La Fête du Cinéma at The Space, Abu Dhabi

The Institut Français in Abu Dhabi is hosting La Fête du Cinéma at The Space between 23rd and 30th June. There will be five French language films with English subtitles screened during that week, all free to attend.

Here's the schedule:


Thursday, 23rd June 2016 at 8.00pm
The 400 Blows
Director: Francois Truffaut
1959 | 99 mins | French | English Subtitles | G

13-year-old Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud) can't seem to do anything right. His dysfunctional parents yell at him, his spiteful schoolteacher picks on him and luck just never goes his way. Despite his efforts at patience, one day it all becomes too much and Antoine throws in the towel, choosing to take his chances on the Paris streets. At times joyous and at others bitterly hard, his new life brings a newfound freedom - one that Antoine will follow up to its painful, poignant and beautiful conclusion.

Francois Truffaut's first feature film and arguably the starting point of the Nouvelle Vague, 'The 400 Blows' is a true landmark in French cinema. Raw, honest and intensely emotional, it captures youth in startlingly vivid detail and holds a mesmerising, unflinching mirror up to life itself.


Saturday, 25th June 2016 at 3.00pm
Les parapluies de Cherbourg / The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Director: Jacques Demy
1964 | 92 mins | French | English Subtitles | G

An angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a handsome garage mechanic, played by Nino Castelnuovo.

When the boy is shipped off to fight in Algeria, the two lovers must grow up quickly. Exquisitely designed in a kaleidoscope of colors, and told entirely through the lilting songs of the great composer Michel Legrand, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most revered and unorthodox movie musicals of all time.


Saturday, 25th June 2016 at 8.00pm
Pierrot le Fou
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
1965 | France | 110 mins | French | English Subtitles | 15+

Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeoisie behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard’s 10th feature in six years is a stylish mash-up of consumerist satire, politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, “the last romantic couple.”

With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated, Pierrot le fou is one of the high points of the French New Wave, and was Godard’s last frolic before he moved ever further into radical cinema.

 

Monday, 27th June 2016 at 8.00pm
Le Havre
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
2011 | 93 mins | French | English Subtitles | G

In this warmhearted comic yarn from Aki Kaurismäki, fate throws the young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a kindly old bohemian who shines shoes for a living in the French harbor city Le Havre.

With inborn optimism and the support of his tight-knit community, Marcel stands up to the officials doggedly pursuing the boy for deportation. A political fairy tale that exists somewhere between the reality of contemporary France and the classic French cinema of the past, Le Havre is a charming, deadpan delight and one of the Finnish director’s finest films.


Thursday, 30th June 2016 at 8.00pm
La Cérémonie
Directed by Claude Chabrol
1996 | 112 mins | French | English Subtitles | 15+

Adapted from Ruth Rendell's classic best seller, Claude Chabrol earns his 'French Hitchcock' tag with one of his most shocking and unforgettable films. Sophie, an introverted and illiterate young woman, is hired as a maid by the burgeous Lelievre family - Catherine (Jacqueline Bisset), Georges and their children - to work on the manor they live in the contryside of France.

They are generous and kind to Sophie, but their genuine attempts to help her are taken as offensive by the young girl. In the meantime, Sophie befriends the postmistress Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert) who has a disturbed history and manipulates the maid against the Lelievre's.

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