25th French Film Festival in Japan

08 JUNE 2017

The 2017 edition of the French Film Festival in Yokohama, organized by UniFrance, will be held from June 22 to 25 at the Yurakucho Asahi Hall and the TOHO Cinemas Nichigeki complex in Tokyo. A selection of 12 French films will be showcased at the event, with screenings held in the presence of a delegation of 16 French actors and directors led by Catherine Deneuve, this year's festival patron, as well as Takeshi Kitano, the Japanese patron of this anniversary event.

As in previous years, the 25th French Film Festival in Yokohama will present a selection of recent French productions proposed by Japanese distributors for most of them. These films will be accompanied by a high-profile delegation of French actors and directors that includes Isabelle Huppert, Danièle Thompson, Trần Anh Hùng, and Katell Quillévéré, who will meet with Japanese audiences and media representatives, thus providing added publicity for their films in collaboration with distributors prior to to the films' commercial release.

The renowned filmmaker Takeshi Kitano, who is the Japanese patron of this year's 25th anniversary edition, will be in attendance at the opening ceremony.

The Air France Audience Prize will be presented at the closing of the festival. This prize comes with a Tokyo-Paris round trip airfare for two, offered by Air France to the winner of a random draw of entries received from audience members who have voted for their preferred film.

Film selection

Cézanne and I by Danièle Thompson
Elle by Paul Verhoeven
Raw by Julia Ducournau
Agnus Dei / The Innocents by Anne Fontaine
From the Land of the Moon by Nicole Garcia
Open at Night by Édouard Baer
Polina by Angelin Preljocaj, Valérie Müller
Rodin by Jacques Doillon
Heal the Living by Katell Quillévéré
The Midwife by Martin Provost
Eternity by Trần Anh Hùng

Part of the program will also be screened in three provincial cities (Kyoto, Osaka, and Fukuoka), with support provided by the Institut français.

Furthermore, a special screening of Death of a Corrupt Man by Georges Lautner will be held in partnership with the Japanese thematic television network Star Channel, which is organizing a large-scale retrospective of the work of Alain Delon that will stretch over 53 weeks.

Artistic delegation

Meetings, master classes, autograph sessions, concerts, and radio broadcasts!

In addition to the customary meetings with audiences held after screenings and autograph sessions, a series of special encounters are to be held this year: Catherine Deneuve and Paul Verhoeven will lead a master class at the Tokyo Film School, while a meeting between the filmmakers Trần Anh Hùng and Ryosuke Hashiguchi will be organized at the Ginza Apple Store, and Isabelle Huppert will take part in a discussion with Hirokazu Kore-Eda at the Institut Français in Tokyo as part of the Kering Women in Motion Program, for which Huppert has been chosen as the face of the 2017 edition.

The singer Vianney will also make the trip to Tokyo to give a concert at a private evening reception co-organized by UniFrance, Marie Claire Style, and the Institut Français. Vianney will also perform in public on June 24, at around 7 p.m. at the Institut Français in Tokyo, as part of the celebrations held for the World Music Day event.

Édouard Baer, who is is taking part in the festival to accompany the presentation of his film Open at Night, will present a radio series of special morning shows broadcast live on Radio Nova from Tokyo, starting on Monday, June 19, held from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. Thanks to a compatible time difference (a fortunate coincidence), Radio Nova's new anchor will invite the leading lights of the French movie scene, as well as the big names of Japan's movie industry (who are less well-known to French listeners), to share his microphone during breakfast sessions that are bound to surprise and delight audiences. It will be a series of unpredictable encounters and impromptu moments entitled "Plus près de toi" (Closer to You), relayed from the other side of the world!

Film Market

The festival will be accompanied by the traditional French Film Market (held June 22 and 23), for which around twenty French sales agents will travel to Tokyo. A number of these sales agents will come directly from Seoul, where UniFrance is hosting a film market (for the third consecutive year) on June 19 and 20, aimed at South Korean film buyers.

French sales companies present in Tokyo