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Department of Modern Languages
The University of Mississippi

Les voix de la jeunesse French Film Festival

Join us for Les voix de la jeunesse (The Voice of Youth) Film Festival, featuring captivating stories from contemporary and classic French cinema

Dramatic Film

Un film dramatique (A Dramatic Film France 2019)

Friday 25 March 2022 @ 6:30p in Lamar 131

Commissioned as a dedicated artwork for the newly constructed Dora Maar middle school on the outskirts of Paris, Un film dramatique is a lively portrait of the first class to attend the school, filmed over the course of four years. The group of 21 middle schoolers discuss the drama of their daily lives and experiment with cameras and equipment. They are the film’s subjects, and also its makers.

With a refreshingly uninhibited approach, Éric Baudelaire (Letters to Max, The Anabasis of May…) offers a new perspective on the realities of our current socio-political moment that is both playful and purposeful. As the students debate the approaching elections and the immigration crisis, they also seek to answer a key political question—what are we doing here together?

Little Girl

Petite fille (Little Girl France 2020)

Tuesday 29 March 2022 @ 6:30p in Lamar 326

Petite fille is the moving portrait of 7-year-old Sasha, who has always known that she is a girl. Sasha’s family has recently accepted her gender identity, embracing their daughter for who she truly is while working to confront outdated norms and find affirmation in a small community of rural France. Realized with delicacy and intimacy, Sébastien Lifshitz’s documentary poetically explores the emotional challenges, everyday feats, and small moments in Sasha’s life.

Night of the Kings

La Nuit des Rois (Night of the Kings France 2020)

Friday 1 April 2022 @ 6:30p in Lamar 131

A young man is sent to “La Maca,” a prison in the middle of the Ivorian forest ruled by its inmates. Astradition goes with the rising of the red moon, he is designated by the Boss to be the new “Roman” and must tell a story to the other prisoners. Learning what fate awaits him, he begins to narrate the mystical life of the legendary outlaw named “Zama King” and has no choice but to make his story last until dawn.

Tale of Summer

Conte d’été (A Tale of Summer France 1995)

Wednesday 6 April 2022 @ 6:30p in Lamar 131

According to Eric Rohmer, the third film of Tales of the Four Seasons is his “most personal vehicle.” Based on events from Rohmer’s youth, A Tale of Summer follows amateur musician Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) to a seaside resort in Dinard, on the coast of Brittany. There, each of three women (Amanda Langlet, Gwenaëlle Simon, and Aurelia Nolin) offers the possibility of romance, but Gaspard’s inability to commit to just one puts all of his chances at love in jeopardy. Summer features Rohmer’s wistful observations on indecisiveness and the fickle nature of desire, as brought to life by a talented young cast in a picturesque setting.

Three Day Pass

La Permission (The Story of a Three Day Pass France 1967)

Friday 8 April 2022 @ 6:30p in Lamar 131

Melvin Van Peebles’s edgy, angsty, romantic first feature could never have been made in America. Unable to break into a segregated Hollywood, Van Peebles decamped to France, taught himself the language, and wrote a number of books in French, one of which, La Permission, would become his stylistically innovative feature debut. Turner (Harry Baird), an African American soldier stationed in France, is granted a promotion and a three-day leave from base by his casually racist commanding officer and heads to Paris, where he finds whirlwind romance with a white woman (Nicole Berger)—but what happens to their love when his furlough is over? Channeling the brash exuberance of the French New Wave, Van Peebles creates an exploration of the psychology of an interracial relationship as well as a commentary on France’s contradictory attitudes about race that is playful, sarcastic, and stingingly subversive by turns, and that laid the foundation for the scorched-earth cinematic revolution he would unleash just a few years later with Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.

Mandibles

Mandibules (Mandibles France 2020)

Tuesday 19 April 2022 @ 6:30p in Lamar 326

When simple-minded friends Jean-Gab and Manu find a giant fly trapped in the boot of a car, they decide to train it in the hope of making a ton of cash.