Stars, comedies and a majority of films by female directors: the 16th edition of the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival opens on Tuesday with a program that gives pride of place to French productions.
Of the eleven films in the competition, which will be presented to the public until Sunday, eight are French and seven are made by women. “There was no calculation or a priori,” assured AFP Dominique Besnehard, the co-creator of the festival (with Marie-France Brière). “We chose the films that seemed to us to be the best”. Among them, Iris et les hommes, a new comedy from the director of Antoinette in the Cévennes, Caroline Vignal, with Laure Calamy again in the title role. Or even The fiancée of the poet of the former Deschiens Yolande Moreau. Also note the presence of four films which were presented at the Cannes Film Festival in May: Le temps d’aimer by Katell Quillévéré, Nothing to lose by Delphine Deloget, Rosalie by Stéphanie di Giusto and Augure by Belgian rapper Baloji.
“There is a bridge with Cannes but we want to remain a pioneering festival”, underlined its co-creator, recalling that Angoulême had presented Intouchables, one of the greatest successes of French cinema (nearly 20 million admissions). Overall, the 2023 edition “is very feminine, with flamboyant heroines and plenty of comedy,” he continued. Same tone on the side of the jury, chaired by Laetitia Casta, which has six women out of nine members, including the Franco-Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, the Franco-Algerian singer Souad Massi or the rising star of tricolor cinema Raphaël Quenard. In Angoulême, no red carpet, the atmosphere is less glamorous than in Cannes but the stars are there: Diane Kruger, Laure Calamy, Karin Viard, Benjamin Biolay, Mathieu Kassovitz…
Out of competition, the public will discover Yann Gozlan’s new thriller, Visions, two years after the success of Black Box (more than a million admissions at the box office) or the drama La petite, which will open the festival, on a surrogate mother, with Fabrice Luchini. This year, few films are from the African continent. “It was difficult,” admitted Dominique Besnehard. On the other hand, Canada will be well represented, with in particular the comedy Bungalow, on the disenchantment of “millennials” (born between the beginning of the 80s and the end of the 90s), by Quebecer Lawrence Côté-Collins. Switzerland will be honored with the screening of several films, including La Salamandre by Alain Tanner (1971). Last year, the public came in droves, with 52,000 festival-goers. This figure should be exceeded, according to Besnehard, who argues that “all the rooms will be full”.