A Preview of the 2025 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema | Festivals & Awards

Now marking its 30th year, the annual “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema” festival returns to give American audiences a taste of what is happening in contemporary French cinema. Running March 6-16th at New York’s Walter Reade Theatre, the program offers up 23 films—a number of which are making their U.S./North American premieres—that include both the latest efforts from a number of France’s most notable names on both sides of the camera to the early works of those soon joining their ranks. In addition, a number of the films will be accompanied by introductions and post-screening Q&A’s with the filmmakers. There will also be a couple of on-stage discussions that will be open to the public, including one on March 11 with actress Judith Godreche, discussing her role as one of the leading figures in France’s #MeToo movement and the effect that it has had on the film industry.

The festival kicks off with the New York premiere of “Three Friends” (March 6), the latest from Emmanuel Mouret, whose “Diary of a Fleeting Affair” was part of the 2023 lineup. This one is a romantic drama that features allusions to such classics of the form as “La Ronde” and “Hannah and her Sisters,” without ever quite rising to their level. It centers on three close friends and their various romantic entanglements. Joan (India Hair, who will present the film with Mouret) is a woman who has just lost her husband (Vincent Macaigne) and is struggling to move on because of the guilt she feels over the fact that she confessed her unhappiness with their marriage just before his death. Alice (Camille Cottin) is becoming convinced that her partner, Eric (Gregorio Ludig) is having an affair and contemplates having one with a renowned artist she has met. They live vicariously through the exploits of Rebecca (Sara Forestier), who they know is having an affair with a married man but who they don’t realize is Eric. Although it contains a few amusing bits of dialogue here and there and a strong and convincing performance from Hair, the film soon becomes an overly talky and repetitive work that is nowhere near as deep or insightful as it pretends to be.

This year’s festival stands as a sort of unofficial tribute to one of France’s leading actors, Vincent Lindon, who will be on hand to present no less than three films on the program in which he is featured. In “The Quiet Son” (March 8, 11), the third feature from Delphine and Muriel Coulin, he plays a widower whose loving relationship with his two children is rocked when he discovers that his older son (Benjamin Voisin) has recently fallen in with a group of violent right-wing nationalists in a performance that earned him the Best Actor award at last year’s Venice Film Festival. In “Cross Away” (March 7, 10), he puts on a literal one-man show in a remake of Steven Knight’s 2013 drama “Locke,” in which he plays a construction foreman who suddenly takes off on the eve of a major job to drive towards an uncertain destination while juggling several phone calls that gradually reveal the precariousness of both his personal and professional lives. Although the film does not veer too dramatically from its predecessor, Lindon finds a new and more lived-in approach to the role previously played by Tom Hardy that allows it to feel still relatively fresh.

The final Lindon selection—and perhaps my favorite of all the films in this year’s lineup—is “The Second Act” (March 8, 13), the latest bit of weirdness from the prolific Quentin Dupieux, the mind behind such mind-benders as “Rubber,” “Mandibles” and “Smoking Causes Coughing.” This time around, he plays one of a quartet of actors (joined by Lea Seydoux, Louis Garrell and Raphael Quenard) who have little enthusiasm for either the project they are ensnared in (which appears to be directed entirely by AI) or each other and who continually find themselves breaking the fourth wall (and more) until it becomes impossible to tell what we are watching at any given point.

Although I confess to being mixed on Dupieux as a whole, this is arguably his best and certainly his most consistent. He playfully deconstructs the mysteries of the filmmaking process while coming up with inspired running gags regarding everything from a supremely nervous bit player who keeps messing up takes to none other than Paul Thomas Anderson, that are delivered expertly by his more-than-game cast.

The festival also includes the local premiere of the latest film from perhaps France’s most celebrated actress, the incomparable Isabelle Huppert. In “Visiting Hours” (March 8, 10), the latest from Patricia Mazuy (whose previous film was the brutal thriller “Saturn Bowling”), she plays Alma, the well-to-do wife of a man who is currently serving time in prison for an auto mishap for which he received a scandalously light sentence, presumably due to his wealth and prestige. While at the prison one day to visit him, she meets Mina (“The Secret of the Grain” Star Hafsia Herzi), who is there to see her husband, who is serving a far longer sentence than Alma’s husband for a much less serious crime.

