Annual French film festival returns to Hamilton

I Feel Good is about 40-year-old bludger Jacques, who comes up with a business plan he hopes will make him rich and famous. Photo / Supplied

A man with a business plan mixing travel and cheap plastic surgery, resistance heroes, and a seven-day-long ball are all coming to Hamilton this month, with the return of the annual French Film Festival.

Opening on March 14 for two weeks at the Lido Cinema, the Alliance Française French Film Festival offers film goers a fantastic selection of 31 offerings, including documentaries, family-friendly films, comedies, and love stories.

Film buffs and Francophiles alike are lucky to have the festival in town, as it almost didn't happen this year.

The previous organisers announced in late 2018 that their organisation was being wound-up, leaving New Zealand without a French Film Festival for the first time in 13 years.

However, Wellington's Penthouse Cinema, the Alliance Française and the French Embassy came together to make it happen.

The Alliance Française de Hamilton is supporting local delivery and president Dr Persephone de Magdalene said: "We look forward to sharing this celebration of French culture and language with other film lovers."

The line-up includes I Feel Good, a film about 40-year-old bludger Jacques, who comes up with a business plan he hopes will make him rich and famous. It involves travel, and cheap plastic surgery.

Memoir of War tells the story of a Resistance member working in Nazi-occupied Paris, who has to get close to a collaborator when her husband is taken to a concentration camp, and Le Grand Bal tells of more than 2000 people attending a marathon annual ball in the French countryside, which lasts seven days and eight nights!

The festival will run in cinemas through the country — from Auckland to Arrowtown — with Hamilton's screenings being hosted by the Lido cinema in Centre Place.

Opening night on March 14 features the film En Liberté/The Trouble With You, which tells the story of a widow who tries to help the man scapegoated by her (now dead) police chief husband.

For more information, visit frenchfilmfestival.co.nz or Lido Cinema.