French Film Festival UK announces 2026 programme

Bonnes nouvelles, cinéphiles! French Film Festival UK is returning for its 34th edition, with a huge programme running from 6 November to 9 December in 40 venues across the UK, from Aberfeldy to Notting Hill. While it's been a strife-torn year for French society, and about to get much worse if the polls for the upcoming presidential race are to be believed, it’s been a vintage year for French-language cinema. French Film Festival UK’s director Richard Mowe points to a brace of epics based on the life of Charles de Gaulle (Resistance and Liberté, both screening at FFFUK) that have been box office smashes as evidence of this robust health. 

"With the phenomenal success of the two De Gaulle films at home and abroad, French-language cinema has been on a roll as never before over the last few months. Its richness, diversity and sheer originality is reflected in the official selection of the one and only French Film Festival UK, which proudly is made in Scotland but shared across the nations. The films all speak for themselves. There is nothing left to say apart from our rallying cry over the decades: Vive le cinéma!"

True, the films do speak for themselves, but in the interest of helping you navigate this year’s FFFUK programme, here are five titles we’re particularly looking forward to.

All of a Sudden 

dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

With films like Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist, Japanese filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi has emerged in recent years as one of the most exciting voices in world cinema, so of course the French want in on the action. His first French feature is an existential knockout. It combines a workplace drama concerning the running of a Parisian care home for the elderly, and a tender story of the friendship that forms between two women. One of those women is Marie-Lou, the head of the care home, played by Virginie Efira; the other is Mari, a Japanese theatre director, played by Tao Okamoto, who’s terminally ill. Like all of Hamaguchi's work, All of a Sudden is extremely talky, but as these women discuss every important topic under the sun – life, death, art, ageing, the evils of capitalism – you’ll be spellbound. Glasgow Film Theatre, 27 Nov, 6pm

Coward

dir. Lukas Dhont

When Lukas Dhont’s Coward, a bruising drama concerning a clandestine romance that forms between two Belgian soldiers on the Western Front during the First World War, screened at Cannes, it was somewhat overshadowed by the more bombastic La Bola Negra, another queer drama set during war. But word is Dhont’s tender work is the more satisfying picture. Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne play Pierre and Francis, who manage to escape the horrors of the trenches by taking part in a military theatre troupe. Francis is the star attraction. His drag burlesque show is a firm favourite with his superiors, and his and Pierre’s artistry allows them to express their queer identity relatively freely amid the machismo and the bloody carnage of war. After two flawed films centred on queer teens (Girl and Close), reports are that this more mature drama is Dhont’s best. GFT, 24 Nov, 8.20pm; Filmhouse, 24 Nov, 8.30pm 

A Man of His Time

dir. Emmanuel Marre

Another film set during wartime that premiered at Cannes also caught our eye in the programme. This one is set in the 1940s in Vichy France and follows a lowly civil servant called Henri Marre (played by Swann Arlaud) as he enthusiastically conives himself into a powerful position within the Vichy Ministry of Labour. This barbed, darkly funny and complex study of one of France's darkest hours and the moral failings of people like Marre who used the horrors of WWII to advance their careers is all the more unsparing given that writer-director Emmanuel Marre is the great-grandson of the film's ignoble protagonist. Filmhouse, 28 Nov, 2.15pm; GFT, 30 Nov, 7.40pm

Jim Queen

dirs. Nicolas Athané, Marco Nguyen

This candy-coloured French-Belgian animation looks a riot. It follows the eponymous Jim Parfait (voiced by Alex Ramirès), a ripped gay body-building influencer who contracts a new STI called heterosis, which has a curious symptom: it slowly turns its victims straight. As well as now understanding the offside rule, Jim’s gym bod starts to turn into a dad bod. In despair, he teams up with his twinky superfan Lucien (voiced by Jérémy Gillet) and tries to find the rumoured cure. Filled with musical flourishes and sharp gags eviscerating the clichés of both gay and straight culture, Jim Queen looks set to be a future queer classic. Filmhouse, 2 Dec, 8.45pm; GFT, 2 Dec, 8.50pm 

Jacquot de Nantes

dir. Agnès Varda

French Film Festival UK is also concerned with exposing audiences to great French-language films from the past. There are a couple of gems featuring the great Jean Gabin, screening to mark 50 years since the death of that iconic French star (Any Number Can Win and Stormy Waters). Some Claude Chabrol seasons have been doing the rounds at cinemas this year, and FFFUK get in on the action with Chabrol’s fantastic 90s thriller La Cérémonie. And there’s a rare outing for Marcel Carné’s kooky detective film parody Bizarre, Bizarre. But our pick of the classics is Jacquot de Nantes, Agnès Varda’s achingly tender 1991 film that poetically reimagines the childhood of her husband Jacques Demy, who had died a year earlier. Institut Français d'Ecosse, Edinburgh, 14 Nov, 7.30pm; GFT, 3 Dec, 5.20pm

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French Film Festival UK runs 6 Nov-9 Dec at various venues across the UK; full programme at frenchfilmfestival.org.uk