Alma impulsively decides to take Mina and her two children in to live with her in her large house, which is ostensibly closer to the prison than where Mina currently lives, and the two gradually begin to bond, though the vast differences in their respective circumstances eventually threaten to come between them. Although the narrative is somewhat uneven, especially with the introduction of a subplot in which Mina is threatened by the brother of one of her husband’s colleagues over some stolen watches that ends up dominating the final stretch, the film is still worth watching for both its quiet but unmistakable observations of the inequities of the French penal system and the inspired interplay between Huppert, working in a lighter mode than usual, and Harzi.

Among the notable filmmakers whose latest efforts are in the lineup is Francois Ozon, who returns to the festival with “When Fall is Coming” (March 7, 16), a quirky (surprise) blend of quiet family drama and dark comedy. Here, retiree Michele (Helene Vincent) is living a peaceful life in the country, spending time in the country with her longtime BFF Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko) and awaiting visits from her beloved grandchild, Lucas (Garlan Erlos). Alas, she and her daughter, Valerie (Ludivine Sagnier) have a rocky relationship and when a visit goes wrong following a culinary disaster, there is the possibility that she may never be allowed to see Lucas again.

At the same time, Marie-Claude’s son, Vincent (Pierre Lottin), has just been released from prison and is looking to make a fresh start and I would not dream of saying anything more about what ensues. Although working in a far more naturalistic mode than in his previous work, the super-stylized “The Crime is Mine,” Ozon conjures up a fascinating and occasionally outrageous meditation on the notions of family and friendship that is anchored by the strong performance by Vincent and given additional frisson by his reunion with Sagnier, who are working together for the first time since the great “Swimming Pool” more than 20 years ago.

“Suspended Time” (March 14, 16) marks the latest work from Olivier Assayas. While he has made some extraordinary films in the past, such as “Summer Hours,” “Personal Shopper,” and both the film and television versions of “Irma Vep,” this is not one of his better works. Set in April of 2020, during the early days of the worldwide COVID-19 shutdown, it tells the semi-autobiographical story of two brothers—celebrated filmmaker Paul (Vincent Macaigne) and music journalist Etienne (Micha Lescot)—who have holed up in their family home in the provinces with their respective romantic partners to ride things out and are slowly driven to distraction by both the close quarters and their general isolation from the outside world. There have been a number of films that have used the pandemic lockdown as a dramatic springboard. Still, while Assayas certainly provides a more picturesque take than most, he doesn’t have much to say about those strange days or their effect on us. Instead, he goes for an auto-fiction approach that grows less interesting as things go on.

“This Life of Mine” (March 6, 10) marks the final film from writer-director Sophie Fillieres, who passed away shortly after completing shooting, having passed on notes to her children (who will be on hand to present the film) as to how the editing should go. In it, Agnes Joui plays a middle-aged woman with two grown children who no longer need her and a boring corporate job that only serves to remind her of the writing career she abandoned long ago. Already struggling with her mental health, a chance encounter with a long-forgotten friend sends her off on a spiral that lands her in a residential hospital for a spell but also inspires her to take stock of her life and what she wants to get out of it. Although the film works for a while, shifting from a more overtly comedic opening third into more serious-minded areas in the middle section, the final segment is a little too mawkish and uneven to work, though how much of this is due to Fillieres’s absence from the editing process is impossible to ascertain, However, the performance from Joui is undeniably winning and proves to be more than enough to hold one’s interest, even when the narrative starts to go off-track.

Another strong performance in the service of a so-so-film is the one that Anamaria Vartolomei, the breakthrough star of “Happening,” delivers in “Being Maria” (March 15), the sophomore feature from Jessica Palud which fulfills the need for every film festival of note to contain at least one work that deals in part with the filmmaking process itself. This one presents the story of Maria Schneider, the French actress who was plucked from virtual obscurity to appear opposite superstar Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris,” an intense production that culminated with the infamous “get the butter” sequence that Brando (Matt Dillon) and Bertolucci (Giuseppe Maggio) planned without her approval or consent to capture her authentic surprised reaction. Based in part on the controversy surrounding this scene, the film would be celebrated and vilified worldwide. Still, while Bertolucci and Brando went on to greater triumphs, Schneider was left to face the fallout herself and, constrained from giving voice to her feelings towards what happened, spiraled off into a drug habit, rocky relationships, and a career that saw filmmakers more interested in her body and notoriety than her talent.

