03/10/2006

Seven Portuguese cities will host the 7th French Film Party from October 4-November 21.

This major event, which includes 32 premieres (feature films, documentaries and animation), aims, according to Patrick Gautrat, the French ambassador to Portugal, to be a showcase of the current diversity of the French film industry.

Diversity is, no doubt, the key word of the programme, which seems to want to broaden local audiences’ horizons of French film, and includes titles not necessarily connected to the type of French arthouse cinema usually released in Portugal's theatres.

The Party, which opens with the French entry for the Academy Awards shortlist, Danièle Thompson's Orchestra Seats (see news) and continues with a list of commercial-oriented titles such as Royal Palace, How Much Do You Love Me? and OSS 17: Cairo, Nest of Spies, also features an impressive list of titles which made a splash at recent international festivals – including 13 (Tzameti) (see focus), Heading South (focus), animation title Renaissance (focus) and Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé (see news) – as well as seven 2006 Cannes titles: Flanders (news), The Page Turner (see focus), Dans Paris (news), The Weakest is Always Right (see news), Changement d'adresse (news), Les Anges Exterminateurs and Charlie Says (see news [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).

During the Party, the Portuguese Film Museum in Lisbon will also host a retrospective entitled "The History of Cahiers du Cinéma in 20 films", for which Emmanuel Burdeau, the editor of the legendary publication, will be present. The programme includes titles from the 1950s through today, including Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques, Edgardo Cozarinsky 2001 documentary Le cinema des cahiers, Nobuhiro Suho's A Perfect Couple and Aki Kaurismäki's Lights in the Dusk [+see also:
trailer
film profile].