Toronto’s annual French-language film festival, Cinefranco, goes truly mainstream this Friday when the 13th annual installment kicks off at AMC Dundas with Le Divan du Monde (Everybody’s Coach, 7:30 pm) and Les sept jours du talion (Seven Days, 9:30 pm).
For festival founder Marcelle Lean, this jump from art house to movie megaplex represents the fruition of a long-held dream “to see French cinema take its place in the middle, casually alongside mainstream film,” she says.
Of course, Lean recognizes that recent entries like Un prophète (A Prophet) and J’ai tue ma mere (I Killed My Mother) are already playing commercially outside the film festival umbrella and she couldn’t be happier about that.
“Popular films really are my target,” she says. “The Cinematheque specializes in more intellectual films and they do it marvelously. And this is what triggered Cinefranco; I was feeling like the tiny bit of French film we saw here was too nouvelle vague (new wave), too intellectual and it gave the impression that French cinema was only for the elite. And this is not the case at all! There is a popular French cinema that is very pleasant, not elitist whatsoever. I’ve been trying to burst the myth ever since.”
I met Lean at her home, a spacious downtown condo serving as temporary headquarters for Cinefranco; volunteers worked around the kitchen island, while Lean poured tea and answered questions in the adjacent living room.
Like her cohorts, Lean is an unpaid volunteer. She busts her backside each year, writes grant applications and begs for sponsor support purely for the love of it: “It was always a gesture from the heart,” she says. “I want to share my passion for francophone cinema. When I set out to create the festival 14 or 15 years ago, I started with an accent on French cinema but we quickly expanded to include films from Quebec and Switzerland, Belgium, African countries, Haiti.”
Lean is loathe to single out particular favorites but she does reserve special praise for a handful of must-see films this year including La journeé de la jupe (Skirt Day) starring Isabelle Adjani, the Genie nominated film 3 Saisons (Three Seasons) by Jim Donovan, the dark Quebec film Les Sept Jours du talion (7 Days) and Le Déserteur (The Deserter), the true story of a draft dodger shot and killed by the RCMP during World War II.
“Cinefranco is a collection of films that have been recognized and rewarded at other festivals around the world,” stresses Lean. “This is the cream of francophone cinema and I also try to bring small jewels that have been overlooked like Le Déserteur. I want the public to know about these films that they’ll never see commercially. And I’d like to give the filmmakers the chance to reach audiences that they may not reach normally.”
WHERE/WHEN: Cinefranco, March 26 – April 3 (times vary) at AMC Dundas (416.335.5323).
Photos by Christopher Jones
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