Proving that he remains French cinema’s greatest and freest adventurer, writer-director Bruno Dumont created a faithful but strikingly contemporary adaptation of turn-of-the- century poet Charles Péguy’s two plays about the childhood of Joan of Arc, with music by  death metal composer Igorr and modern-day children recorded singinglive on the dunes of the Pas-de-Calais. The result is mystifying and mystical, jaw-dropping and farcical, but never less than inspired: a film in which an eight-year-old girl does justice to the verse of one of the great French poets while twin nuns do a gestural dance surrounded by a flock of oblivious sheep. The story starts with the deeply Christian peasant girl Jeanette confronting religious doubt in the face of the English invasion of France, then leaps five years ahead to reveal the willful teenage Jeanne on the eve of her departure to help the dauphin break the siege of Orleans. For all its gleeful wackiness, Jeanette is a serious film about the idea of France, childhood, and religious faith, located at the unlikely intersection of realism and absolute movie fantasy. And in entrusting great works of literature to children, Dumont gives us a potent reminder that the classics belong to everybody.

DIRECTOR
Bruno Dumont

SCREENPLAY
Bruno Dumont

CAST
Lise Leplat Prudhomme
Jeanne Voisin
Lucile Gauthier
Victoria Lefebvre
Aline Charles

DETAILS
Musical
French
115 min.
France, 2017

With his second feature as a writer-director, renowned Corsican actor Thierry de Peretti delivers a revealing look at the political and criminal turmoil that have long plagued his native island, at times rivallingFrancis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather in terms of emotional  richness and narrative complexity. Set in the 1990s, a period when Corsica
hovered on the edge of civil war, A Violent Life follows Stéphane, a Corsican student who gets sucked into radical nationalist circles and eventually goes underground to join the armed struggle. De Peretti’s great achievement is the empathy with which he treats the young man’s misguided but in some ways justified actions: while the out-come of his decisions is unarguably tragic, the film provides a genuine understanding of the conditions that push young people to take up arms. And while what makes A Violent Life so powerful is clearly the director’s knowledge of a specific socio-political context, its insightsabout  nationalism and insurrection are applicable to many situationsthroughout history and in  present day. As such, it is essential viewing.

DIRECTOR
Thierry de Peretti

SCREENPLAY
Thierry de Peretti
Guillaume Bréaud

CAST
Jean Michelangeli
Henri-Noël Tabary
Cédric Appietto

DETAILS
Drama
French
107 min.
France, 2017

BPM is a fictionalized account of the history of Act Up-Paris, the triumphant true story of some of the great heroes of our era: the men and women who fought for the recognition and improved treatment of HIV and AIDS patients at a time when a diagnosis was a death sentence. As an original member of Act Up, writer-director Robin Campillo brings a detailed, thoroughly researched authenticity to his reconstruction of the activist organization’s politically and emotionally charged group meetings, its colorful protests, and the intimate relationships that bound the tight-knit group together. Yet BPM is anything but a dry history lesson: Campillo intelligently divides the film in two sections, the first of which establishes Act Up’s historical importance by focusing on its internal dynamics and political actions, while the second delivers the emotional punch of its impact on individual fates through a love story between two of its members, one of whom is dying of AIDS. In crafting this remarkable elegy, Campillo achieves a rare blend  of celebration and outrage, remaining true to the activists’determination, humor, and youthful vibrancy. Above all, BPM is a remarkable testament to the power of regular citizens to effect change by banding together to demand justice.

DIRECTOR
Robin Campillo

SCREENPLAY
Robin Campillo
Philippe Mangeot

CAST
Nahuel Pérez Biscayart
Arnaud Valois
Adèle Haenel
Antoine Reinartz
Ariel Borenstein
Félix Maritaud
Aloïse Sauvage
Simon Bourgade

DETAILS
Drama
French
143 min.
France, 2017

With Faces, Places, 89-year-old powerhouse Agnès Varda teams with the world-famous young street artist JR to make a film as wide-ranging as it is personal, as fanciful as it is pointed. Setting off on French country roads to find subjects for JR’s trademark mural-size portrait photographs, the two artists focus on people generally outside of the spotlight: retired miners, factors workers, the wives of dockers, andfarmers. Each encounter fills in another piece of an idiosyncratic portrait of modern-day France, as well as the evolving relationship between open-hearted Agnès Varda and mysterious JR. The give-and-take between Varda and JR plays out in a fascinating through-linedevoted to Jean-Luc Godard, Varda’s old friend and sole surviving colleague of the French New Wave. But make no mistake: while the film is credited to both artists, Varda is definitely calling the shots. As
ever, her montage is allusive, playful, rapid-fire, occasionally jarring—in short, totally in keeping with her singular way of thinking. Her generosity in sharing her life and thought with us deep into old age is amcause to rejoice. Faces, Places was nominated for an Academy Awardfor the Best Documentary of 2017.

DIRECTOR
Agnès Varda and JR

SCREENPLAY
Agnès Varda and JR

DETAILS
Drama, Thriller
French
113 min.
France, 2017

Félicité is a nightclub singer in a little bar in Kinshasa who lives alonewith her teenage son  Samo. When Samo severely injures himself in a motorcycle accident, Félicité must find a way to raise the money to pay for an operation or allow her son’s leg to be amputated. The originality and power of French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis’s fourth feature lies in the way it transcends this simple against-the-clock narrative,the kind of story that has driven films of social realism from Bicycle Thieves to the Dardenne brothers, to create a shifting, complex portraitof the struggles, joys, and imagination of a modern-day heroine—and
by extension, of the city she lives in. Filming in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country previously unfamiliar to him, Gomis confirms the tremendous promise of his earlier films, walking a porous line between dream and waking life, magic and bureaucracy, observation and fantasy, that at its best suggests a new cinematic language. Alive with the diverse sounds of various Kinshasa musicians, Félicité is an
engrossing, deep dive into the days and, especially, nights of a city by turns nightmarish and surprisingly radiant.

DIRECTOR
Alain Gomis

SCREENPLAY
Alain Gomis

CAST
Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu
Gaetan Claudia
Papi Mpaka

DETAILS
Musical/Drama
Lingala, French
129 min.
France, Belgium, Senegal,
Germany, Lebanon, 2017
DCP, Blu-Ray, DVD, ProRes