic girl, Boris finds himself interested in her mother, a bartender named Judith (Louise Bourgoin). When Dimitri expresses similar feelings—“I hope there’s a second Judith,” he tells Boris—this offbeat love triangle is set in motion. With serious issues of the heart and the human body at stake, Miss and the Doctors manages to remain wonderfully lighthearted and buoyant.

Suzanne

Told in elliptical fragments that span 25 years, Katell Quillévéré’s follow-up to her debut Love Like Poison (FCN 2011) is the story of a woman and the effects of her irrepressible passions on those around her. We first meet Suzanne as a girl, living with her sister and widowed truck-driver father, but quickly move to the girls’ teenage years and the news that Suzanne is pregnant and will keep the baby—just the first bombshell that this mercurial woman will drop on her family. The dramatic twists and turns of their lives are presented in non-judgmental fashion and elevated by sharp performances from the film’s leads.

Stranger by the Lake

Alain Guiraudie’s analysis of gay male desire is set entirely in the environs of a cruising spot on the shore of a picturesque French lake, where men prowl the nearby woods for hook-ups. On the first day, Franck spots a devilishly handsome man named Michel but keeps missing his chance. Later, he sees the dreamboat do something terrible, but instead of running away Franck throws himself into Michel’s arms. Guiraudie tackles weighty subject matter—the intermingling of danger and desire, physical versus intellectual engagement, and the nature of intimacy—with a playful sensibility and striking visual style. Note: This is a sexually explicit film.

House of Radio

Master documentarian Nicolas Philibert’s latest takes a delightful and surprisingly humorous look at public radio, French style. Inside an unusual round building in Paris is Radio France, comprised of several premiere stations. Luckily for us, these bustling offices are full of great characters both known (Umberto Eco in for an on-air interview) and unknown (a news manager who gleefully sorts through grisly news briefs, the director of a radio drama, a telephone operator who screens for a call-in show). Mixed in with the quiz shows, live musical performances and sports reporting, they form the fabric of a beautifully observed and pleasurable view of a public institution and beloved medium.

Vic+Flo Saw a Bear

At 61 and newly released from jail, Victoria (Pierrette Robitaille) is trying to start over. Laying low at the home of her paralyzed uncle Émile, she’s visited by her former cellmate and younger lover Florence (Romane Bohringer), who wants to move in. With their days bordering on the mundane—driving around the isolated countryside in a golf cart or splashing about in a wading pool—Flo becomes frustrated at their hemmed-in existence and their bucolic life together is threatened. Upending viewer expectations with surprising tonal shifts, director Denis Côté (Curling) memorably reinvents the romantic drama genre.

Bastards

Claire Denis’ troubled and troubling new film, highlighted by Agnès Godard’s masterful cinematography and Stuart Staples’ (of Tindersticks) evocative score, begins with rain and death and rarely lets up from there. For reasons at first mysterious, a sea captain named Marco Silvestri (Vincent Lindon) arrives in Paris and rents an empty apartment. Living directly downstairs are business tycoon Edouard Laporte (Denis regular Michel Subor) and his mistress Raphaëlle (Chiara Mastroianni), whose lives will intersect with Marco’s in dark and devastating ways. Denis’ latest is an angry and upsetting film, detailing a world where money and the power it wields can have poisonous and far-reaching effects.
This year’s cinema à la Française traverses the globe, from the wilds of Lapland and rural Quebec to a stately family mansion in Italy. Returning French Cinema Now filmmakers including Axelle Ropert and Alain Guiraudie join SF International Film Festival brethren Nicolas Philibert and Sébastien Betbeder for a stellar line-up of the best in current Francophone films.

Opening Night Party

Join the San Francisco Film Society and TV5 Monde in celebrating new works of international francophone cinema at French Cinema Now opening night with FIPRESCI prize winning director Sebastian Betbeder’s film 2 Autumns, 3 Winters. A limited number of tickets are available for a post-screening reception at 1300 On Fillmore (1300 Fillmore at Eddy). Join us for French inspired bites and sponsored wine from 9:15–11:00 pm.

2 Autumns, 3 Winters

Sébastien Betbeder, whose debut Nights with Theodore was the winner of the FIPRESCI prize at this spring’s SFIFF, returns with this offbeat story of thirty-somethings navigating whatever crisis comes between quarter- and mid-life. Arman and Benjamin are friends from art school. Arman first meets Amélie when he bumps into her, literally, while jogging. His casual attempts to meet her again fail until one night when dramatic circumstances reunite them, intertwining the lives of all three. Playfully told, despite the serious nature of some of its events, 2 Autumns, 3 Winters applies indie charm to the vagaries of life.

A Castle in the Sky

In her third film, director, actress and cowriter Valeria Bruni Tedeschi continues to mine her own experience to portray the lives and crises of the bourgeoisie. Here she plays Louise, an actress tiring of her profession and longing for motherhood. When she runs into younger actor Nathan (VBT’s former real-life beau Louis Garrel) on a film set, he pursues her relentlessly, but he’s not particularly interested in fathering a child. As she has done in her prior work, Bruni Tedeschi presents the problems of the rich and famous without apology but with refreshing nuance and humor, and surrounds herself with a formidable cast.

