Screened at three cinemas, the Széchenyi Baths and the French Institute, Francophone Film Days showcases 15 features made across the French-speaking world from Switzerland to Senegal. Several are English-friendly – starting with tonight’s ‘Alone at My Wedding’, here we recommend five films to go and see. All these subtitled screenings take place at the Toldi cinema downtown.

1/5

Alone at My Wedding

Marking the first full-length feature by director Marta Bergman, Alone at My Wedding was born of her long experience making documentaries about the Roma community in Romania. The leading protagonist, a single mother named Pamela, is a composite of many similar characters Bergman had come across in the course of her factual film work. For this engaging tale, the director first sought out Romanian electro DJ Vlaicu Golcea to integrate traditional Roma violin into the soundtrack to set the tone, before setting Pamela (Alina Serban) off on her fictional journey from a hut shared with her grandmother and two-year-old daughter to becoming an internet bride in Belgium, to discovering her own freedom. Screened at ACID Cannes in 2018. 

28 February, 6 March, both 8:30pm

2/5

Shock Waves – Diary of my Mind

Award-winning Franco-Swiss director Ursula Meier gives the revered Fanny Ardant the leading role in this psychological drama that screened at last year’s Berlinale. Ardant plays a schoolteacher who falls under suspicion after she receives a confessional diary from one of her pupils, 18-year-old Benjamin Feller, posted to her shortly before the teenager murders both his parents. Riven by doubt about her influence on the boy’s mind when discussing dark literary topics, Ardant gives a screen-stealing performance but credit must also be given to Kacey Mottet Klein, then only 19, who again shines under Meier’s direction. The film is one of four in the Shock Waves series based on real-life crimes, commissioned by French-Swiss TV.   

1 March 8:30pm, 3 March 6pm

3/5

Claire Darling

A 75-year-old Catherine Deneuve plays the eponymous central character who decides, one fine June morning at the start of summer, that this will be the last day of her life. The process begins with Deneuve throwing out all her precious possessions, scattering them around her front lawn and offering them all up for cheap sale. As neighbours and passers-by bicker over each object, the items throw light on aspects of Claire’s colourful past. Old friends then alert Claire’s estranged daughter, Marie, of the bizarre goings-on at the family estate, and mother and child meet for the first time in 20 years. The denouement comes when each delves into the reasons behind their separation. Julie Bertuccelli, daughter of filmmaker Jean-Louis, directs this adaption of the debut novel by Texan journalist Lynda Rutledge, Faith Bass Darling’s Last Garage Sale. The film is only just released in France. 

1 & 6 March, both 9pm, 3 March 4:30pm

4/5

With the Wind

The Swiss Jura uplands are the picturesque setting for this first full-length French-language feature by Bettina Oberli, premiered at last year’s Locarno Film Festival. Seen through the eyes of dairy farmer Pauline (Melanie Thierry), the story revolves around a wind turbine ordered by an ecologically minded couple who have drifted apart through the daily grind in their Helvetic idyll. Enter stage right the strapping Samuel, who brings his technical know-how and Latin good looks from Portugal to raise the turbine and stir things up on the mountainside. Stunning cinematography by Stéphane Kuthy and a superb performance by Thierry keep the film from sinking into a milkmaid’s melodrama. 

2 & 3 March, 6pm & 6:30pm

5/5

Yao

Everyone’s favourite French actor Omar Sy plays… everyone’s favourite French actor, here named Seydou Tall and idolised by an impressionable boy, Yao, from a remote Senegalese village. In Dakar to promote his book, Tall is also returning to hiunfamiliar African roots. Moved by his young fan, who ran away from home at considerable risk to cross the country and meet his hero, Tall decides to break with his schedule and take the boy back to his village. An alien in the undeveloped backwoods of Senegal, the star actor soon begins to regret this unplanned trek and questions his own identity. 

2 & 4 March 9pm, 5 March 6:30pm, 6 March 6pm