French Film Festival coming to Far North

French Film Festival Aotearoa director Fergus Grady, who will premiere the festival in Kerikeri for the first time. Photo / Supplied

Cinema lovers who’ve missed the big screen throughout the pandemic have something to look forward to this week.

In its 17th year, French Film Festival Aotearoa will launch in Kerikeri for the first time on Thursday. It’s the only festival host north of Matakana.

Festival director Fergus Grady said independent cinemas like Kerikeri’s Cathay Pacific comprised nearly all of its host venues, and such festivals were instrumental in recovering pre-pandemic traffic levels.

“Festivals like this are key to building their consistency, especially over winter,” Grady said.

“We’re hoping this helps bring older audiences back to cinemas, and they have the confidence to return.”

The decision to expand to the Far North was instigated by the cinema’s change in ownership late last year.

New owner Ross Churchouse said he’d been working outside the cinema industry while it was hit hard by Covid, and saw the opportunity to rebuild.

“Having a cinema in a small town is a very important thing, and the previous owners had done a great job of maintaining the customer base.”

Churchouse said the festival was part of his effort to ensure the cinema offered “something for everyone”, and “to bring in interesting films to look after core daytime art-house audiences.”

Fresh from a visit to Cannes to choose next year’s films, Grady said French cinema audiences were “really coming back” although 2019 levels had not yet been recovered.

“It hasn’t been as consistent here in NZ, with some really good but also bad results.”

While in Cannes, Grady and two colleagues from Film Festivals Aotearoa consulted with Australian colleagues and distributors from around the world to decide which titles to prioritise seeing and managed to watch 15 films per day among them.

“When we took over the festival in 2021, we sought to bring home the biggest crowd pleasers rather than the critically acclaimed.”

After seeing more than 50 films with potential for next year’s festival, Grady said they already had a strong top 10 in mind and called it “a good year for French cinema”.

“We’re expecting some real blockbusters audiences will love next year.”

Grady said he saw Kerikeri as a growing demographic and hoped to extend the festival’s duration to two weeks in 2024, but would wait to see this year’s attendance results to make the call.

He described this year’s lineup as strong in general, but had some predictions for standouts among audiences generally skewing towards women aged 60 and above.

Among them are Two tickets to Greece, A Great Friend, Sugar and Stars and The Tasting.

Grady - also a filmmaker who’s premiered two feature documentaries with great success around the world - said his personal favourite was comedy The Innocent, an official selection of the Cannes International Film Festival.

“Masquerade, which is on opening night, is quite good.”

It features two of France’s most recognisable leading men and premiered to critical acclaim at Cannes 2022.

Churchouse encouraged anyone averse to subtitles to consider expanding their horizons.

“Don’t let subtitles turn you off from great storylines. They aren’t at all hard to follow along. It’s valuable to try new things.”

He said tickets were limited to 50 per screening, except for the opening and closing nights which were in bigger cinemas, and selling quickly.

The festival opens on June 1 and runs until June 7.

View films and the schedule at: frenchfilmfestival.co.nz/locations/Kerikeri