Presented by the Department of French and Francophone Studies (Brown University) at Avon Cinema.
1995-2026: our festival is celebrating its thirty-first anniversary this year.
For over three decades, the Providence French and Francophone Film Festival has sought to bring to Rhode Island some of the best French-language films from around the world and commit to using one of cinema's greatest strengths: the ability to showcase a diversity of narratives, characters, and aesthetics to foster a deeper understanding of the realities around us, all through the lens of a single language, within a multicultural artistic and geographical landscape.
This year, we pay tribute to one of France's most significant contributions to film history: the French New Wave. This is highlighted through Richard Linklater's homage in Nouvelle Vague, a behind-the-scenes recreation of the shooting of Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (Breathless). On Saturday, March 14, Linklater's film will screen following Godard's original masterpiece, Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7), and Thierry Frémaux's documentary Lumière, le cinéma!, illustrating the artistic and spiritual bridge connecting the invention of cinema to its youthful 1960s revival in France, as well as the lasting influence of a revolutionary artistic movement on contemporary cinema.
Alice Diop, our special guest in 2025, returns to this year's lineup with Fragments for Venus—her first film shot in the US—by looking at the place that Western art has reserved for black female bodies, preceding in the same program Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane William Mbaye's examination of Saint-Louis' colonial history in Ndar, Saga Waalo. Abdellatif Kechiche's highly awaited Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due will have its North American premiere at the festival, concluding a saga about the pleasures and dramas of youth in Southern France, where dreams and reality clash as the French-Tunisian director unveils hopes and tensions within a multicultural microcosm. In Kouté vwa (Listen to the Voices), Maxime Jean-Baptiste looks at the artistic aspirations of a young man in French Guiana amid personal grief and social turbulence in a land marked by its colonial history.
In Matthew Rankin's Universal Language, the Canadian director blends—and expands—notions of francophilia, cinephilia, and persophilia into a visually and culturally transformative experience, while Anne Émond offers a humorous, unconventional take on a non-traditional love story in Amour apocalypse (Peak Everything). Two films suited to younger audiences—Ugo Bienvenu's Oscar-nominated Arco and Michel Gondry's Maya, Give Me a Title—find visually striking ways to convey universal tales filled with emotion, intimacy, and tenderness. Family is also the main theme of Cédric Klapisch's La Venue de l'avenir (Colors of Time), in which distant family members discover a common thread in a shared heritage rooted in Impressionist innovations.
Finally, the Dardenne brothers’ Jeunes mères (Young Mothers) sheds light on teenage mothers living in a maternity shelter as they face the challenge of building a new future for themselves and their little ones amid personal and social difficulties, a film that will be screened along with Camille Vigny’s moving testimony on domestic violence in the short film Crushed. Additionally, we will pay tribute to Belgian actor Émilie Dequenne, who passed away on March 16, 2025, with a screening of Rosetta, the film that gave the Dardenne brothers their first Palme d'Or and Dequenne a Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for a performance still recognized as one of the greatest in film history.
The Providence French and Francophone Film Festival is presented by the Department of French and Francophone Studies (Brown University) at Avon Cinema. This year's festival is dedicated to the memory of Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov.
1995-2026: our festival is celebrating its thirty-first anniversary this year.
For over three decades, the Providence French and Francophone Film Festival has sought to bring to Rhode Island some of the best French-language films from around the world and commit to using one of cinema's greatest strengths: the ability to showcase a diversity of narratives, characters, and aesthetics to foster a deeper understanding of the realities around us, all through the lens of a single language, within a multicultural artistic and geographical landscape.
This year, we pay tribute to one of France's most significant contributions to film history: the French New Wave. This is highlighted through Richard Linklater's homage in Nouvelle Vague, a behind-the-scenes recreation of the shooting of Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (Breathless). On Saturday, March 14, Linklater's film will screen following Godard's original masterpiece, Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7), and Thierry Frémaux's documentary Lumière, le cinéma!, illustrating the artistic and spiritual bridge connecting the invention of cinema to its youthful 1960s revival in France, as well as the lasting influence of a revolutionary artistic movement on contemporary cinema.