When the focus is on the “Tango” shoot and its immediate aftermath, the film is intriguing. Still, when it goes into Schneider’s later career, it is more interested in seeing her as a simple martyr than a person and becomes another middling showbiz biopic. That said, Vartolomei (who will be on hand to present the film with Dillion) is quite good, making you wish she had been given the chance to portray Schneider in a film with more interest and curiosity about her as a whole than this can muster.

One of the more ambitious films in this year’s collection is Aude Lea Rapin’s techno-thriller “Planet B” (March 12, 14). Set in 2039, the film concerns a group of environmental activists, led by Julia (Adele Exarchopoulos), who are arrested following an action that goes sideways and wake up to discover that they have been sentenced to Planet B, the world’s first virtual prison where they are constantly being tempted to inform on each other by those in charge in exchange for their freedom. Meanwhile, Noiur (Souheila Yacoub), an Iraqi journalist whose documentation is about to expire, inadvertently stumbles upon evidence of Planet B and tries to find a way inside to reveal its existence to the world. By tapping into current fears regarding virtual reality, climate change, and the treatment of prisoners while at the same time offering a portrait of what might be coming before too long, Rapin’s film sometimes bites off more than it can adequately chew. Still, it remains reasonably watchable and compelling throughout, aided in no small part by the impressive driving score from none other than filmmaker Bertrand Bonello.

The struggles of migrants trying to make their way through contemporary France are at the heart of two of the festival’s more gripping films. In Jonathan Millet’s “Ghost Trail” (March 9, 11), Adam Bessa stars as Hamid, a migrant who, two years after being released from a Syrian jail, is struggling to make ends meet as a construction worker in Strasbourg while at the same time determined to track down the man who tortured him during his period of imprisonment. This brief description might make the film sound like a simple revenge thriller. Still, Millet instead presents us with a more complicated and nuanced portrayal of the contemporary migrant experience, both in terms of trying to rebuild their lives and in coming to terms with what caused them to flee in the first place.

Meanwhile, Boris Lojkine’s “Souleymane’s Story” (March 9, 14) follows a Guinean immigrant (Abou Sangare, a non-professional actor who won the Best Actor prize in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes last year) over the course of two days as he struggles to keep up with his punishing work as a bicycle food deliverer while trying to prepare himself for an imminent and all-important interview regarding his asylum status. Shot largely on the fly with concealed cameras and edited for maximum intensity, Lojkine’s film has the form of a breakneck thriller but just underneath is a thoughtful and powerful drama examining life on the margins of society through the eyes of the sort for whom the system seems to be set up almost specifically to fail.

The importance of the press in times of political upheaval is the focus of two more of the films, though one proves to be far more successful at it than the others. Based on the novel by Jerome Ferrari, “In His Own Image” (March 12, 14), the latest from filmmaker Thierry de Peretti, tells the story of Antonia (Clara-Maria Laredo), a young photographer from Corsica who chronicles the upheaval in her country from the ’80s to the beginning of the 21st century while at the same time being entwined in a long-standing affair with a radical activist (Louis Starace) whose activities end up forcing her to realize that separating the personal from the political is not as easy as some like to make it sound. Although handsomely mounted, the film is undone by a clumsy, flashback-heavy structure that saps most of the tension out of each individual scene and an approach to Antonia that is so determined to make her seem enigmatic that it forgets to make her interesting.

