Schedule:

12:30 PM - Holy Cow
Q&A with Louise Courvoisier
Following the sudden death of his farmer father, hard-partying 18-year-old Totone (Clément Faveau) is abruptly obliged to step into the role of man of the house in Louise Courvoisier’s directorial debut, which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Taking a job at a nearby dairy farm, where he quickly falls for the farmer’s daughter, Totone makes up his mind to jump-start his family’s future via an unorthodox shortcut: winning a 30,000 Euro prize for producing the best Comté in the region. In this warm, lived-in coming-of-age fable—a treat for cheese-loving cinephiles in particular—Courvoisier brings together a cast of non-professional actors from the Jura region where she herself grew up, creating a rich depiction of rural agricultural life that’s also a crowd-pleasing story about the unlikely detours that shape the utterly unpredictable process of growing up. A Zeitgeist Films release in association with Kino Lorber.

3:00 PM - Visiting Hours
Q&A with Patricia Mazuy
Two of France’s greatest working actresses—the legendary Isabelle Huppert and The Secret of the Grain star Hafsia Herzi—are paired in this moving drama from Patricia Mazuy. Affluent Alma (Huppert) meets working-class Mina (Herzi) during visits to the prison facility where both of their husbands are serving time. Despite their different backgrounds, the two women quickly form a close connection—but can their bond survive the conflicting pressures of their respective circumstances? Revered at home but sadly under-celebrated here, co-writer and director Patricia Mazuy has proven exceptionally adept at repurposing conventions of tone and genre to her own ends in films like the offbeat police-comedy-thriller Paul Sanchez Is Back! (Rendez-Vous 2019) and the grim neo-noir Saturn Bowling. With her new film, Mazuy once again demonstrates her mastery of tonal shifts and her steadfast refusal to be pigeonholed in this trenchant depiction of the French carceral system and the shaky relationships it engenders.

6:00 PM - The Quiet Son
Q&A with Delphine and Muriel Coulin and Vincent Lindon
Pierre (Vincent Lindon), a widower who has dedicated his life to his two children, is shaken to discover that his older son Fus (Benjamin Voisin) has begun hanging out with violent right-wing nationalists. Whereas their previous collaborations (17 Girls, Rendez-Vous 2012; The Stopover, Rendez-Vous 2016) trained an eye on the experience of women in France, for their third feature the Coulin sisters have applied an equally analytical and empathetic perspective to a decidedly masculine environment. This sobering contemplation of radicalization takes a nuanced look at two equally strong, competing impulses: loyalty to family on one hand, and responsibility toward the greater social good on the other. At its center is the typically masterful Lindon, delivering a career-best performance for which he was awarded Best Actor at last year’s Venice Film Festival.

9:00 PM - The Second Act
Introduction by Vincent Lindon
A movie-within-a-movie (or is it?), the latest quirkily imaginative feature from Quentin Dupieux (Smoking Causes Coughing, Rendez-Vous 2023) is, among other things, a showcase for some of France’s most talented working performers to riff on their own personas to hilarious effect. Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel, and Raphaël Quenard are among the actors attempting to make their way through the production of a movie none of them seems to like very much. Repeatedly breaking the fourth wall and irreverently lampooning everything from AI to Paul Thomas Anderson, Dupieux’s meta-movie—the opening night selection at last year’s Cannes Film Festival—is an ebullient and thought-provoking behind-the-scenes comedy that gleefully deconstructs itself, inciting plenty of belly laughs along the way.