Schedule:

Friday, February 16, 2024

6:45 p.m: Je verrai toujours vos visages (All Your Faces)
Jeanne Herry, MP4, 118 min
France, 2023 (French)
This emotional and difficult filmed journey recreates with well-known actors two aspects of the restorative justice program in France including circles, bringing together victims and convicted offenders, in the presence of facilitators and volunteers; and mediations, where the victim meets with their attacker.

9:30 p.m: Houria
Mounia Meddour, DCP, 98 min
France / Belgium / Algeria, 2022 (Arabic, French)
In Algiers, a talented dancer is violently assaulted after winning big on a clandestine bet. Left incapacitated, her dream of becoming a ballerina shattered, Houria creates a new gestural language of healing and reconstruction with a community of women sharing similar traumas.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

4:00 p.m: Serre-moi fort (Hold Me Tight)
Mathieu Amalric, Blu-ray, 97 min
France, 2021 (French)
The unpredictability of memory resonates with filmic storytelling in this suspenseful musically rhythmed drama. When the grief-stricken Clarisse takes off, leaving behind her husband Marc and their two children, they struggle on without her, the years of their growing up filling the months she spends on the road drifting from town to town.

6:00 p.m: Revoir Paris (Paris Memories)
Alice Winocour, Blu-ray, 105 min
France, 2022 (French, Russian, English, Spanish)
In an emotionally poignant quest for the connections necessary to grieving and recovery following a tragic attack on a brasserie, the traumatized amnesiac Mia returns three months later to the scene to gather the missing elements of her flashbacks and meet the survivors that will allow her reconstruction.

8:30 p.m: La gravité (The Gravity)
Cédric Ido, Blu-ray, 86 min
France, 2023 (French)
After a mysterious cosmic event upsets the Earth’s gravity and creates chaos in their futuristic Parisian suburb, three estranged friends are drawn into an intergenerational fight with a group of teenagers who take control of their cité in anticipation of a new world order.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

3:00 p.m: Dounia et la princesse d’Alep (Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo)
Marya Zarif / André Kadi, H264, 73 min
France, 2022 (French)
After losing her mother to the war, 6-year-old Dounia flees Aleppo with her family. Sustained by the music, cuisine, dances and stories of her Syrian culture, supported by the women of her entourage, and believing in the Princess of Aleppo, she holds onto a few magical nigella seeds as she journeys towards a new life.

5:00 p.m: Quand tu seras grand (Big Kids)
Andréa Bescond / Éric Métayer, H264, 99 min
France, 2022 (French)
Yannick, who works at a retirement home where budget restrictions pressure caretakers and residents alike, is not thrilled when a group of school children led by their teacher Aude starts using his cafeteria while theirs is being remodeled. However, the children and the residents make this new arrangement a growing experience for one and all.

7:30 p.m: Le lycéen (Winter Boy)
Christophe Honoré, DCP, 122 min
France, 2022 (French)
Lucas is 17 when his teenage world is shattered by the death of his father. With time spent with his brother and his friends in Paris and the help of his mother with whom he lives, Lucas experiences many shades of grief as he struggles to rediscover hope and love.

Monday, February 19, 2024

7:00 p.m: Claude McKay, de Harlem à Marseille (Claude McKay, from Harlem to Marseille)
Matthieu Verdeil, MOV, 80 min
France, 2021 (French)
Adapted from his 1967 eponymous novel, Van Peebles’ feature debut tells the story of Turner, an African American WWII GI stationed in France, who is granted a three-day leave from base. In Paris, he meets a white French shop clerk and together they spend the weekend enjoying their romance even as they experience France’s contradictory attitudes about race.

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

7:00 p.m: Le lion des Mogols (The Lion of the Mogols)
Jean Epstein, DVD, 106 min
France, 1924 (Silent)
In the 1920s, Prince Roundghito-Sing escapes his Hindu kingdom and joins a film crew during Paris’ années folles where he becomes a film star. A century ago, Jean Epstein was playing with form and rhythm in this inventive mise en abyme of the art of cinema. With live piano accompaniment by Renato Umali.

