All the French films at the 76th Cannes Film Festival

11 MAY 2023

The Competition of the 2023 edition of the Cannes Film Festival offers a very fine portrait of contemporary French cinema, with seven French titles competing for the Palme d'Or.
And as is the case every year, France, land of cinema and the cradle of many international co-productions, will be present across the event, with a total of more than 80 films, including shorts, produced or co-produced by France featuring in the festival's various strands.

After the majestic opening orchestrated by Maïwenn and her Madame du Barry, seven directors (five women and two men) will fly the French colors in the Official Selection and Competition with French films or majority-French productions: Justine Triet with Anatomy of a Fall (four years after Sibyl, also in Competition), Kaouther Ben Hania with Four Daughters, Catherine Breillat (returning to Cannes 19 years after Intimate Scenes) with Last Summer, Catherine Corsini with Comecoming, Ramata-Toulaye Sy with Banel & Adama (the only debut feature in Competition), and Trần Anh Hùng with (The Taste of Things). Rounding off the list, Youth (Spring) by the Chinese documentarian Wang Bing, is also a majority-French production.

The strong presence of French films is exceptional, doubled by the history-making presence of women directors, with a total of 7 films in Competition.

Out of Competition, several French filmmakers will make an expected return to the Croisette, notably in the Cannes Première strand, which will feature new films by Valérie Donzelli (Just the Two of Us), Martin Provost (Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe), Katell Quillévéré (Along Came Love), and Lisandro Alonso (Eureka, a majority-French title).

Un Certain Regard offers new films by Stéphanie Di Giusto (Rosalie), Thomas Cailley (The Animal Kingdom), Jean-Bernard Marlin (Salem), Alex Lutz (Strangers by Night), and a debut feature, All to Play For by Delphine Deloget.

Last but not least, two "unclassifiable" films in the Midnight Screenings: Acid, a genre film by Just Philippot, and the comedy The King of Algiers, starring Reda Kateb and Benoît Magimel.

Over at Directors' Fortnight, a French film (The Goldman Case by Cédric Kahn) will open this section.

And the great cinema artists Michel Gondry (The Book of Solutions), Faouzi Bensaïdi (Deserts), and Bertrand Mandico (She Is Conann, a minority-French co-production however) will be back, not forgetting Pierre Creton (A Prince).

Critics' Week will allow us to discover the new film by Marie Amachoukeli (Àma Gloria), which opens the section, nine years after Party Girl, which she co-directed. Iris Kaltenbäck's debut feature The Rapture is also in the lineup, and Vincent Must Die, the debut feature by Stéphan Castang, a renowned director of short films, will be presented in a Special Screening.

Also returning is Erwan Le Duc, whose The Bare Necessity was revealed in 2019 at Directors' Fortnight. His new film, No Love Lost, will close Critics' Week.

ACID continues its research mission and will present the new film by documentarian Nicolas Peduzzi (On the Edge), as well as the animated film Chicken for Linda!, directed by Chiara Malta & Sébastien Laudenbach, who burst onto the scene in 2016 with The Girl Without Hands.

This brings us to Cannes Classics, which, apart from the tribute to Jean-Luc Godard in three films (Contempt in a restored version, Florence Platarets' documentary Godard par Godard, and the short Film-annonce du film qui n'existera jamais : Drôles de guerre by Jean-Luc Godard), proposes several restored films: Meeting on the Docks by Paul Carpita, L'Amour fou by Jacques Rivette, Consider All Risks / The Big Risk by Claude Sautet, Mississippi Blues by Bertrand Tavernier, and Ces messieurs de la Santé by Pierre Colombier.

Cannes Classics will also be the strand, as every year, in which numerous documentaries dedicated to cinema are presented: Chambre 999 by Lubna Playoust, La Saga Rassam-Berri, le cinéma dans les veines by Michel Denisot and Florent Maillet, and Viva Varda ! by Pierre-Henri Gibert.