Films and Schedule

All films will be screened at the Avon Cinema and will include English subtitles.

March 12, 6 PM | March 15, 1 PM
La Petite dernière (The Little Sister). 2025. France/Germany. Directed by Hafsia Herzi. 106 min
Fatima, 17, the youngest of three daughters, treads carefully as she searches for her
own path, grappling with emerging desires, her attraction to women, and her loyalty to her
caring French-Algerian family. Starting university in Paris, she dates, makes friends,
and explores a whole new world, all while confronting a timeless and heartrending
dilemma: How can one stay true to oneself when reconciling different parts of one's
identity feels impossible?

March 13, 3.30 PM | March 17, 6 PM
Fragments for Venus. 2025. France/Italy. Directed by Alice Diop. 21 min. Ndar, Saga
Waalo. 2025. Senegal. Directed by Ousmane William Mbaye. 91 min.
In Alice Diop's Fragments for Venus, a black woman wanders through a museum,
carefully examining each painting, searching for something. In the background, a
voiceover recites titles and describes paintings, gradually revealing the place Western
art has often reserved for black female bodies. Another black woman wanders through
the streets of Brooklyn, looking in wonder at the black women around her, living
incarnations of the new Venus. In Ndar, Saga Waalo Ousmane William Mbaye examines
Ndar, the original name of Saint-Louis, an island at the mouth of the Senegal River,
which was the port of colonial penetration in West Africa four centuries ago. An
economic, cultural, and political crossroads, it served as a model for the "civilizing
mission.

March 13, 6 PM | March 18, 6 PM
Amour apocalypse (Peak Everything). 2025. Canada. Directed by Anne Émond.
100 min.
Adam is a kind-hearted kennel-owner. Hypersensitive and borderline depressed, he
hides his existential fears from his affection-avoidant father and lets his young assistant
take advantage of his good nature. To help combat his eco-anxiety, Adam orders a
therapeutic solar lamp. Through the lamp's supplier's technical support line, he meets
Tina, a radiant woman with a voice that soothes all of his worries. This unexpected
encounter changes everything: Earth trembles, and hearts explode... It's love.

March 13, 8 PM | March 15, 3 PM
Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due. 2025. France. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche.
134 min. North American premiere | Introduced by Maria Giménez Cavallo
Sète, France, 1994. It's the end of summer vacation for Amin. Ophélie, his childhood
friend, confides in him: her father wants her to take over the family farm; her fiancé,
Clément, will return from Iraq for their wedding, but she is pregnant with Tony's baby,
and Tony wants to keep the affair secret. Ophélie contemplates her choices: should
she get an abortion in secret and marry Clément, or follow her maternal instinct,
perhaps seeking refuge in Paris with Amin? Meanwhile, Tony introduces Amin to an
American producer who wants to produce Amin's screenplay and give his wife,
Jessica, the lead role. Destiny will have to decide its path.

March 14, 11 AM
Arco. 2025. France/USA/UK. Directed by Ugo Bienvenu. 88 min.
A magical animated journey through time, Arco is a dazzling adventure about a 10-
year-old boy from a peaceful, distant future who accidentally travels back to 2075 and
discovers a world in peril. As Arco develops a charming and touching friendship with a
young girl named Iris, they band together and, along with her trusted robot caretaker
Mikki, set out on a quest to get Arco home, while the two children may also be the only
ones who can save our planet. Arco won the Cristal Award for Best Feature Film at the
2025 Annecy Awards and is nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2026
Academy Awards.

March 14, 1.30 PM | March 19, 4 PM
Lumière, le cinéma!. 2025. France. Directed by Thierry Frémaux. 106 min.
In one of those wonderful coincidences of history, "lumière", the French word for
"light," was also the last name of brothers Auguste and Louis, whose brilliant invention,
the cinematograph, helped to inaugurate the most beloved art form of the last 130
years. Institute Lumière director Thierry Frémaux uses Lumière, Le Cinéma! to guide
the viewer through over a hundred shorts—some famous, some forgotten, some never
before seen—directed by Lumière and company. In the process, Frémaux illuminates
how the brothers employed the camera as a creative instrument as they (and their
operators) mastered framing, staging, and subject selection for quotidian and exotic
microdocumentaries as well as the first-ever fictional motion pictures. The result is not
only a glorious re(telling) of the genesis of cinema but a profound meditation on the
beautiful world captured—and the mysterious world imagined—by the Lumières.

