The 26th French Film Festival in Yokohama, organized by UniFrance, returns to Yokohama, the city where it first began. This four-day event celebrating French cinema will take place at the Aeon Cinema Minato Mirai from June 21 through 24. A selection of 14 films will be presented in the presence of a delegation of twenty French artists, led by Nathalie Baye, the patron of this edition.
The 26th edition of the French Film Festival in Yokohama will bring together, as it does every year, a selection of recent French films (11 of which proposed by their Japanese distributors). These films will be accompanied by a delegation of twenty French actors and directors, led by Nathalie Baye, the 2018 patron. These artists come to meet with the public and Japanese media, thereby supporting the promotion of their films with local distributors at the moment of the theatrical release.
We can also add that the filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival for his film Shoplifters, will be present at the opening ceremony, as will the actress Takako Tokiwa, the Japanese "muse" of this year’s festival.
The Air France Audience Prize will be announced at the end of the festival, and a Tokyo-Paris return trip for two will be offered by Air France to the winner of a random draw from among the entries received from spectators who voted for their favorite film.
The selection
- C'est la vie! by Éric Toledano & Olivier Nakache (opening film)
- To the Ends of the World by Guillaume Nicloux
- Moka by Frédéric Mermoud
- See You Up There by Albert Dupontel
- Everyday Heroes by Anne-Dauphine Julliand
- Custody by Xavier Legrand
- Amant double by François Ozon
- Memoir of War by Emmanuel Finkiel
- Big Bad Fox & Other Tales by Benjamin Renner & Patrick Imbert
- Redoubtable by Michel Hazanavicius
- Reinventing Marvin by Anne Fontaine
- Bloody Milk by Hubert Charuel
- Revenge by Coralie Fargeat
- Faces, Places by Agnès Varda & JR
Short films
- Thomas by Laura Smet
The artistic delegation
Swann Arlaud, Nathalie Baye, Hubert Charuel, Albert Dupontel, Coralie Fargeat, Emmanuel Finkiel, Anne Fontaine, Julie Gayet, Anne-Dauphine Julliand, Xavier Legrand, Olivier Nakache, Finnegan Oldfield, François Ozon, Laura Smet, Mélanie Thierry, Éric Toledano, Lang-Khê Tran, and Gaspard Ulliel (TBC).
Talks, master classes, signings!
The opening night gala, which will take place at the Minato Mirai Concert Hall (with a screening of Sens de la fête), will begin with a concert by the composer Jean-Michel Bernard.
Apart from the traditional Q&A sessions after film screenings, and autograph sessions, specific master classes and talks have been organized: Swann Arlaud and Finnegan Oldfield will speak about the young generation of French actors to which they belong at the University of Yokohama on June 22. They will be followed, on the same day, by film director Coralie Fargeat, who will meet with Geidai University students, in Yokohama, and discuss genre films. Kiyoshi Kurosawa may moderate. To round off these events, on Saturday 23, Nathalie Baye will meet with 300 people at Waseda University in Tokyo to give a master class focusing on her career.
The event is complemented by two exhibitions at the Red Brick Warehouse in Yokohama: Gaumont, 120 Years of French Cinema, and a show of Jean-Baptiste Le Mercier's photographs Rendez-vous with French Cinema.
Film market
The festival will be accompanied by a French Film Market on June 20 and 21 at the Institut Français in Tokyo, which 21 French exporters and two producers will attend.
The sales companies present at the French Film Market:
- Alpha Violet (Keiko Funato)
- Bac Films (Gilles Sousa)
- Celluloid Dreams (Nadine Rothschild)
- Charades (Yohann Comte)
- Coproduction Office (Sophie Cabon)
- Doc & Film International (Clémence Lavigne)
- Elle Driver (Adeline Fontan Tessaur)
- Playtime (ex Films Distribution) (Nicolas Brigaud-Robert)
- Gaumont (Alexis Cassanet)
- Indie Sales (Nicolas Eschbach)
- Le Pacte (Camille Neel)
- Les Films du Losange (Alice Lesort)
- Luxbox (Hédi Zardi)
- Memento Films International (Alexandre Moreau)
- Orange Studio (Andrei Kamarowsky)
- Pyramide International (Agathe Mauruc)
- SND (Charlotte Boucon)
- TF1 Studio (Alice Damiani)
- The Bureau Sales (Emmanuelle Le Courtois)
- Wide (Loïc Magneron)
- WTFilms (Grégory Chambet)
