This year the Vermont International Film Festival runs from October 20 to 29. Quite a few Francophone films will be screened! Your AFLCR membership entitles you to reduced admission. For more information about the films, the schedule, and the locations, check out the VTIFF website.
Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une Chute)
Directed by Justine Triet
France | 2023 | Fiction | 152 min. | French w/subtitles
Showtime: Saturday, October 29 | 7pm | Film House
In a snowy, isolated cabin in the Alps, a couple live with their blind son. When the husband turns up dead, the wife is suspected of his murder, and the son is the only witness. A complex plot emerges, examining the nature of truth and marriage. It’s an explosive family drama and a courtroom procedural. This film won the 2023 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Animalia (Parmis Nous)
Directed by Sofia Alaoui
France/Morocco/Qatar | 2023 | Fiction | 90 min. | French, Arabic, Berber w/subtitles
Showtime: Sunday, October 22 | 7:15pm | Black Box Theater
Itto is pregnant and alone. In the rural countryside of Morocco, an extraterrestrial phenomenon is taking place. As things fall apart, the structures that protect the wealthy and privileged matter little. This film won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Prize for Creative Vision at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival,
Cette Maison
Directed by Miryam Charles
Canada | 2023 | Docufiction | 75 min. | Haitian and French w/subtitles
Showtime: Friday, October 27 | 7:00 pm | Film House
Fourteen-year-old Tessa is found hanging in her bedroom. It is originally ruled suicide but is later determined to be homicide. Tessa reappears, always fourteen, speaking with her mother in the present day. This dreamlike film “weaves between documentary and hallucination, real locations and theatrical sets, and even an imaginary landscape of Haiti, as she recounts her family’s migration to Quebec,” writes VTIFF. The screening will be followed by an in-person Q&A with the director.
The Crime Is Mine (Mon Crime)
Directed by Francois Ozon
France | 2023 | Fiction | 102 min. | French w/subtitles
Showtimes:
Tuesday, October 24 | 2 pm | Film House
Thursday, October 26 | 4:15 pm | Film House
In 1935 Paris, Madeline, a debt-ridden actress, rebuffs a lascivious producer, who then ends up dead. Madeline is accused of the crime and is defended by her lawyer/roommate Pauline. The film embraces, in the words of its director, “the triumph of sorority.” Isabelle Huppert makes an appearance as a cruel older actress.
Omen (Augure)
Directed by Balogi
Congo | 2023 | Fiction | 91 min. | French and Swahili w/subtitles
Showtime: Saturday, October 28 | 11:15am | Film House
In modern-day Kinshasa, four people are accused of witchcraft. The director, a Congolese rapper-turned-filmmaker, views their interconnected stories through a magical-realist lens, accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack, offbeat costuming, and careening camera movements.
Orlando, My Political Biography (Orlando, Ma Biographie Politique)
Directed by Paul Preciado
France | 2023 | Fiction | 98 min. | French, English, and Spanish w/subtitles
Showtimes:
Monday, October 23 | 7:15 pm | Black Box Theater
Friday, October 27 | 2:15 pm | Black Box Theater
Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s 1928 century-spanning, gender-bending romance, forms a template for the modern trans experience. The film focuses on “gender poets,” whose lives transcend the bounds of binary expression, offering insight into their experiences with hormones, gender-affirming care, institutional erasure, and the political positioning in a normative regime.
The film won the Special Jury Award Encounters Section, Teddy Award for Best Documentary Film, and the Special Jury Mention Documentary Award at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival.
Our Body (Notre Corps)
Directed by Claire Simon
France | 2023 | Documentary | 168 min. | French w/subtitles
Showtime: Wednesday, October 25 | 3:15 pm | Black Box Theater
The film documents its director’s discovery that she has cancer in a Paris hospital, weaving intimate patient-doctor consultations and surgical procedures in a gynecological ward, exploring life in a woman’s body.
Panique
Directed by Julien Duvivier
France | 1946 | Fiction | 100 min. | French w/subtitles
Showtime: Sunday, October 22 | 4pm | Film House
In the suburbs of Paris, an elderly maid has just been murdered. The same evening, Alice, just getting out of jail, reunites with her lover Alfred. A voyeur falls in love with Alice and suspects who the murderer is. Opinions are manipulated, evidence is planted, violence erupts, and panic ensues. This 1946 film noir was based on a novel by Georges Simenon. Pierre Simenon, son of Georges, will introduce the film, and the screening will be followed by an in-person conversation with Mr. Simenon and Bruce Goldstein.
Smoking Causes Coughing (Fumer Fait Tousser)
Directed by Quentin Dupieux
France | 2023 | Fiction | 80 min. | French w/subtitles
Showtime: Friday, October 27 | 4:30 | Black Box Theater
In this superhero spoof, the Tobacco Force dispel adversaries with the explosive, cancer-causing effects of cigarette smoke. But when the group’s cohesion cohesion is threatened, their boss sends them away on a team-building retreat. “There, the film slips into a mosaic of gory, humorous campfire tales, each more stupefying than the last,” explains VTIFF.
The Taste of Things (La Passion de Dodin-Bouffant)
Directed by Tran Anh Hùng
France | 2023 | Fiction | 136 min. | French w/subtitles
Showtime: Saturday, October 21 | 7:00 pm | Film House
Set in late 19th-century France, the film opens with a mouthwatering cooking sequence that runs nearly 40 minutes and portrays a slow-burning romance with a minimalist plot. Hùng told Variety: “What was important to me was . . . to weave gastronomy into a love story.” The film, which stars Juliet Binoche and Benoît Magimel, won best director at the Cannes Film Festival this year and is competing for France’s submission to the 2024 Academy Awards. Opening Night film; AFLCR member discount does not apply.
Tori and Lokita
Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Belgium/France | 2023 | Fiction | 88 min. | French w/subtitles
Showtimes:
Monday, October 23 | 1:45 pm | Black Box Theater
Friday, October 27 | 7:15 pm | Black Box Theater
Eleven-year-old Tori and sixteen-year-old Lokita are undocumented immigrants who have left Cameroon and Benin, respectively, for a new life in Belgium. But they are exploited, harassed, and threatened from all sides. Despite the corrupt, evil system that seeks to monetize their misery, their friendship endures. Both leads are non-professional actors.