For the 13th year running, Unifrance and the French Embassy are hosting the French Film Days event in Budapest.
The 2009 French Film Days in Budapest will be held from April 16 through 19, with this year's event extended to eight provincial cities.
The festival will give six Hungarian distributors the chance to present premiere screenings of seven feature films that have already secured distribution deals and which are slated for release late May, 2009. The following films will be showcased at the event: Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (Welcome to the Sticks) by Dany Boon (distributed by Best Hollywood), Faubourg 36 (Paris 36) by Christophe Barratier (SPI Hungary), Le Fils de l'épicier (The Grocer's Son) by Éric Guirado (Anjou Lafayette), Entre les murs (The Class) by Laurent Cantet (Cirko), Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I've Loved You So Long) by Philippe Claudel (Odeon), Les Femmes de l'ombre (Female Agents) by Jean-Paul Salomé, and Versailles by Pierre Schoeller (Budapest Film).
Following its major success last year, the festival will offer a short film program for the second time. This year's program includes seven films: Arrêt demandé by Thomas Perrier, Bien joué by Sandrine Veysset, La Vita nuova by Christophe Gautry and Arnaud Demuynck, Les Williams by Alban Mench, Oktapodi by film students at Les Gobelins, Pig by Bosilka Simonovitch, and Skhizein by Jérémy Clapin.
In the wake of Laurent Cantet's visit to Budapest on April 2 for the event's press conference, a delegation of French artists and sales agents will travel to the Hungarian capital to attend the festival, which is the longest-standing event organized by Unifrance in Europe.
It is important to note that the 28 French productions and co-productions released in Hungarian theaters in 2008 registered close to 430,000 admissions (including films on extended release from the previous year). Thanks to these fine attendance results, French films ranked in 3rd position in Hungary, after American and Hungarian productions. The three most successful French titles were Astérix aux jeux olympiques (Asterix at the Olympic Games), La Reine soleil (Princess of the Sun), and Ensemble, c'est tout (Hunting and Gathering).
