If a trip to Cannes proved out of reach this summer, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival has you covered. SBIFF’s steadily expanding program and largest mini-festival, the Wave Film Festival, allows Francophiles and cinema lovers alike to take a trip to France through the silver screen.
Considered the birthplace of cinema in the Western world, France has long produced pioneering films in cinematography and romantic surrealism, and the 2010s have given rise to a new wave of French cinema. Due to the expansion and globalization of filmmaking, this surge is perhaps less avant-garde, but just as acutely nostalgic as the post-revolutionary French New Wave of the mid-20th century, which saw directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut alter the landscape of filmmaking by establishing a renewed emphasis on innovation over craft. With French cinema again in the spotlight, the Wave Film Festival shines a light on 11 of the past year’s best-critiqued Gallic movies.
The films chosen range from psychological thriller Mother’s Instinct (Duelles) to Escape from Raqqa (Exfiltrés), a true story of a woman and child escaping from an ISIS-run Syrian town, and are all exemplary stories that successfully embody modern French culture. Several of these films have been heralded as award-worthy during the past festival circuit, such as Treat Me Like Fire (Joueurs), The Trouble With You (En liberté), and A Faithful Man (L’homme fidèle). Proving to be a diverse selection of classic coming-of-age tales and intimate dramas, the Wave offers insight into both emerging and recognizable French themes and talent.