Five Oscar picks head 60-title French festival in Los Angeles
Five countries have sent their Oscar picks to Los Angeles. They will screen side by side at the 30th American French Film Festival, whose full programme was unveiled by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
The festival runs 3 to 8 November at the Directors Guild of America Theater Complex on Sunset Boulevard, according to the same report. It will show 60 films and series in total. That is a compact week.
The count breaks down as 31 fiction features, 11 series, four documentaries and 14 short films. Of those, 58 titles will compete for the TAFFF Awards, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
The opening film is In Waves by Phuong Mai Nguyen. It is a Netflix animated drama, with Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu in the voice cast, as reported by Variety.
Awards season runs through the selection. France's entry for the best international feature Oscar, Minotaur, written and directed by Andrey Zviagintsev, is in the line-up. So are Japan's All of a Sudden by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Belgium's Coward by Lucas Dhont, Romania's Fjord, written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, and Morocco's Strawberries by Laila Marrakchi, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. Each is the film put forward by its country for the category.
The festival will also host the first United States screening of De Gaulle, written and directed by Antonin Baudry and starring Simon Abkarian as Charles de Gaulle. History on a large screen. No small subject for a Los Angeles premiere.
TAFFF deputy director Anouchka van Riel described the 30th edition selection as "a cinema of resistance". The phrase covers fiction, documentary and series work across the programme.
For fans, this means range as well as volume. The documentary section listed by the festival includes Inside Gaza by Helene Lam Trong, about Palestinian reporters working for AFP, Rebounds on electro dance, We Are the Orchestra on the Orchestre de Paris and conductor Klaus Makela, and Whispers in the Woods, which follows wildlife photographer Vincent Munier with his father and son, according to the festival site.
Practical details are straightforward. All programmes are presented with English subtitles, and tickets go on sale on 8 October at tafff.org, according to the festival site. Admission is free for members of the DGA, WGA West and SAG, with SAG members added as new in 2026.
