Film at Lincoln Center has teamed up with Unifrance for the 31st edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, running March 5–15, bringing 22 films to New York audiences, some that world premiered at Cannes and Venice. Twenty directors and film talent are scheduled to attend select screenings for post-screening Q&As.
Opening night showcases the New York premiere of The Stranger, François Ozon’s adaptation of Albert Camus’s novel, which bowed at Venice this past year and received four César Award nominations, including Best Actor (Benjamin Voisin) and Best Supporting Actor (Pierre Lottin). Alpha, Julia Ducournau’s follow up to her Palme d’Or award-winning Titane, closes the festival. Alpha premiered in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
Hubert Charuel’s fab, near-queer-ish Meteors, exploring masculinity is also featured. Read my CANNES REVIEW HERE.
The Contending was able to view a number of the selected films, all worthwhile, and one, in particular, a must-see that should be considered for France’s 2026 International Feature Oscar submission. We’ll begin there.
Case 137
After seeing Dominik Moll’s bracing, uber-timely and truly absorbing work, Case 137, I was initially up in arms that it wasn’t even among the five considered by France to submit for the 2025 International Feature Oscar. But then I saw the release date in its country of origin, meaning it will be eligible this year. I breathed a sigh of relief because this is a film that is a riveting cinematic work, vital to our frightening times, led by a captivating lead performance by Léa Drucker (Synonyms, Close, Last Summer) who rightly won the César Award for Best Actress. Pay no heed to the whiny American critics who call it too procedural or ‘programmic’—they would have probably said the same about All the President’s Men. I was utterly captivated from beginning to end and couldn’t help but wonder if the Trump administration’s ICE stormtroopering was somehow based on how the government of France responded to the Yellow Vest protests that began in November of 2018. The parallels make the mind boggle.
Based on real events, but fictionalized, director and co-writer Dominik Moll (along with Gilles Marchand) have crafted an intense look inside the internal affairs investigation of a young man severely injured at one of the demonstrations. Drucker plays investigative police officer Stéphanie, a woman literally caught in between two worlds–she comes from a family of law enforcement, but the victim of the crime is from her industrial city of Saint-Dizier. As her investigation digs deeper into the incident, the officers involved claim self-defense, despite the fact that video footage contradict that. Facts and proof don’t seem to matter much. Sound familiar?
Nominated for eight César Awards, Case 137 isn’t a showy, studio film where there’s a clear hero, bad guys and a happy ending. It’s a gritty docu-realistic work that engrosses, angers and stings. It deserves to be seen. The film debuted at Cannes last year and will be released in the U.S. by Film Movement.
Enzo
Also debuting at Cannes last year was Robin Campillo’s poignant and unpredictable look at the yearning and burgeoning desire of a 16-year-old boy who is also trying to figure out his place in the world. The film is the final collaboration between the late writer-director Laurent Cantet and Campillo (along with the busy Gilles Marchand.) They collaborated on the Cannes Palme d’Or winner The Class in 2008.
Campillo co-wrote and edited five films with Cantet and has directed five features including the acclaimed queer-themed Eastern Boys (2013) and BPM (120 Beats Per Minute) (2017).
In Enzo, the bored and unmotivated titular character (played with a wee charm and a lot of necessary awkwardness by Eloy Pohu) is a good student but not interested in pursuing an education. Instead, he takes on a job at a construction site and is initially terrible at it. His well-to-do parents (Pierfrancesco Favino and Élodie Bouchez) are not thrilled, to say the least.
Enzo finds himself attracted to Vlad (a winning Maksym Slivinskyi), a Ukrainian laborer, which creates a host of problems. He also finds himself becoming more socially conscious and awakening from his privileged ennui.
Enzo is an engrossing and unique coming-of-age film and a nice addition to the queer canon.
The Great Arch
Claus Bang (The Square) is superb as the tortured architect who goes to great lengths to fight for his vision. The fab supporting cast includes Swann Arlaud (Anatomy of a Fall), writer-director-actor Xavier Dolan (Mommy) and Michel Fau (The Crime is Mine) as François Mitterrand—all deservedly César nominated.
Demoustier paints a very intricate and honest cinematic portrait of what most artists are already painfully aware of, how forced compromises, endless struggles and agonizing betrayals often follow once an admired and approved project is initiated. Too often, those in power (ergo those who handle the purse strings), become fearful about costs, but also decide they know better than the creator.
A Cohen Media Group release.
Two Pianos
Celebrated filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin (Deception, Brother and Sister) has crafted yet another spellbinding work centered on Mathias (François Civil), a gifted pianist who returns to his home of Lyon after years in Asia, lured by his former mentor and diva, Elena (Charlotte Rampling). One night, arriving late to a party he runs into an old love, Claude (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), and literally faints at the sight of her. He then reconnects with his best friend, Pierre (Jeremy Lewin), who is now married to Claude. And before you can say triangle… Oh and Claude and Pierre have a young son who looks an awful lot like Mathias…
Desplechin is able to weave his melodramatic plot in a way that skirts too much soap opera in large part thanks to his wonderful cast.
