(Los Angeles) The rise of streaming and videos on demand during the pandemic have benefited foreign cinema, said the American director Michael Mann on Monday at the opening of the French Hollywood film festival.
“I think the combination of streaming and the effects of the pandemic, where people have spent a lot of time watching video on demand, has opened up cinema to the world in a truly formidable way, ”the director told AFP. Heat and Last of the Mohicans on the red carpet of Colcoa, the most important festival dedicated to French films in the world.
This 25e edition – the previous one was canceled last year due to the pandemic – is further reduced somewhat due to restrictions imposed by the United States on foreign travelers. These restrictions will end on November 7.
However, Colcoa offers 55 films and series ” made in France ”, most of which are shown for the first time in North America.
The film Ouistreham, unveiled at Cannes this summer, but which will not be released in France and the United States until next year, opened the festival on Monday, which runs until Sunday.
Directed by Emmanuel Carrère and adapted from a book by Florence Aubenas, it paints a moving portrait of marginalized and downgraded women, with Juliette Binoche in the spotlight and surrounded by non-professional actresses, some of whom play their own role.
Thanks to a new generation of filmmakers and streaming, “There are new ways of consuming, of discovering and of being interested in various cinematographic genres, and therefore the American public opens up to the world”, estimated for his part François Truffart, the director of Colcoa (for City of Lights, City of Angels respective nicknames of Paris and Los Angeles).
On the program this year, the film Black Box, a panting thriller about an investigator, played by Pierre Niney, who seeks to solve the mystery of the crash of a Dubai-Paris flight that killed 300 people in the Alps; The fool’s ball by Mélanie Laurent; or Titanium by Julia Ducournau, in the running to represent France at the Oscars next year.
Side series, in addition to successes like Paris Police 1900 and Opera, the festival highlights On The Verge, a comedy written, directed and performed by Julie Delpy that takes place in pre-COVID-19 Los Angeles where four friends are struggling in the midst of an existential crisis.