Always a feast, never a famine, the French Film Industry continues to flourish and furnish a fine buffet of film fare at the annual Alliance Francaise French Film Festival.

This year’s offerings run the gamut of genres – drama, comedy, thrillers, documentaries and animation – here are five recommendations

SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE is Writer/director Cédric Klapisch’s romantic thriller, a rom-com of errors starring Ana Girardot and François Civil. It’s a thriller because Klapisch sets up the expectation of his characters connecting but then runs the narrative foul of such a meeting.
Girardot’s Mélanie is a scientist still recovering from a recent break-up, while her neighbour, Civil’s Rémy, works in a call centre after having been made redundant by robots in his previous employ.
She finds solace in slumber, he is an insomniac. Both are advised to seek psychotherapy.
Despite living next to each other, the pair’s paths only ever cross in the street, or at the local convenience store, run by the canny Mansour, played by a beaming Simon Abkarian.
Each of them is suffering from a certain isolation and alienation and resort to Tinder type sites to connect with others but with disastrous results.
It is their respective psychiatrists- his played by the marvellous François Berléand and hers by the cool Camille Cottin, who help the duo check their excess emotional baggage and allow them to travel forward unencumbered with childhood trauma.

TWO OF US sees the luminous Barbara Sukowa team with Martine Chevallier in a poignant coming out story.
Madeleine, the widowed mother of two grown children has plans to leave France and set up house in Italy with her neighbour, Nina, with whom she has been having an affair for many years.
The liaison has been kept a secret from Madeleine’s son and daughter and the stress of coming out to them brings on a stroke, rendering her speechless, unable to utter the truth to her kids, and effectively ostracising Nina from her life.
LA BELLE EPOQUE is like a film version of the pina colada song, wherein 60 something artist, Victor, travels back in time via a role playing service to the place where he met his now estranged wife, Marianne.
Complications ensue when Victor falls for Margot, the actress role playing Marianne, who is going through her own tumultuous love affair.
Grounded by three first class performances by Daniel Auteuil as Victor, Fanny Ardant as Marianne and Doria Tillier as Margot, LA BELLE EPOQUE is a sophisticated mind bend, a Charlie Kaumanesque autumnal rom-com with a bitter sweet tang.

FAREWELL TO THE NIGHT stars Catherine Denueve as a riding school owner whose grandson has been radicalised by extreme Islam. Under clandestine cover that he is emigrating to Canada, the grandson is planning to travel to the Middle East to wage jihad.
His conversion has been aided and abetted by a young woman the grandmother has known since she was a kid, never realising her fanatical beliefs or of the burgeoning romance that has taken root with her grandson.
The grandmother resorts to desperate measures to dissuade her grandson from his foolish, fatal focus, measures that have ramification far outside the little rural hamlet where family secrets ferment family fracture.
A peerless performance from Catherine Deneuve combined with a topic that families and society are grappling with every day makes FAREWELL TO THE NIGHT compelling and compulsory.

AZNAVOUR BY CHARLES is a home movie selectively edited and stretched into a feature, a remarkable precis documentation of a dazzling life.
AZNAVOUR BY CHARLES is Narrated by award-winning French actor Romain Duris from a script by Aznavour, an oral overlay that accompanies the careful crocheting that knits together footage from Aznavour’s vast personal experiences to present not just unparalleled insight into the man himself but also his relationships with wives, children, and fellow celebrities.
Alliance Française French Film Festival March 10- April 8 at Palace Norton Street, Palace Verona, Chauvel Cinema, Palace Central, and Hayden Orpheum Cremorne.

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