Civil (The Three Musketeers) has matinee idol looks but also happens to be an incredibly incisive and nuanced actor. We are always rooting for Mathias, even when he fucks up. Civil also worked hard to be able to perform Bach, so props for that as well.
Rampling is riveting as usual and her scenes with Civil are a wonder, but she departs the film around the midway mark (which felt so contrived) and is sorely missed as the narrative then focuses fully on the topsy-turvy Mathias/Claude relationship.
Tereszkiewicz has the trickiest part since Claude is selfish and erratic, but the actress is so captivating we can’t help but care.
Two Pianos is an emotionally rich film that ends on a less than fulfilling note but haunted me for days afterwards.
A Kino Lorber release.
Nino
Winner of two César Awards including Best First Feature and Male Newcomer, Pauline Loquès’ intimate, tender debut feature, Nino, is about a young man in his late 20s who is diagnosed with throat cancer and the four days he must wait until his treatment starts.
Loquès grounds the film in a sensitivity to the reality of the situation but also provides a hopefulness one doesn’t often see in films like this. The script, by Loquès and Maud Ameline, eschews the maudlin for something more existential.
And it’s the nuanced performance by the beguiling Théodore Pellerin as the titular character that keeps the audience invested and engaged. Pellerin has been creating rich and intriguing characters in films like Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Solo and Lurker recently. Here gets to go deep into realizations about his character’s mortality that is wholly relatable.
Love Me Tender
Vicky Krieps delivers another extraordinary performance in Anna Cazenave Cambet’s shattering drama, Love Me Tender, about a mother’s fight to see her 8-year-old son.
Krieps is Clémence, a strong-willed woman amiably separated from her husband Laurent (Antoine Reinartz) and sharing custody of their son Paul (Viggo Ferreira-Redier). But when Clémence tells Laurent that she’s been seeing women, he takes it as an insult to his manhood and decides their son should only be with him. So begins a harrowing legal battle where it seems that the entire French legal system runs contrary to women who do not conform to their idea of traditional motherhood.
Love Me Tender, based on Constance Debré’s 2020 award-winning, semi-autobiographical novel, is a sharp critique of the courts and social system and is most effective when the focus remains on Clémence, her son and their ridiculously unfair predicament. The film spends a bit too much time on Clémence’s sexual conquests, which is fine, but these liaisons aren’t really explored enough to warrant the extended run-time.
Krieps has a way of slipping wholly into the skin of her character and allowing us just enough access to be fully invested in her journey.
The Little Sister
Fatima (outstanding newcomer Nadia Melliti), a devout Muslim teen, lives in Paris with her kind Algerian immigrant family. She goes to school, has rowdy friends, and a boyfriend. But she also has a secret, she’s attracted to girls—only girls.
Hafsia Herzi’s sensitive, careful, queer coming-of-age film, The Little Sister, chronicles her journey towards self-discovery, tentatively dating other girls and, ultimately finding love with Ji-na ((Return to Seoul’s Park Ji-Min). But Ji-na suffers from severe depression and she pushes Fatima away. But life goes on.
Herzi and Melliti show us a young woman on the cusp of figuring out who she is, despite the cultural and religious stigma attached to same-sex love.
The Little Sister garnered six César Award nominations, including Best Film, with Melliti winning the Best Female Newcomer Award. She also won the Best Actress Award at Cannes.
Herzi chooses to end her film on a decidedly safe note, which works tonally, but dodges a real and important issue faced by many LGBTQ youth raised in extreme religious homes.
The Stranger (L’Étranger)
I missed the press screening of François Ozon’s The Stranger (L’Étranger) in Venice, which really upset me because I am a huge fan of the director’s work starting with Sitcom in 1998 and through Water Drops on Burning Rocks, 8 Women, Swimming Pool, Time to Leave, In the House and Frantz. He had the balls to take on the Catholic sex abuse scandal in the potent and stirring, By the Grace of God and made his best film to date in 2020 with Summer of 85. I even adored his last three films, Peter von Kant, The Crime is Mine and When Fall is Coming—all his work is as fascinating as it is diverse.
The Stranger is another adaptation of Albert Camus’s 1942 novel (Luchino Visconti’s 1967 version starred Marcello Mastroianni). Ozon casts his lead, Meursault, to perfection with the gorgeous Benjamin Voison (so good in Summer of 85) playing the enigmatic titular character whose seeming indifference leads to a tragic end.
The film is gorgeously shot, by Manu Dacosse. All tech aspects are near perfect–it’s terrific filmmaking reminiscent of the recent Netflix series, Ripley. Yet, like that series, and I may be in a minority, I was left rather cold—able to admire the camerawork, production design, costumes, etc…but unable to connect with much else. And perhaps that is the point, but it felt rather pointless.
In the end, it’s Voison’s alluring charisma that makes the elusive journey of The Stranger worth taking.
SPOILER
In wanting to add some depth to Meursault’s reasoning for killing a man, Ozon creates a latent queer argument that could have/should have been explored more–that the realization of his homosexual attraction to the man caused him to panic. And shoot him.
Music Box Films will release The Stranger later in 2026.
