French finesse

With work from established directors and emerging talents, and featuring some of the best actors working in cinema, this year's French Film Festival promises entertainment, stimulation and provocation for Irish audiences. Michael Dwyerreports

OPENING FILM

An award winner at Cannes this year, where it received a sustained standing ovation, the animated feature Persepolis is the French entry for the best foreign-language film category at next spring's Oscars. Co-directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, Persepolis is based on Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novels about a precocious young girl, Marjane, growing up in Tehran. It covers the downfall of the Shah in 1978 and the radical transformation of the country after the Islamic Revolution.

Raised by middle-class liberal parents, Marjane is scathing in her outspoken criticism of the repression of women in particular under the new theocratic regime, and the movie is alternately poignant and uproariously funny. The spirited voice cast features Chiara Mastroianni as Marjane, her real-life mother Catherine Deneuve as Marjane's mother, and the venerable Danielle Darrieux as her grandmother.

CLOSING FILM

A former guest of the festival, director Claude Miller made an auspicious feature directing debut in 1976 with The Best Way to Walk and followed it with such notable films as La Petite Voleuse, Class Trip and Betty Fisher and Other Stories. Un Secret, Miller's latest film, traces the life of a Jewish family during and after the second World War. It stars Cécile de France, Patrick Bruel and Ludivine Sagnier.

Love Songs/Les Chansons d'Amour: Shown in competition at Cannes this year, Christophe Honoré's modern musical is set among the self-absorbed young bourgeoisie of Paris, talking and smoking profusely as they try to deal with their complicated sex lives. As the potentially bisexual magazine sub-editor at its axis, Louis Garrel displays a decent singing voice on the poppy tunes that pepper the soundtrack of this enjoyable divertissement.

Belle Toujours: The remarkable Portuguese writer-director Manoel de Oliveira began making movies in the early 1930s and is as prolific as ever as he turns 99 next month. Belle Toujours is an elegant vignette that doubles as a homage and a sequel to Luis Buñuel's classic Belle de Jour (1967). Bulle Ogier takes on Catherine Deneuve's role as Séverine, the bored bourgeois Parisian who amused herself by working at a kinky brothel. Michel Piccoli reprises his role as Henri, her husband's best friend, and there are some unanswered questions when they meet for the first time in decades.

Water Lilies/Naissance des Pieuvres: Director Céline Sciamma will attend the festival screening of her well-regarded debut feature, which follows three teenage girls over a summer as they compete for boys and for places on the local synchronised swimming team.

: The antithesis of last year's Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, this documentary observes the 2006 World Cup from the perspective of French midfielder Vikash Dhorasoo. He spent most of the tournament suffering the frustration of being relegated to sitting on the bench and experiencing dark nights of the soul, which hastened his retirement.

Flight of the Red Balloon/Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge: Prolific Chinese-born, Taiwan-raised director Hou Hsaio-hsein's first film outside Asia pays homage to Albert Lamorisse's irresistibly charming Le Balloon Rouge (1956) and stars Juliette Binoche as a Parisian puppeteer.

Hunting and Gathering/ Ensemble, c'est tout: Claude Berri, the director of Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, turns to a contemporary setting for a story of opposites attracting when an aspirant artist (Amélie star Audrey Tautou) falls for a young chef (Guillaume Canet).

Don't Touch the Axe/Ne Touchez pas la Hache: The new film from former critic and veteran director Jacques Rivette is a Balzac adaptation starring Guillaume Depardieu and Jeanne Balibar as lovers in 19th-century Paris.

Blood of a Poet/La Sang d'un Poète: Jean Cocteau's imaginative first film, made in 1930 when he was 41, will be screened with the accompaniment of a new score performed live by the Dublin septet 3epkano.

TRIBUTE PROGRAMME

The festival's special guest will be Nicolas Philibert, the respected documentarist who achieved international acclaim with Être et Avoir, his 2002 film observing a teacher and his young students over a single year. Être et Avoir is one of six Philibert documentaries to be screened. Among the other is his latest, Back to Normandy, which revisits the participants in the late René Allio's 1975 Moi, Pierre Rivière (also showing), which dealt with a gruesome 19th-century family murder and on which Philibert worked as assistant director. He will discuss his work in a public interview after the screening of Back to Normandy.

The Carte Noir French Film Festival runs at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin, from next Tuesday until November 22nd. Three films from the programme, including Ensemble, c'est Tout, will be shown at the Eye cinema in Galway from November 19th to 21st. www.irishfilm.ie