Far more intriguing is “Meeting with Pol Pot” (March 7, 13), in which Cambodian-born filmmaker Rithy Panh takes an innovative and eye-opening look at one of the darker moments in his country’s history. Based on the nonfiction book by journalist Elizabeth Becker (who will present the film alongside Panh), the film takes place in December, 1978 as a trio of French journalists—Lise (Irene Jacob), Paul (Cyril Guei) and Alain (Gregoire Colin)—are summoned to Cambodia with the possibility of scoring a rare interview with Pol Pot, then trying to gain international support for his genocidal Khmer Rouge regime before a possible invasion by Vietnam. While waiting endlessly for the interview to happen, the three are taken to various setups designed to assure them that artists and intellectuals are, contrary to rumor, not being imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Although Alain, who claims to have studied with Pol Pot at the Sorbonne and is insistent of his goodness and fairness, the others are not nearly as convinced and end up stumbling into increasingly risky areas.

In addition to the strong performances by the three leads and a smart, inquisitive screenplay, the film also benefits greatly from Panh’s recreation of this pivotal moment in Cambodian history, one that makes clever and judicious use of both archival footage and clay figurine dioramas (a conceit he previously deployed in his 2013 film “The Missing Picture”) to bring the horrors to life while at the same time confessing to the difficulties of replicating such monstrous acts, even in the form of drama, in provocative ways.

On the lighter side of things, there are a trio of films that are so aggressively feel-good in nature that I would not be surprised if any of them were picked up to be remade by an American studio before too long. “Holy Cow” (March 8), the directorial debut of Louise Courvoisier, tells the story of Totone (Clement Faveau), an 18-year-old kid forced into adulthood when his farmer father dies and he is left to care for his adorable moppet sister. After briefly taking a job at a nearby dairy farm, where he falls for the farmer’s daughter but runs afoul of his sons, Totone hits upon a unique way of making a go of it—he plans, despite no experience, to win a 30,000 Euro prize for making the best Comte cheese in the region. While I love looking at enormous rounds of cheese as much as anyone else, that doesn’t take away from the fact that our hero is kind of a jerk throughout (while he is in the farmer’s house having sex with his daughter, he has his pals steal milk for the cheese) and that it is ultimately far too predictable for its own good with a final bit that is, frankly, kind of gross.

In “Jim’s Story” (March 7, 15), the latest from the fraternal filmmaking duo of Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, sad sack Aymeric (Karin Leklou) runs across Florence (Laetita Dosch), a former co-worker who is six months pregnant with the child of Christophe (Bertrand Belin), a man who has left her to return to his own wife and family. Aymeric ends up stepping into Christophe’s shoes, not only getting Florence through the pregnancy but helping to raise the child as his own. A few years later, though, following a tragedy, Christophe returns with a desire to become involved with the life of Jim (Eol Personne), the son he has never known, a decision that has heartbreaking implications as Aymeric is forced to navigate his new standing in regard to his relationship with the child. Ultimately, the film is a tear-jerker and not a particularly subtle one at that and is ultimately a little too sappy and contrived for its own good—the kind of film that Garry Marshall might have made without changing a single aspect.

Emmanuel Courcol’s “The Marching Band” (March 11, 16), is also pretty melodramatic as well, though it does a somewhat better job of selling its heart-tugging elements. In this one, world-renowned orchestra conductor Thibault (Benjamin Lavernhe) finds out in the opening scenes that he has leukemia and is in imminent need of a bone marrow donor. During the search for a match, he discovers that he was actually adopted and that he has an older brother, Jimmy (Pierre Lottin), who works in the canteen at a factory in Northern France being threatened with closure. After initial misgivings, Jimmy agrees to donate his marrow and after recovering, Thibault tries to get closer to his newfound brother, first by helping out with the local marching band, for which Jimmy plays trombone, after their conductor moves away and then by encouraging Jimmy to step up and lead the band into a local competition.

Like the previous two films I have mentioned, there is nothing particularly surprising to be had here but Courcol serves up the expected goods in a reasonably entertaining and crowd-pleasing manner, aided in no small part by the engaging performances from the two leads.

Young people struggling to find their respective places in contemporary society form the basis of another quartet of films in the lineup. In “Wild Diamond” (March 10, 15), the only debut feature selected for the main competition at Cannes last year, writer-director Agatha Riedinger (who will be presenting the film) focuses on Liane (nonprofessional actor Malou Khebizi), a 19-year-old girl living in near-poverty with her mother and younger sister who yearns to break out of her humdrum existence by being cast as a contestant on a reality show entitled “Miracle Island.” Although the audition seems to go well and the producer assures her that she is in, Liane’s entire existence begins to spin out of control when she doesn’t hear anything afterwards.

