‘Fjord’, ‘All Of A Sudden’, ‘Minotaur’ & ‘Coward’ Among Titles Set For 30th Edition Of The American French Film Festival In L.A.

The 30th edition of the American French Film Festival, which runs November 3-8 at the DGA Theater Complex in L.A., has unveiled its 2026 lineup.

Highlights this year in the program include French Oscar entry Minotaur, Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, which is Romania’s official Oscar entry and Lucas Dhont’s Coward, Belgium’s Oscar entry.

As previously announced, the festival will open with In Waves, from French-Vietnamese director Phuong Mai Nguyen. The animated feature, which features the voices of Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu, is set against the backdrop of California’s surfing world and is adapted from L.A. illustrator AJ Dungo’s eponymous cult 2019 graphic novel.

Further highlights in the lineup this year include All of a Sudden, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s French-language debut which is Japan’s Academy Award entry this year, and French co-production Strawberries from director Laïla Marrakchi, which is Morocco’s official Academy Award entry.

Fjord, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes earlier this year, stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve. The French co-production follows two evangelical parents who are suspected of child abuse and become the subject of an investigation.

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur is a Russian-language political thriller based on the 1969 French film The Unfaithful Wife by Claude Chabrol. The film won the Grand Prix award in Cannes this year.

TAFFF is set to close on November 8 with The American Dream, written and directed by Anthony Marciano. The comedy-drama biopic is based on the true story of real life French NBA agents Bouna Ndiaye and Jérémy Medjana, who launched the careers and represented several elite French NBA players including Victor Wembanyama, Rudy Gobert and Nicolas Batum.

The festival will also feature the first U.S. screening of Antonin Baudry’s De Gaulle, the U.S. premiere of comedy All About Corinne and the North American premiere of Guillaume Canet’s psychological thriller Karma with Marion Cotillard. Stephane Brizé’s Venice title A Little Good Soldier will also screen at the fest.

The lineup this year includes 60 films and series, with 31 fiction features, 11 series, four documentaries and 14 short films, many of which are either North American or U.S. Premiere presentations. 58 will be up for The American French Film Festival Awards.

“Since 1997, the Franco-American Cultural Fund, founder of The American French Film Festival, has brought more than 1,200 French films and series into the Hollywood spotlight and given thousands of French artists, from newcomers to well-known directors, to writers, composers, actors and producers, the opportunity to present their work before their American peers in the heart of Hollywood,” said Taylor Hackford, director and former DGA president and FACF board member. “This year there will be another spectacular selection and delegation to celebrate the 30th anniversary event at the Directors Guild of American, making TAFFF the second oldest film festival in the City of Angels.”

François Truffart, exec producer and programmer of the festival said: “For 30 years, The American French Film Festival has established itself as a leading and unmissable international platform on the global circuit for promoting French films and series. Supporting filmmakers from their earliest short films to eventual Oscar recognition, creating a platform where both established and emerging talent can present their work, being the first to launch a series competition alongside feature films and consistently championing female filmmakers, are just a few of the many meaningful milestones I cherish with TAFFF.”

TAFFF deputy director Anouchka van Riel added: “This year’s selection is a cinema of resistance. Individuals stand up to systems that exist to grind them down: a corporate machine in A Little Good Soldier and Minotaur, a courtroom built by men in Women on Trial, an online mob in Forsaken and an exploitative labor chain in Strawberries. Running alongside that is a quieter thread about care, illness and what we owe one another, from the friendship forged against cancer in All of a Sudden to the love story at the heart of In Waves. Between those who fight and those who care, the lineup returns to one question: At a time when intelligence is becoming artificial, what remains human? These films answer with the things no machine has learned (yet): to refuse and to care.”

The 30th edition of The American French Film Festival takes place November 3-8, 2026.