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

7:00 p.m: Sitabaomba, chez les zébus francophones (Sitabaomba, Where Zebus Speak French)
Nantenaina Lova, DCP, 103 min
France / Madagascar / Germany / Burkina Faso, 2023 (Malagasy, French)
Ly, a peasant from Madagascar’s capital is living in Sitabaomba, a heartland torn apart by two presidents, the army and foreign investors. He struggles to save the land and its very soul by bringing old and young together with the art of traditional storytelling.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

7:00 p.m: Toni
Jean Renoir, Blu-ray, 85 min
France, 1935 (French)
Set in the 1930s among a community of immigrants living close to Marseille, Toni’s arrival from Italy and his love affairs set in motion a tragic story of cupidity and unrequited love. Made with nonprofessional actors and shot on location, Renoir’s innovative craft points to the Italian neorealist movement and the French New Wave.

Friday, February 23, 2024

7:00 p.m: Au cimetière de la pellicule (The Cemetery of Cinema)
Thierno Souleymane Diallo, DCP, 93 min
France / Senegal / Guinea / Saudi Arabia, 2023 (French, Eastern Maninkakan, Pulaar)
In 1953, Mamadou Touré directed Mouramani, a film considered to be the first ever made by an African francophone director. But today no one knows where to find a print of it nor if one even exists. This documentary is a road movie in search of that film across Africa and Europe, an ode to cinema, both the kind we watch and the kind we make.

9:00 p.m: Colette & Justin
Alain Kassanda, Blu-ray, 89 min
France, 2022 (Lingala, French)
Through a series of interviews with his grandparents and archival footage of Belgian colonial times in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the filmmaker’s search to understand himself and his roots becomes an evocative and poetic meditation on the intersections of political and family histories, and the multi-generational reach of colonialism.

Saturday, February 24, 2024

4:00 p.m: Cette maison (This House)
Miryam Charles, DCP, 75 min
Québec, 2022 (Haitian, French)
The 2008 unresolved death of the director’s teenage cousin, Tessa, in Bridgeport is the source of this imagined biography. Fluidly filmed, this voyage across time and space interrogates assumptions about the security and inherent dangers of a home.

6:00 p.m: Les jours heureux (Days of Happiness)
Chloé Robichaud, H264, 118 min
Québec, 2023 (French)
Facing issues of legacy and her filial relationship, Emma, a young rising star conductor in Montréal must confront Patrick, her father and agent, and understand her romantic liaison with Noëlle, a cellist and mother of a young boy when an important position with a prestigious orchestra presents itself.

8:30 p.m: Solo
Sophie Dupuis, DCP, 101 min
Québec, 2023 (French)
Simon is a young talented drag artist in Montreal. As he works with the show’s new recruit Olivier, their artistic collaboration turns into a whirlwind romance, further complicated by the return of his estranged mother, a famous opera singer. With the support of his sister, he realizes the toxicity of both relationships and that perhaps he shines best as a solo act.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

3:00 p.m: Nina et le secret du hérisson (Nina and the Hedgehog’s Secret)
Alain Gagnol / Jean-Loup Felicioli, DCP, 82 min
France / Luxembourg, 2023 (French)
In this animation film, 10-year-old Nina, who has always loved her father’s stories about a hedgehog, becomes worried about her family’s future when she learns that he has lost his factory job. Hearing that his boss has hidden a treasure, Nina plans with the help of her best friend Mehdi and her imaginary hedgehog a heist to save her father.

5:00 p.m: Ru
Charles-Olivier Michaud, Blu-ray, 120 min
Québec, 2023 (French)
Adapted from the eponymous autobiographical novel by Kim Thúy, Ru follows the migratory journey of a young Vietnamese girl and her family to Quebec. After a dangerous sea crossing and a stay in a Malaysian refugee camp, they are warmly welcomed by their sponsor family and she slowly learns and grows to accept her new culture.

7:30 p.m: Chocolat
Claire Denis, DCP, 105 min
France / Cameroon / West Germany, 1988 (French)
Drawing on her own childhood experiences growing up in colonial Cameroon, Claire Denis  tells the story of the young France recounting her friendship with the “houseboy” Protée as well as the sexual tension between him and her mother, Aimée. Gradually, the child senses the boundaries that exist between white and black, colonizer and colonized.

Date: February 16 - 25, 2024

Location:

UW-Milwaukee Union Theatre
2200 East Kenwood Boulevard
Milwaukee, WI 53211

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