THE Belltable Arts Centre welcomes the IFI French Film Festival to Limerick for the first time at the weekend. The Irish Film Institute have worked closely with the Belltable in recent months providing an impressive array of new films for screening in the city centre.
David O’Mahony of Irish Film Institute told Limerick Post that this festival is the first of the IFI seasons brought on tour to Limerick.
“There is such a wealth of content that comes from French cinema. It has a huge attraction for audiences. “We get great audiences for the Dublin festival. It has been growing year on year.”
The French are very much dedicated to developing their own national cinema. They can claim a proud heritage in films and of course host the most famous film festival in the world at Cannes every year.
Safe to say that many film lovers initially dipped their toe in subtitled movies with French produced films.
The Dublin French Film festival is in its 18th year and screening 28 films over two weeks. Six of those films have been chosen for screenings at the Belltable over the weekend.
Marie-Pierre Richard is the artistic director of the IFI French Film Festival and will be attending the screenings to introduce some of the films.
The six films are a diverse snapshot of current French cinema, including documentaries, period dramas and comedies.
While he contends that all six films are worthy of your time, David O’Mahony’s pick of the bunch is ‘A Season in France’. Screening on Friday, the story follows an asylum seeker who has fled civil war in the Central African Republic to live in Paris. He works menial jobs to support his two children while awaiting the outcome of the asylum process.
On the lighter side, ‘Just to Be Sure’ is a funny caper telling the story a bomb disposal expert who finds out his dad is not his real father after over forty years and sets out to find the truth.
The French Film Festival happens at Belltable from his Thursday November 23 to Saturday 25.
www.limetreetheatre.ie for tickets.
