French cinema makes landfall in Waikato this month, bringing films including 13 Days, 13 Nights to local cinemas. Photo / Jérôme Prébois
French cinema makes landfall in Waikato this month, filling local screens with Cannes hits, wartime thrillers, fashion dramas and blockbusters.
After a breakout 2025 season that packed theatres across the country, the L’Oréal French Film Festival Aotearoa returns to Hamilton on May 27 for its 20th anniversary celebration.
The festival will also come to Cambridge and Whitianga on May 28.
This year’s programme brings a mix of crowd-pleasers and critically acclaimed films to Waikato audiences.
Festival director Fergus Grady said audiences were embracing French cinema not just for its artistry, but for the energy and emotion of the cinema experience.
“We’re seeing audiences come out smiling and highly recommending what they’ve seen,” Grady said.
“We feel some of the more commercial French cinema that does well in France really resonates here in New Zealand.”
This year’s programme rolls from intimate family stories to large-scale historical epics, with actors including Angelina Jolie, Pierre Niney and Isabelle Huppert starring in the festival’s headline films.
Organisers are also pushing hard to widen the audience beyond traditional arthouse crowds.
“We are making a conscious effort to include films that might appeal to more of a general audience, not just people expecting a niche film experience,” Grady said.
Likely to be one of the festival’s biggest crowd-pullers is 13 Days, 13 Nights, a political thriller following the story of French embassy staff scrambling to evacuate citizens from Kabul during the Taliban takeover.
“That’s a really thrilling film. I can’t recommend that highly enough,” Grady said.
The film is directed by Martin Bourboulon, who also led the recent Three Musketeers films, and showcases how French studios are now chasing blockbusters.
“The studio system in France has become really invested in trying to deliver a huge French blockbuster every year,” Grady said.
French film-makers were now building massive sets, staging huge battle sequences and pouring money into ambitious productions that rival Hollywood spectacle while keeping a distinctly French voice, he said.
“You’re seeing incredible scale, huge numbers of extras and really ambitious film-making.”
The festival still leaves room for quieter emotional stories.
Just an Illusion, from the directors behind The Intouchables, follows two working-class brothers navigating family tensions and growing up.
Grady believes the film carries the same emotional punch that turned The Intouchables into a worldwide hit.
Beyond the films, the festival taps into something cinemas have struggled to replicate in the streaming era: collective experience.
As audiences spend more time watching alone at home, festivals continue drawing people back into packed theatres where laughter, tension and emotion ripple across the room together.
“There’s still something special about watching films together,” Grady said.
“You can feel the audience reacting collectively.”
The festival continues attracting loyal older audiences, though organisers are increasingly focused on bringing younger moviegoers through the doors.
“The average audience is probably in their 40s and 50s,” Grady said.
“We do have French language students and teachers coming through, but we are conscious of the ageing demographic and continue trying to challenge that.”
Recent attempts to target younger audiences with coming-of-age films have delivered mixed results, with Grady admitting it remained difficult to predict what younger viewers would connect with.
At the same time, he believes French cinema continues to thrive because of the enormous support the country gives its film-makers.
“You’re seeing French co-productions winning Oscars year after year,” he said.
“There’s a huge amount of government support for film-making there.”
That investment fuels everything from intimate dramas to sprawling historical spectacles, helping French cinema maintain both artistic credibility and commercial reach.
While internationally recognised names like Jolie generate headlines, Grady said star power alone was never enough to guarantee success.
“I don’t think it’s super important to have an American actress in a French film,” he said.
“It’s more about the strength of the film itself.”
Tom Eley is a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. Before he joined the Hamilton-based team, he worked for the Weekend Sun and Sunlive. He previously worked as a journalist at Black Press Media in Canada and won a fellowship with the Vancouver Sun.