Tournees Film Festival
January 27 - March 19, 2021
In collaboration with Film & Media Arts and World Languages & Cultures, we are excited to present the Tournees Film Festival to virtually screen a series of six films this Spring 2021. The Festival is a program of the French-American Cultural Exchange (FACE Foundation), in partnership with the Franco-American Cultural Fund, which aims to bring French cinema to American college and university campuses. Showcasing established and emerging talents, Tournées Film Festival reflects the diversity and the richness of French cinema through various genres—fiction, documentary, animation, and repertory films. The selected films present a wide variety of subjects, perspectives, locations, and human experiences.
Please see below for more information, including film synopses, digital screening dates, and the sign-up link for the virtual screenings. When you sign up, you will be provided with a link to access the streaming film. The films will be available to view only during the specified dates. Please only complete the registration form once.
Past Free Film Screenings
Joan Of Arc (Jeanne)
With this follow-up to his jaw-dropping 2017 film Jeanette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc, Bruno Dumont, probably the most original auteur in the contemporary French cinema, delivers a dazzling conclusion to his adaptation of early 20th century French poet Charles Péguy’s two plays about Joan of Arc. More Info & Trailer
Dates: January 27 - February 2 (This virtual screening has passed)
The State Against Mandela (Le Proces De Mandela Et Les Autres)
In October 1963, Nelson Mandela and nine other leaders of the banned African National Congress appeared before the Pretoria High Court in the apartheid state of South Africa. This diverse group of fighters against apartheid included members of various African peoples, white Jewish South Africans, and an Indian Muslim, all of whom were accused of sabotage and potentially faced the death penalty. While there are no images of the nine-month trial that followed, the 256 hours of audio recorded include some of Nelson Mandela’s most fiery declarations of faith. More Info & Trailer
Dates: February 8 - February 15 (This virtual screening has passed)
Soleil O
The late Mauritanian-French writer-director-producer Med Hondo was a trailblazer in making independent films that featured the lives of African immigrants in Europe and denounced all forms of oppression. His first feature Soleil Ô, self-financed and shot over three years in the aftermath of May '68 with a cast of African and West Indian actors, follows the fortunes of an African immigrant in Paris as he faces racism in the workplace, objectification in the bedroom, and indifference on the part of better-off Africans. More Info & Trailer
The Freshmen (Premiere Annee)
Over the last few years, practicing physician Thomas Lilti has carved out a unique place for himself in French cinema as a commercially successful writer-director with a specialization in the medical field. His nearly anthropological but always engrossing approach to various aspects of contemporary French medicine has unfolded in a series of entertaining fiction films. More Info & Trailer
Varda By Agnes (Varda Par Agnes)
Varda by Agnès, the last film by the late great Agnès Varda, is a typically joyous, digressive, and revealing ramble through the director’s work, based on a series of lectures she gave in the last years of her life. Composed of numerous clips from Varda’s films and public appearances, as well as extensive documentation of her gallery installations, the film provides both an introduction to and a summation of the extraordinary achievement of the woman who kicked off the French New Wave with La Pointe Courte. More Info & Trailer
Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (Portrait De La Jeune Fille En Feu)
Five years after her international triumph Girlhood, writer-director Céline Sciamma returns with a poignant feminist revision of the historical romance. More Info & Trailer
Tournées Film Festival is made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S., the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), the French American Cultural Fund, Florence Gould Foundation, and Highbrow Entertainment.
