NEW WAVES SECTION

Some of the most exciting new discoveries in French cinema of the past 12 months can be found in New Waves, the section devoted to ?rst,second and third time directors.Eleonore Faucher has marked herself out as an Agnès Varda for a new generaton while Christophe Barratier is responsible for one of the year ’s
biggest hits, now set to work its choral magic abroad.
There is also a totally delightful piece of animation sharing concerns about the planet.Add the continuing confident hand of Gael Morel;an unashamedly theatrical ensemble piece full of youthful verve;a surreal treat with the late Marie Trintignant and an exposé of work-place politics and you have a tantalising choice.Note too the entrancing tale of a boy growing up in the shadow of Mont-Blanc; a thriller based on a novel by Donald E Westlake and a marital comedy drama.
Simply,you ’re spoilt for choice.

Brodeuses / A Common Thread

This story of a rural teenager coming to terms with her pregnancy and her future has some affinities with Agnès Varda ’s Vagabonde and the Dardennes brothers ’ Rosetta, Brodeuses , however,doesn ’t share their gritty social realist approach or emotional intensity, but is much warmer in tone.

Les choristes / The Choir

The year is 1948. Clement Mathieu (Jugnot) is a chubby,middle-aged,and good-natured dominie, dreaming,like most music teachers,of becoming a great composer.Instead he finds himself in charge of these misfit children,some of them orphans whose parents lost their lives in the war, others kids from destitute families or unruly brats whose parents have given up on them.

Le clan / The Clan

Three brothers explore the sometimes awkward, sometimes dangerous business of burgeoning masculinity in The Clan, the third film after Full Speed and Under Another Sky from young actor turned director Gael Morel (who notably starred in André Techiné ’s Wild Reeds ).

L'esquive / The Dodger

Adolescent passion and theatrical ambitions become entwined in L ’esquive ,an engaging ensemble piece set amid a Paris housing scheme that ’s brought to life by an impressive young cast. Despite its no-name players ,a low-stakes story, an untranslated title (French slang for “dodging ”) and DV origins, the film already has created buzz.

Janis et John

A joyously far-fetched premise is moulded into an off-beat slice of baby boomer heaven in Janis and John.This assured deadpan comedy,in which a mousey housewife and a loser actor achieve self- actualisation by posing as Janis Joplin and John Lennon,is a lively,stylishly rendered venture that marks a sharp big-screen debut by co-scripter and director Samuel Benchetrit.

Je suis un assassin / The Hook

A down-on-his-luck writer turns murderer-for- hire in Thomas Vincent's The Hook ,a very French thriller despite being adapted from a novel by American Donald E Westlake.An unsuccessful novelist,played by François Cluzet,obliges a best-selling colleague by dispatching the rich man's wife.

Malabar Princess

A young boy spends a year in the French Alps beside Mont-Blanc in this intelligently scripted and beautifully made family picture for all ages. It blends historical facts and believable human behaviour to yield sharp evidence that life isn't always easy as the boy discovers the truth about his absent mother.

La prophétie des grenouilles / Raining Cats and Frogs

Tom,and his adoptive parents,Ferdinand and Juliette,are spending the summer holidays with Lili -a girl of Tom ’s age.Lili ’s parents run a family zoo and have gone to Africa in search of crocodiles! Ferdinand and Juliette have offered to look after the kids and the zoo.Everything is going really well until the day some frogs warn the children that there ’s going to be a flood!

Les sentiments

Two seemingly happily married French couples are orced to contend with a number of issues in director Noemie Lvovsky ’s highly original marriage comedy drama.

Le soleil assassiné / The Sun Assassinated

Set in Algeria in the period shortly after independence, Abdelkarim Bahloul ’s powerful drama is a tribute to the Algerian-born poet Jean Sénac,murdered in 1962.

Vénus et Fleur / Venus and Fleur

Vénus and Fleur meet each other when their identical handbags get switched in a cafe.Fleur invites Venus to stay with her in her uncle's borrowed villa.

Violence des échanges en milieu tempéré / Work Hard, Play Hard

Jean-Marc Moutout ’s film offers further insight into the world of ambitious young execs on the make,on the loose and on the fast track to moral perdition. Jérémie Rénier plays a young trainee newly signed up with a prestigious management consulting firm,and placed under the tutelage of a company hotshot (Laurent Lucas),who walks the walk, talks the talk and brooks no argument. \

Wild Side

Like a sort of Jules et Jim conundrum for the new millennium, director Sebastien Lifshitz who made Presque rien ,follows the fortunes of transexual Stephanie who returns home to Northern France and the rural landscape of her childhood to care for her dying mother.