SFIFF52 FRENCH-LANGUAGE FILMS 

It's Not Me, I Swear!
Philippe Falardeau, Canada (pictured)
In a placid Montreal suburb in 1968, ten-year-old Léon is a hellion with a cause. The child of dysfunctional but au courant parents, he needs attention. Philippe Falardeau's (Congorama) intelligent comedy is also a touching study of abandonment.

Bluebeard
Catherine Breillat, France
Following last year's opening night sensation The Last Mistress, France's masterful Catherine Breillat returns to the Festival with this playful, intoxicating and surprisingly personal rumination on Charles Perrault's 17th-century fairytale.

French Girl

Souad El-Bouhati, France/Morocco

Sofia, the titular heroine of this finely observed debut feature, is wrenched from her beloved France back to her family's North African homeland, where she contends with issues of immigration and identity while seeking wisdom in the poems of Baudelaire.

Khamsa
Karim Dridi, France
Karim Dridi creates a vivid picture of Roma life in an enclave on the outskirts of Marseille. Thirteen-year-old Marco, a runaway from foster care, prefers this place of hard living and big, messy families to life on the outside.

Home
Ursula Meier, Switzerland/France/Belgium (pictured)
Isabelle Huppert stars in this look at the gradual deterioration of a family's peaceful existence when the long-unused stretch of highway that borders their house suddenly opens to public use.

35 Shots of Rum
Claire Denis, France
Claire Denis magically limns the story of a father and daughter facing her inevitable independence in this beautiful tale set among a small circle of Parisians and their friends. Soulful Alex Descas stars, and Ingrid Caven has a memorable cameo.

Modern Life
Raymond Depardon, France
Raymond Depardon has been documenting the changing face of rural France in his Profils Paysans series. Modern Life combines his flair for widescreen shots and the perfect light with his patience for the kitchen interview, and always, his love for his subjects.

Sacred Places
Jean-Marie Téno, Cameroon/France
Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Marie Téno profiles a poor but lively neighborhood in the capital of Burkina Faso, where a cine club proprietor tries to include Burkinabe films among the action and Bollywood fare. With short Homage (13 min).

Versailles
Pierre Schoeller, France
Guillaume Depardieu, in one of his last performances, brings heart-piercing intensity to the role of a brooding social outcast living in a hut in the woods near Versailles whose life is upended when a young homeless woman decides to leave her five-year-old son in his care.

Mesrine: A Film in Two Parts

Jean-François Richet, France/Canada/USA/Spain/England/Algeria   

(pictured)
This two-fisted, two-part epic charts the remarkable 20-year crime spree of Jacques Mesrine, France's public enemy number one.

Mesrine: Part One charts the notorious criminal's stint in Algeria and his awakening to his hunger for power and violence. Returning home, Mesrine takes to the role of gangster like he was born to it in Richet's white-knuckle thriller.

In Mesrine: Part Two the criminal's celebrity only increases as a gangster, would-be revolutionary and megalomaniacal media hound. Both exciting and historically meticulous, Mesrine is a fitting tribute for this celebrity criminal.

Summer Hours
Olivier Assayas, France
Olivier Assayas's richly meditative and expressive new film uses the perspectives of three adult siblings on the disposition of their mother's estate to explore the meaning, passions and memories we invest in objects and our surroundings.

The Other One
Patrick Mario Bernard, Pierre Trividic, France
When a middle-aged woman discovers her young ex-lover's new girlfriend is her own age, her obsessive jealousy takes its biggest toll on her sense of self as paranoia and self-loathing lead to a full-blown identity crisis.