FROM ONE FEST TO ANOTHER
Cannes hits come to Cinemania
Anglophones have carte blanche to check out French-language movies at the 23rd Cinemania Film Festival.
The annual celebration of films from around “la francophonie,” almost all shown with English subtitles, presents 54 features, Nov. 2 to 12 at the Imperial Theatre, the Cinémathèque québécoise and Cinéma du Parc.
Among these are some of the biggest names in French cinema today, including — as has increasingly been the norm with Cinemania — a strong contingent of titles from this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Many of these films will get French-only releases in Montreal, so for English-speaking cinephiles, the fest is a rare chance to take in the cream of the current French crop without missing a line of dialogue.
“I see it as a window on francophone cinema and on the francophone world,” said Guilhem Caillard, who took over Cinemania’s general director duties from event founder and president Maidy Teitelbaum in 2014.
Cinemania boasts 13 films from Cannes, three of which were presented in official competition. Among them is Le redoutable, by Michel Hazanavicius (director of the multi-Oscar winning 2011 silent film The Artist) — one of this year’s guests of honour — starring Louis Garrel as Jean-Luc Godard.
A retrospective of four of Hazanavicius’ films (some without subtitles) will be shown at the Cinémathèque, beginning Nov. 3. The director will be interviewed by Patrick Fabre, official presenter of Cannes’ Montée des marches, Nov. 4 at 1 p.m. at the Phi Centre. Hazanavicius also will host a free screening of his 1993 Hollywood classics remix La Classe américaine (without subtitles), Nov. 1 at 8:30 p.m. at bar Le Ritz PDB, 179 Jean-Talon St. W.
“We met at the Angoulême Film Festival, where he was presenting Le redoutable,” Caillard said. “I asked him if he would come to Cinemania and he said yes immediately. He’s a very interesting human being, very modest. I think we’re going to have a lot of fun.”
The other films from the Cannes competition are: French suspense master François Ozon’s L’amant double, which Caillard describes as “a Hitchcockian and maybe Freudian film, which made me think of (Paul Verhoeven’s) Elle, a thriller that pushes limits;” and Michael Haneke’s family satire Happy End, starring Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant.
Movies culled from Cannes’s Un certain regard section include: Léonor Serraille’s Caméra d’or-winning first feature Jeune femme, about an unemployed woman drifting through life; Mathieu Amalric’s Barbara, a biopic on the famed French singer, which will be presented by actress Jeanne Balibar; and Kaouther Ben Hania’s La belle et la meute, a harrowing thriller based on the true story Guilty of Having Been Raped, included as part of Cinemania’s focus on Tunisia.
And from Cannes’ Directors Fortnight comes Un beau soleil intérieur, a rare comedy from Claire Denis, starring Juliette Binoche as a divorced mother looking for love, with an appearance by Gérard Depardieu; and Philippe Garrel’s black-and-white tale of love and betrayal L’amant d’un jour, starring the director’s daughter, Esther Garrel.
“We’re not specifically looking for Cannes films, but we’re looking
for quality films,” Caillard noted, adding that the famed festival is “a wonderful stamp of approval.”
Further proof of Cinemania’s expanding influence can be found in its ability to attract big name visitors. The other guest of honour of this year’s edition is veteran French director Claude Lelouch, who turns 80 on Monday. He will present his 46th film Chacun sa vie, an ensemble affair starring Jean Dujardin, Christophe Lambert, Johnny Hallyday and Béatrice Dalle. Lelouch will be the subject of a retrospective at the Cinémathèque, including a screening of his 1981 film Les uns et les autres.
Other festival highlights include: André Téchiné’s Nos années folles, based on the true story of a deserter who disguised himself as a woman to evade police during the First World War; Rebecca Zlotowski’s Planetarium, starring Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Depp as a pair of American mediums in Paris in the 1930s; and Florence Quentin’s Bonne pomme, a comedy starring Dépardieu and Catherine Deneuve in their 10th film together.
If you needed one more sign of Cinemania’s prestige: founder Maidy Teitelbaum will be named an officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République française in a Nov. 7 ceremony presided by Laurence Haguenauer, France’s consul general to Quebec.
The seventh South Asian Film Festival of Montreal presents films from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Canada and the U.S., all with English subtitles, Friday to Nov. 5, at Concordia’s J.A. de Sève Cinema.
“The lineup is representative of the people and diaspora of people of South Asian origin,” coprogrammer Dipti Gupta said.
Among the films being shown are Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya’s The Cinema Travellers, a documentary about the travelling cinemas of India which premièred at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival (Friday at 7 p.m.); Padmakumar Narasimhamurthy’s Billion Colour Story, the black-and-white story of an Indian child in Mumbai with a unique take on the world around him (with the filmmaker in attendance, Oct. 29 at 7 p.m.); and Alankrita Shrivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha, in which four Indian women defy conventions (Nov. 4 at 7 p.m.).
“We’re committed to fostering discussion by creating a platform for everybody to have safe conversations on things discussed and not discussed in their households,” Gupta said. “In our mosaic of Canada, several of us are coming from diverse backgrounds to celebrate this diversity.”
For tickets and information, visit saffm.centrekabir.com