Alice Diop, our special guest in 2025, returns to this year's lineup with Fragments for Venus—her first film shot in the US—by looking at the place that Western art has reserved for black female bodies, preceding in the same program Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane William Mbaye's examination of Saint-Louis' colonial history in Ndar, Saga Waalo. Abdellatif Kechiche's highly awaited Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due will have its North American premiere at the festival, concluding a saga about the pleasures and dramas of youth in Southern France, where dreams and reality clash as the French-Tunisian director unveils hopes and tensions within a multicultural microcosm. In Kouté vwa (Listen to the Voices), Maxime Jean-Baptiste looks at the artistic aspirations of a young man in French Guiana amid personal grief and social turbulence in a land marked by its colonial history.
In Matthew Rankin's Universal Language, the Canadian director blends—and expands—notions of francophilia, cinephilia, and persophilia into a visually and culturally transformative experience, while Anne Émond offers a humorous, unconventional take on a non-traditional love story in Amour apocalypse (Peak Everything). Two films suited to younger audiences—Ugo Bienvenu's Oscar-nominated Arco and Michel Gondry's Maya, Give Me a Title—find visually striking ways to convey universal tales filled with emotion, intimacy, and tenderness. Family is also the main theme of Cédric Klapisch's La Venue de l'avenir (Colors of Time), in which distant family members discover a common thread in a shared heritage rooted in Impressionist innovations.
Finally, the Dardenne brothers’ Jeunes mères (Young Mothers) sheds light on teenage mothers living in a maternity shelter as they face the challenge of building a new future for themselves and their little ones amid personal and social difficulties, a film that will be screened along with Camille Vigny’s moving testimony on domestic violence in the short film Crushed. Additionally, we will pay tribute to Belgian actor Émilie Dequenne, who passed away on March 16, 2025, with a screening of Rosetta, the film that gave the Dardenne brothers their first Palme d'Or and Dequenne a Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for a performance still recognized as one of the greatest in film history.
The Providence French and Francophone Film Festival is presented by the Department of French and Francophone Studies (Brown University) at Avon Cinema. This year's festival is dedicated to the memory of Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov.
The team @ French & Francophone Studies — Brown University
Committee:
Francisco Valente, Artistic Director of the Festival
Virginia Krause, Chair of French & Francophone Studies
Stéphanie Ravillon
Annie Wiart
Festival Coordinator:
Olivia Urciuoli
Marketing & Graphic Design:
Maya Tkachenko Coggeshall-Burr & Olivia Urciuoli
Administration & Accounting:
Sheena Gilliard, Candace Laning, Olivia Urciuoli
Special thanks to our volunteer translators: Candelaria Beatty, Anna Ershova, Anthony Fusco, Rajaa Ghandour, Angela Lian, Lily Luby, Noa Saviano , Brianna Seaborn.
and Murahn Batun, Emily Benitez, Haley Berger, Melissa Bermudez, Grace Berry, Jessie Chen, Evelyn Daigneault, Sofiya Doroshenko, Lily Luby, Nigel Evans, Pilar Rivera, Audrey Sanger for postering.
An immense thank you to Sylvie Toux (film festival founder, 1995), Regina Longo, Daniel Kamil, Eric Bilodeau, Richard Blakely, who have been vital to this festival's continued success.
And in loving remembrance of those who worked for years to create and support the festival: Shoggy Waryn, Richard Manning, Achim Wieland and Marcin Gizycki.
Francisco Valente, Artistic Director of the Festival
Virginia Krause, Chair of French & Francophone Studies
Stéphanie Ravillon
Annie Wiart
Festival Coordinator:
Olivia Urciuoli
Marketing & Graphic Design:
Maya Tkachenko Coggeshall-Burr & Olivia Urciuoli
Administration & Accounting:
Sheena Gilliard, Candace Laning, Olivia Urciuoli
Special thanks to our volunteer translators: Candelaria Beatty, Anna Ershova, Anthony Fusco, Rajaa Ghandour, Angela Lian, Lily Luby, Noa Saviano , Brianna Seaborn.
and Murahn Batun, Emily Benitez, Haley Berger, Melissa Bermudez, Grace Berry, Jessie Chen, Evelyn Daigneault, Sofiya Doroshenko, Lily Luby, Nigel Evans, Pilar Rivera, Audrey Sanger for postering.
An immense thank you to Sylvie Toux (film festival founder, 1995), Regina Longo, Daniel Kamil, Eric Bilodeau, Richard Blakely, who have been vital to this festival's continued success.
And in loving remembrance of those who worked for years to create and support the festival: Shoggy Waryn, Richard Manning, Achim Wieland and Marcin Gizycki.
Animation by Tim Probert (timprobert.com) and updated by Shanshan
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