Khebizi does a good job of trying to bring nuance to the kind of character that is too often dismissed as a joke but Riedinger’s insights towards reality television and those who look upon it as a shortcut to fame, fortune and self-realization are fairly banal and bring nothing new to the table.

Another story of a young person tempted with the prospect of fame and wealth comes in the form of Camille Perton’s “Arenas” (March 16). In the film, which Perton will be introducing, a supremely talented 18-year-old soccer player named Brahim (Ilies Kadri) finds himself consumed with the desire to turn pro to provide for his family. However, when his friend/advisor Mehdi (Sofia’s Khammes) fails to land him a spot on his preferred team, Brahim finds himself falling under the spell of Francis (Edgar Ramirez), a slick agent who knows all of the angles required to get him signed up but who may be more interested in making a deal than in following his client’s wishes.

Although it may be a little too short for its own good, Perton does a good job of negotiating both Brahim’s attempts to do right by his family and the shadowy behind-the-details of the modern sports scene and supplies a nice supporting role for Ramirez, who gets far more to do here in just a few scenes than he did in that “Emilia Perez” nonsense.

Although it does not contain anyone seek fame and fortune, the emotional stakes are just as high for the characters in Claire Burger’s teen drama “Foreign Tongue” (March 12, 13). As the film opens, Fanny (Lilith Grasmug) is leaving Strasbourg to spend a month with her German pen pal Lena (Josefa Heinsus) and while their initial meeting is a bit on the stressful side for a number of reasons, the two soon become friends, spurred on in part by their mutual interest in political activism. However, when Lena goes to visit Fanny and her family, things begin to take a darker turn for reasons that I will leave for you to discover. Although the title may suggest something a little more on the salacious side, this proves to be a largely fascinating observation on the slippery notion of teen friendship anchored by impressive and convincing performances from the two leads as well as from Nina Hoss and Chiara Mastroianni as their equally troubled mothers.

Another one of my favorites from this year’s festival is “Winter in Sokcho” (March 11, 12), a quietly moving and intimate drama from Kona Kamura that tells the story of Son-ha (Bella Kim), a young woman working in a small hotel in the Korean seaside town where she grew up with her mother, having never met her French father. When a renowned French artist (Roschdy Zem) arrives in town to do some work, she shows him around town and while a friendship begins to develop between him, she finds herself increasingly consumed with understanding who he really is and how it may or may not connect to the unanswered questions regarding her own life.

Although the film may seem to have a bit of a “Lost in Translation” vibe on the surface at first, it soon goes off into intriguing areas of its own as Kamura avoids the expected melodramatic pitfalls while handling the key plot points, including Son-ha’s body image issues and rocky relationship with a jerk boyfriend with grace and subtlety. In this, she is helped immeasurably by Kim, a newcomer who nevertheless navigates the narrative in a quietly compelling manner in what was my favorite performance in all of the films on display here.

Finally, there are two titles that I was not able to fully watch at press time. I did see the first installment of Thibault de Longville’s “DJ Mehdi: Made in France” (March 19), a six-part 240-minute-long documentary  miniseries chronicling the life and work of DJ Mehdi, a musical prodigy who became a leading name in French hip-hop music before his tragic death in 2011 at the age of 33.

In addition, the fraternal directorial duo of Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma present “And Their Children After Them” (March 13, 15) an adaptation of Nicolas Mathieu’s acclaimed 2018 novel set in 90s-era France about a fight at a party between two boys from wildly different backgrounds that proves to have long-lasting repercussions for both that stars Paul Kircher, and Sayyid El Alami as the boys and also includes Gille Lellouche and Ludivine Sagnier in the cast.

For more information on screening times, tickets and scheduled guest appearances, click here.

The Rendez-Vous with French Cinema program runs at New York’s Walter Reade Theater from March 6 through March 16.