About 3,000 Students Fill the DGA for the 30th American French Film Festival
About 3,000 Los Angeles high school students filled the DGA theater in Hollywood for the 30th American French Film Festival, which ran from November 3 to 8. The festival's education programme put one film at the centre of the week: In Waves, an animated feature by Phuong Mai Nguyen.
According to Variety, the programme held five screenings of In Waves, each with around 600 students in the seats. Producer Priscilla Bertin and screenwriter Fanny Burdino joined the post-screening question-and-answer sessions. Anouchka Van Riel, the festival's deputy director, leads the educational programme.
The film is adapted from AJ Dungo's graphic novel and set in Southern California, which gives local students a familiar backdrop. The festival's own site says In Waves opened the 30th edition on November 3.
The schools programme has run for two decades. This year it drew more than 60 schools over five days, split roughly evenly between public and private institutions. That mix matters for a festival that wants to reach students who might never otherwise attend a film screening with a filmmaker in the room.
Netflix bought In Waves at the Cannes Film Festival, the French Riviera event where sales companies and streaming services often strike distribution deals for films still in production or just finished. Variety reported the purchase. No financial terms have been made public.
Beyond the schools, the festival's main programme is a competition. More than 60 new French films and series are in the running for the TAFFF Awards 2026, according to the festival's website. Winners will be announced by the festival, and the awards give audiences a shortlist of recent French work to look out for.
For a general audience, the story is simple. A film that began as a graphic novel reached a Hollywood theatre, and a few thousand teenagers watched it in one week. Behind that screening sit a sales deal struck months earlier on the Riviera, a festival team that books thousands of seats, and a school system that agreed to bring its students in.