Rendezvous in Kiruna

Ernest is working on a major architectural project at his firm when he receives an unwanted call from Sweden. His biological son whom he has never met has died in a boating accident and, with the mother away, Ernest must come to Lapland and identify the body. Although he protests that he has no emotional connection to the dead youth, he ends up on a long drive north during which he picks up Magnus, a young Swedish man on his way to visit his grandfather. Director Anna Novion’s interest in Bergman and her own Swedish heritage add a quiet flair to this story of unavoidable emotional ties.

Michael Kohlhaas

Arnaud des Pallières’ austere and visually splendid medieval-era drama tells the story of Michael Kohlhaas (Mads Mikkelsen), a horse trader who is one day forced by a ruthless Baron to give over two of his prize steeds. When the nobleman’s subsequent mistreatment of the horses is revealed, Kohlhaas demands justice. But when a nobility-favoring court rules against him, and the Baron and his henchmen commit other hideous acts, Kohlhaas turns to the sword and crossbow for his revenge. Though the themes and moral conflicts will be familiar to Game of Thrones fans, the remarkable style recalls Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac.

Miss and the Doctors

With the same playful humanism she exhibited in The Wolberg Family (FCN 2009), Axelle Ropert’s latest film details the romantic and professional travails of sibling bachelor doctors Boris (Cédric Kahn) and Dimitri (Laurent Stocker). Attending to a precocious diabetic girl, Boris finds himself interested in her mother, a bartender named Judith (Louise Bourgoin). When Dimitri expresses similar feelings—“I hope there’s a second Judith,” he tells Boris—this offbeat love triangle is set in motion. With serious issues of the heart and the human body at stake, Miss and the Doctors manages to remain wonderfully lighthearted and buoyant.

Suzanne

Told in elliptical fragments that span 25 years, Katell Quillévéré’s follow-up to her debut Love Like Poison (FCN 2011) is the story of a woman and the effects of her irrepressible passions on those around her. We first meet Suzanne as a girl, living with her sister and widowed truck-driver father, but quickly move to the girls’ teenage years and the news that Suzanne is pregnant and will keep the baby—just the first bombshell that this mercurial woman will drop on her family. The dramatic twists and turns of their lives are presented in non-judgmental fashion and elevated by sharp performances from the film’s leads.

Stranger by the Lake

Alain Guiraudie’s analysis of gay male desire is set entirely in the environs of a cruising spot on the shore of a picturesque French lake, where men prowl the nearby woods for hook-ups. On the first day, Franck spots a devilishly handsome man named Michel but keeps missing his chance. Later, he sees the dreamboat do something terrible, but instead of running away Franck throws himself into Michel’s arms. Guiraudie tackles weighty subject matter—the intermingling of danger and desire, physical versus intellectual engagement, and the nature of intimacy—with a playful sensibility and striking visual style. Note: This is a sexually explicit film.

House of Radio

Master documentarian Nicolas Philibert’s latest takes a delightful and surprisingly humorous look at public radio, French style. Inside an unusual round building in Paris is Radio France, comprised of several premiere stations. Luckily for us, these bustling offices are full of great characters both known (Umberto Eco in for an on-air interview) and unknown (a news manager who gleefully sorts through grisly news briefs, the director of a radio drama, a telephone operator who screens for a call-in show). Mixed in with the quiz shows, live musical performances and sports reporting, they form the fabric of a beautifully observed and pleasurable view of a public institution and beloved medium.

Vic+Flo Saw a Bear

At 61 and newly released from jail, Victoria (Pierrette Robitaille) is trying to start over. Laying low at the home of her paralyzed uncle Émile, she’s visited by her former cellmate and younger lover Florence (Romane Bohringer), who wants to move in. With their days bordering on the mundane—driving around the isolated countryside in a golf cart or splashing about in a wading pool—Flo becomes frustrated at their hemmed-in existence and their bucolic life together is threatened. Upending viewer expectations with surprising tonal shifts, director Denis Côté (Curling) memorably reinvents the romantic drama genre.

Bastards

Claire Denis’ troubled and troubling new film, highlighted by Agnès Godard’s masterful cinematography and Stuart Staples’ (of Tindersticks) evocative score, begins with rain and death and rarely lets up from there. For reasons at first mysterious, a sea captain named Marco Silvestri (Vincent Lindon) arrives in Paris and rents an empty apartment. Living directly downstairs are business tycoon Edouard Laporte (Denis regular Michel Subor) and his mistress Raphaëlle (Chiara Mastroianni), whose lives will intersect with Marco’s in dark and devastating ways. Denis’ latest is an angry and upsetting film, detailing a world where money and the power it wields can have poisonous and far-reaching effects.
read more
show less
   
EDIT OWNER
Owned by
{{eventOwner.email_address || eventOwner.displayName}}
New Owner

Update

EDIT EDIT
Date/Times:
CLAY THEATRE
2261 Fillmore St. , San Francisco, CA 94115

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA EVENTS CALENDAR

TODAY
27
SATURDAY
28
SUNDAY
29
MONDAY
1
The Best Events
Every Week in Your Inbox

Thank you for subscribing!

Edit Event Details

I am the event organizer



Your suggestion is required.



Your email is required.
Not valid email!

    Cancel
Great suggestion! We'll be in touch.
Event reviewed successfully.

Success!

Your event is now LIVE on SF STATION

COPY LINK TO SHARE Copied

or share on


See my event listing


Looking for more visibility? Reach more people with our marketing services