It showcases a particularly rich programme of films each year, the best of which we would like to share with you.
Alongside the competition, it brings together our favourites – films released over the course of the year, which have won awards at festivals or been praised by the press. All screened for the first time in Châlons-en-Champagne, these stories take us on a journey through very diverse eras, regions and contexts, where major historical events intertwine with more personal destinies.
The Second World War, its prelude and its aftermath, lie at the heart of five films with very different tones and styles. László Nemes, director of Son of Saul, captures Jean Moulin’s final moments of resistance in the face of his torturer Klaus Barbie, at a turning point in history (Moulin).
Notre Salut brilliantly examines the mechanisms that lead an ordinary man to join the collaborationist movement, whilst Fatherland immerses us in Thomas Mann’s delicate return to his native Germany, now defeated. Los Javis, the renowned Spanish directing duo, present La Bola Negra, an epic in three parts in which the fates of three men are bound together by time and history. Finally, La Violoniste uses animation to unfold an intimate portrait of friendship, memory and the wounds of the Sino-Japanese War, driven by the power of music.
The war in Ukraine is also a theme in two films from this selection. Vesna confronts the horror of the conflict through the story of a priest who resists the enemy and attempts to restore dignity to the bodies of the victims. Minotaure, meanwhile, tackles the Russian invasion more indirectly, through the story of a family torn apart.
South America is also represented this year with two entries. Dégel conjures up the ghosts of the Chilean dictatorship in a thriller imbued with a fascinating and unsettling sense of strangeness. The gripping documentary Les Survivants du Che immerses us in the incredible escape of Che Guevara’s comrades as they are hunted down by the Bolivian army.
Two final films bring this rich selection to a close. Do You Love Me transports us to the heart of Lebanese history through remarkable editing that blends archive footage with film clips, once again straddling the line between personal narrative and grand historical narrative. In a radically different vein, RRR stands out as a spectacular Indian and anti-colonial epic that is every bit as good as any Hollywood production.
