This is Not a French Film

Apr 2, 2018 — The director of Love After Love examines the emotional subtlety of Maurice Pialat’s camera work in a pivotal scene in the 1983 masterpiece À nos amours.

Sep 19, 2016 — If you consider noir as a global phenomenon, then films like Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le moko (1937), Jean Renoir’s La bête humaine (1938), and Carné’s Port of Shadows (1938) may be the first full harvest of this bitter crop.

Mar 25, 2013 — Robert Bresson’s prison-break story is a tale of religious faith and a work of striking purity.

Apr 20, 2009 — The French scientist-educator-filmmaker Jean Painlevé’s groundbreaking work consistently revealed not only a commitment to informed science and effective communication but to the creative expression of ideas.

Aug 2, 2004 — The three film’s in Renoir’s trilogy are comic period fantasies in dazzling color, offering a kind of continuous, bustling choreography in which shifting power relations between upper and lower classes and between spectators and performers literally turn the world into...

Jun 23, 2026 — A monthly series brings films worth making time for to an artist-run space in the Bay Area.

Feb 18, 2026 — Among this month’s highlights are a celebration of VHS and how it revolutionized film culture, a spotlight on the Romanian New Wave, and a retrospective of pioneering queer filmmaker Monika Treut.

Dec 17, 2025 — This January, savor multiple levels of nostalgia with a survey of ’90s cinema’s riffs on the ’70s, or turn a new page with a collection of films about dreamers seeking fresh starts in life.

Aug 6, 2025 — Along with its world premieres and restored classics, the festival presents a few films sure to spark debate.

May 21, 2025 — The exiled American director of Try and Get Me! and Hell Drivers depicted crime and violence as the inevitable results of capitalist competition.