Los Angeles has long had a passionate love affair with French cinema, dating back more than 60 years ago when there were lines around the block to get into theaters showing the latest works from cinema masters such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and others.
Local cineastes later got their French film fixes every year starting in 1997 thanks to a popular film festival called COLCOA, an acronym for the evocative, but not so helpful City of Lights, City of Angels moniker. Then came COVID, then the industry strikes of 2023, and those “Lights” were temporarily dimmed.
So good news arrived when François Truffart, the longtime director of COLCOA, announced that the newly rechristened American French Film Festival would begin in 2024, with myriad improvements, including moving from the spring into a fall (Oct. 29-Nov. 3) slot designed to catch the strong breezes and heightened interest of Hollywood’s annual awards season.
TAFF (its new chosen acronym) bows again on the Directors Guild of America screens in Hollywood, and its awards-friendly date is boosted by opening with one of the most highly regarded awards contenders in multiple categories, Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Jury Prize winner, “Emilia Pérez.”
Truffart, an ardent film lover and one of the French cinema industry’s most important advocates, calls the shift from spring to fall “a dramatic change,” citing the newly renamed fest’s longtime “strong ties to the industry, especially voters in the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild,” and its new “connection to
awards season.”
Amazingly, Truffart reports that nearly half of the fest’s approximately 40 films and TV series “will be shown in Los Angeles before they’re premiering in France. We’re just before AFM, and international sales companies now have the perfect platform to show films to engaged audiences. It’s a great place for them test the appeal of the films.”
Truffart feels that the shift to fall is especially important as a showcase of French wares, emphasizing the fest’s longtime connectivity to the Hollywood entertainment industry. To that end, he touts the newly created TAFF Awards as “a unique opportunity for distributors. It’s a chance for Hollywood to give their opinions on films and series.”
Keenly aware of the business challenges facing foreign fare presented on big screens, Truffart also stresses new pricing policies that will appeal to anyone from students to seniors to perhaps still struggling industryites, noting a “$58 weekly pass to make this an affordable way to discover some of the most important and exciting new filmmakers in the world.”
Special guests of the fest include helmers such Audiard, attending for the first time, as well as Oscar-winner (for “The Artist”) Michel Hazanavicius, presenting his new film, “The Most Precious of Cargoes.” Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte, who directed closing night film, “The Count of Monte-Cristo,” will also be in attendance.
Tipsheet
WHAT The American French Film Festival
WHEN Oct. 29-Nov. 3
WHERE DGA Theater Complex, 7920 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles
WEB tafff.org