The Center for French and Francophone Studies at Duke university is presenting its annual French Film Festival from January 29 to February 13, 2026.
The screenings are free, open to the public, and take place at Rubenstein Arts Center, 2020 Campus Drive, Durham, North Carolina.
The films will be introduced in English, subtitled in English and followed by a Q&A session in English.
French Film Festival Schedule
You can also find a Facebook event for each screening at Cinematic Arts at Duke’s Facebook page.
Holy Cow (2024)
Thursday, February 5, 2026
7 p.m.
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.
Meeting with Pol Pot (2024)
Friday, February 6, 2026
7 p.m.
Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) – 1978. Three journalists are invited by the Khmer Rouge to conduct an exclusive interview of the regime’s leader, Pol Pot. The country seems ideal. But behind the Potemkin village, the Khmer Rouge regime is declining and the war with Vietnam threatens to invade the country. The regime is looking for culprits, secretly carrying out a large scale genocide. Under the eyes of the journalists, the beautiful picture cracks, revealing the horror. Their journey progressively turns into a nightmare.
This real-life journalistic excursion, based on true events detailed in Elizabeth Becker’s nonfiction book WHEN THE WAR WAS OVER: CAMBODIA AND THE KHMER ROUGE REVOLUTION, is brought to life thanks to exemplary lead performances from Irène Jacob, Grégoire Colin, and Cyril Gueï, meticulously conjuring the sights and sounds of 1978 Cambodia with the assistance of archival footage and clay figurines. The result is a unique admixture-historical horror paired with a rich meditation on the impossibility of portraying it.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
Saturday, February 7, 2026
4 p.m.
An angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a handsome garage mechanic, played by Nino Castelnuovo. When the boy is shipped off to fight in Algeria, the two lovers must grow up quickly. Exquisitely designed in a kaleidoscope of colors, and told entirely through the lilting songs of the great composer Michel Legrand, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is one of the most revered and unorthodox movie musicals of all time.
Ghost Trail (2024)
Tuesday, February 10, 2026 (rescheduled)
7 p.m.
Two years after being released from Syrian jail, Hamid (Adam Bessa) is making ends meet as a construction worker in the French city of Strasbourg, where, haunted by the memory of his imprisonment, the young man searches tirelessly for the man who tortured him, determined to get his revenge-but what’s the real price of vengeance for the person seeking it? Inspired by true events, Jonathan Millet’s deeply researched thriller excavates the too-little-examined moral dilemmas and political negligence that traumatized migrants must confront amid the struggle to rebuild their lives and take control of their destinies at the margins of contemporary French society, inviting audiences to better empathize with France’s newest residents, and to better understand their place in the world-and our own.
Annette (2021)
Friday, February 13, 2026
7 p.m.
A years-spanning musical melodrama drenched in greens and yellows, scored by oddball art-pop duo Sparks and based on their original story, ANNETTE marks the French director’s first English-language film, which revolves around a celebrity couple in present-day Los Angeles. Henry (Adam Driver), a towering stand-up comedian, and Ann (Marion Cotillard), a world-famous singer, are living life happily in the spotlight until their world is upended after the birth of their first child, Annette, a mysterious little girl with a peculiar talent. Carax imbues his sixth feature with grandiose compositions, an exhilarating sense of movement, and a turbulent emotional register-alternately moody, beguiling, effusive, and hilarious-all the while toying with established genres in the most thrilling ways imaginable.
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