Palouse French Film Festival

Dossier 137 / Case 137

Tuesday October 6

Directed by Dominik Moll 

Drama  –   116 min. (2025)

Case 137 is seemingly just another case for Stéphanie (Léa Drucker), an investigator at the IGPN, the police of the police. But an unexpected element will trouble Stéphanie and transform case 137 into something more than a simple number. A taut, emotionally grounded procedural, Dossier 137 transcends its genre with a deeply personal lens on police corruption and political unrest.

L’Étranger/ The Stranger

Tuesday October 13

Directed by François Ozon

Crime/drama – 122 min. (2025)

In 1930s Algeria, the daily life of an indifferent Frenchman, Meursault (Benjamin Voisin) is shaken by the death of his mother and a fateful encounter on a beach. Cleverly contextualizing Albert Camus’ existentialist classic within a modern political lens, François Ozon’s The Stranger is as intriguing to mull over as it is beautiful to look at.

À son image / In His Own Image

Tuesday October 20

Directed by Thierry de Peretti   

Drama  –  110 min. (2024)

Antonia, a young Corsican, is a photographer for a local newspaper who navigates life – her convictions, friendships and love – while caught in the island’s political turmoil from the 1980s to the early 2000s. A son image depicts a generation’s journey through unrest, violence and the fight for independence.

La venue de l’avenir / Colours of Time

Tuesday October 27

Directed by Cédric Klapisch 

Drama/romance  – 126 min. (2024)

Brought together by the unexpected inheritance of an abandoned house in Normandy, four cousins, previously strangers, discover a mysterious shared past. Two centuries earlier, Adèle Munier, their ancestor and owner of the house, left her rural home for Paris in search of her mother’s identity, at the heart of the city’s modernization and the rise of Impressionism.

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!