Palouse French Film Festival

The Palouse French Film Festival will present its 15^th edition in October at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre in Moscow, Idaho.

 

Price $5 per film or $12 for a festival pass; free to students.

Films are in French with English subtitles.

Films start at 7PM. There will be a reception with French wine and cheese at 6:15PM on opening night.

For more information about the theater, check the KPAC website.

 

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Here is the line-up for the 2025 edition:

Vingt Dieux / Holy Cow

Tuesday October 7

Directed by Louise Courvoisier

Comedy/drama  –   90 min. (2024)

In Jura, 18-year-old Totone spends his carefree days with his friends Jean-Yves and Francis, filled with flirting, drinking, and occasional brawls with youth from the neighboring village. But after the tragic death of his father, he must look after his younger sister and their failing family farm. He assumes even more responsibility when he enters a cash competition for the best Comté cheese.

 

Le Comte de Monte-Cristo / The Count of Monte Cristo

Tuesday October 14

Directed by Alexandre de La Patellière et Matthieu Delaporte

Historical action – 178 min. (2024)

This is the newest adaptation of the 1844 novel of the same name by Alexandre Dumas. After escaping from an island prison where he spent 14 years for being wrongly accused of state treason, Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney) returns as the Count of Monte Cristo to exact revenge on the men who betrayed him.

 

L’Histoire de Souleymane / Souleymane’s Story

Tuesday October 21

Directed by Boris Lojkine

Drama  –  93 min. (2024)

In this anguishing character study, a Paris food delivery cyclist and asylum seeker from Guinea named Souleymane (Abou Sangare) is anxiously applying for asylum in France. He has two days to prepare his story for a make-or-break interview to secure legal residency. Hindered by a system that prioritizes exposing one’s trauma over accepting the content of their character, Souleymane struggles.

 

En Fanfare / The Marching Band

Tuesday October 28

Directed by Emmanuel Courcol

Comedy/drama  – 104 min. (2024)

Acclaimed conductor Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe) has leukemia and needs a bone marrow donor. Learning he was adopted, he finds an older brother (Pierre Lottin), a musician and factory worker. Their reunion sparks a fraternal, musical journey amidst the town’s factory closure.

 

 

These are the films from 2024:

• Les Trois Mousquetaires : D’Artagnan / The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan by Martin Bourboulon (2023)
• La Passion de Dodin Bouffant / The Taste of Things by Anh Hung Tran (2023)
• Le Tableau volé / Auction by Pascal Bonitzer (2024)
• La Syndicaliste / The Sitting Duck by Jean-Paul Salomé (2022)

These are the films from 2023:

• L’Innocent – The Innocent  by Louis Garrel (2022)
• Eiffel by Martin Bourboulon (2021)
• Celle que vous croyez  –  Who You Think I Am by Safy Bebbou (2019)
• Twist à Bamako  –  Dancing the Twist in Bamako  by Robert Guédiguian (2021)

 

A little bit of history

This event was initiated through the collaboration between two French Professors: Sarah Nelson from the University of Idaho and Sabine Davis from Washington State University. After receiving a grant from the  Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture in 2010, the festival made its debut on the Palouse, featuring recent French and Francophone films in French with English subtitles.

After receiving the grant for five consecutive years, the festival became an independent university event funded by the yearly financial support from both Washington State University (WSU) and the University of Idaho (U of I). In particular, the School of Languages, Cultures, and Race and the College of Arts and Sciences at Washington State University and the Department of Modern Languages & Cultures  and College of Letters, Art &Social Sciences at the University of Idaho were generous loyal donors to the festival. These institutions combined with other units at both universities, as well as personal donations from community members have contributed over $33,000 to this local film event.

The purpose of the festival was and still is two-fold: to bring French cinema to the Palouse and to offer an insight into French and Francophone culture to the students and community members in the region. Over the past twelve years, the festival has featured a total of 48 films delving into a variety of societal topics such as history, arts, gender relations, immigration, homelessness, racial tensions, religion, death, family dynamics, friendship, and love through the interpretive lens of French, Canadian, Belgian, Senegalese, Mauritanian, and Chadian film directors. Insightful introductions of the films by university faculty and community members, as well as academic discussions in classes on both U of I and WSU campuses, have provided a stimulating context in which community members and students can learn about another culture and reflect on their own.

With a total audience of over 7000 from its inception, the Palouse French Film Festival has become the highlight of the Pullman and Moscow cultural calendar in the fall!