Unifrance is hosting the 18th French Film Festival in Yokohama, March 18 - 22.
Unifrance will organize the 18th French Film Festival in Japan, March 18 through 22, with the support of the Ambassade de France - Japon and the Franco-Japanese Institute in Tokyo, which will simultaneously host an Alain Resnais retrospective.
The delegation, led by Jane Birkin, will consist of twenty artists:
Christopher Thompson and Élisa Sednaoui for Bus Palladium, Radu Mihaileanu and Alexei Guskov for The Concert, Laurent Cantet for The Class, Cécile de France for Les Gardiens de l’ordre and Sister Smile, Bruno Dumont, who will also give a masterclass, for Hadewijch, Mathieu Amalric and Anne Consigny for Wild Grass, Jean-Pierre Jeunet for Micmacs, Catherine Corsini for Leaving, Mia Hansen-Løve for The Father of My Children, Cédric Kahn for Regrets, Gaspar Noé for Into the Void, Benoît Pétré and Jane Birkin for Thelma, Louise et Chantal, Arnaud Desplechin, Anne Consigny and Mathieu Amalric for A Christmas Tale, and Jacques Audiard for A Prophet.
9 of the 15 films in this selection have already found a distributor in Japan and will use the festival as a launching pad for their promotional campaigns.
The selection has been structured around the theme of love (Bus Palladium, Hadewijch, Leaving, Regrets).
A screening of 9 short films completes the selection: 7.57 am-pm by Simon Lelouch, Allons-y ! Alonzo ! by Camille Moulin-Dupré, In Our Veins by Guillaume Senez, ¿Dónde está Kim Basinger? by Édouard Deluc, Waiting For the Rain to Stop by Charlotte Joulia, Gilles Corporation by Vianney Meurville, The Man in the Blue Gordini by Jean-Christophe Lie, The Little Dragon by Bruno Collet, and A Whore and a Chick by Clément Michel.
With 2 million admissions for French films in 2009, French cinema once again progressively finds its place at the Japanese box office. Several films have done notably well: Coco Before Chanel (nearly 600,000 admissions), Transporter 3 (290,000 admissions), and I Come with the Rain (245,000 admissions). 2010 promises to be an exceptional year because Oceans, released January 23, has alone already attracted more than 1.8 million spectators.