March 14, 3.45 PM
Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7). 1962. France. Directed by Agnès Varda. 89 min.
Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a
singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift in the city as she awaits the test results of a
biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman's life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited
mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas
of Cherbourg) and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

March 14, 5:45 PM
À bout de souffle (Breathless). 1960. France. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. 90 min.
Followed by a conversation with David Wills and Francisco Valente
Small-time crook Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) steals a car and murders a policeman.
While on the run, he reconnects with Patricia (Jean Seberg), a journalism student living
in Paris, and tries to convince her to go on the lam with him. Jean-Luc Godard's first
feature film is a founding moment in the French New Wave—and a revolutionary work
in film history. Restored in 4K from the original camera negative by Studiocanal and
CNC at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory (Bologna).

March 14, 8.30 PM
Nouvelle Vague. 2025. France/USA. Directed by Richard Linklater. 106 min.
A playful, poignant love letter to cinema, Nouvelle Vague reimagines the making of
Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless in an exuberant exploration of the youthful rebellion and
creative chaos that shaped the French New Wave.

March 15, 11 AM
Maya, donne-moi un titre (Maya, Give Me a Title). 2024. France. Directed by Michel
Gondry. 61 min. Maya and her dad, Michel Gondry, live in two different countries. Every evening, he
asks her: "Maya, give me a title." Her answer serves as the basis for many short stop-motion animations in which Maya is the hero. The result is a poetic and amusing journey that invites you to dream and laugh.

March 15, 6 PM | March 18, 8 PM
Universal Language. 2024. Canada. Directed by Matthew Rankin. 89 min.
In an interzone somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg, the lives of multiple
characters intertwine in surprising and mysterious ways. Gradeschoolers Negin and
Nazgol find a sum of money frozen in the winter ice and try to claim it. Massoud leads
a group of increasingly befuddled tourists through the monuments and historic sites of
Winnipeg. Matthew quits his meaningless job at a Québec government office and sets
out on an enigmatic journey to visit his mother. Space, time, and personal identities
crossfade, interweave, and echo into a surreal comedy of misdirection.

March 15, 8 PM | March 19, 8 PM
La Venue de l'avenir (Colors of Time). 2025. France. Directed by Cédric Klapisch.
126 min.
United by the unexpected inheritance of a house in Normandy, four estranged cousins
discover their family history. While exploring the house, left untouched since the 1940s,
they excavate the life of their ancestor, a 20-year-old woman who lived there in 1895.
The end of the 19th century saw the birth of both photography and the Impressionist
movement, which profoundly changed painting. Through back-and-forth journeys
between 1895 and 2025, they find in the relics of the past what will help them better
envision their own future.

March 16, 6 PM
Rosetta. 1999. Belgium, France. Directors Luc Dardenne and Jean-PierreDardenne. 95 min.
The Belgian filmmaking team of brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne turned heads
with Rosetta, an intense vérité drama that closely follows a poor young woman
struggling to hold on to a job to support herself and her alcoholic mother. It's a swift,
simple tale made revelatory by the raw, empathetic way the directors render Rosetta's
desperation, keeping the camera nearly perched on her shoulder throughout. Many
have copied the Dardennes' style, but few have equaled it. This ferocious film earned
the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for the filmmakers and the Best Actress
prize for the indomitable Émilie Dequenne, who passed away last year.

March 16, 8 PM
Crushed. 2024. Belgium. Directed by Camille Vigny. 12 min.
Using a powerful visual metaphor with a first-person perspective, Camille Vigny tells
the story of the domestic violence she suffered when she was 18 in her short film Crushed.
A highly courageous political statement, Crushed is a bloodcurdling cry from the dark.
Jeunes mères (Young Mothers). 2025. Belgium, France.
Directed by Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. 104 min.
In Young Mothers, the Dardenne brothers follow the paths of Jessica, Perla,
Julie, Ariane, and Naïma, who are housed in a shelter for young mothers—five
teenagers hoping for a better life for themselves and their babies.

March 17, 8.30 PM | March 19, 6 PM
Kouté vwa. (Listen to the Voices). 2024. Belgium/France/French Guiana. Directed by
Maxime Jean-Baptiste. 76 min.
In the award-winning Listen to the Voices (Special Jury Prize and Special Mention at
the 2024 Locarno Film Festival), director Maxime Jean-Baptiste follows Melrick, a 13-
year-old boy who spends his summer vacation in Cayenne with his grandmother
Nicole. His desire to learn to play the drum brings back the spectre of Lucas, Nicole's
son, also a drummer, who died in tragic conditions 11 years earlier in the streets of
French Guiana.