The American French Film Festival At 30: Building Bridges Between French Cinema & Hollywood

The American French Film Festival is kicking of its 30th edition tomorrow (November 3) at the DGA Theater Complex in L.A. and this year looks set to be one of its biggest lineups to date. The six-day event, which will open with animated feature In Waves, will screen 60 French films and series, many of which are either North American or U.S. premieres. This year’s selection is notably rich in mainstream titles, which TAFFF organizers say is reflective of how the festival’s ambitions have grown across the last three decades.

“It has become something entirely different in scope and content,” says TAFFF Deputy Director Anouchka van Riel. “At the beginning we focused more on niche cinema, but we have since evolved into more significant industry event and we have become a sturdy bridge across the Atlantic.”

TAFFF’s opening night film makes that evolution particularly clear. In Waves, the animated feature directed by Phuong Mai Nguyen and produced by Priscilla Bertin and Judith Nora’s Silex Films, will open the event. Based on the 2019 graphic novel by L.A. illustrator AJ Dungo and featuring the voices of Stephanie Hsu and Will Sharpe, the film tells the story of a young skateboarder and a young surfer whose relationship rises above the test of serious illness. Netflix picked up global rights outside of France to the Cannes Critics Week opener back in May.

Producer Bertin and writer David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, Blade) both participated at a development workshop at TAFFF two years ago where they discussed adapting graphic novels into screen and animated formats.

“Now it’s come full circle and we’re so lucky that Netflix decided to have the L.A. premiere for In Waves with us,” says van Riel.

Oscar contenders

While TAFFF has made a concerted effort in recent years to position itself as a key platform for launching French-language Oscar contenders, this year’s lineup will see five films in the International Feature Oscar race screen at the festival.

France’s Oscar submission and Cannes Grand Prix winner Minotaur from exiled Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev will play at the festival this year along with a slew of French co-productions in the International Feature race: Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, which is Romania’s official Oscar entry; Lucas Dhont’s Coward, Belgium’s Oscar entry; Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s French-language debut All of a Sudden, which is Japan’s Oscar entry; and Laïla Marrakchi’s Moroccan Oscar entry Strawberries.

The list, says van Riel, highlights France’s increasingly significant role in the co-production space. “We have a lot of co-productions at the festival and it’s a very important part of the industry process in France,” she says. “France supports a lot of cinema around the world and we show it in our program.”

Other major titles in the 2026 lineup include Pierre Salvadori’s Cannes opener The Electric Kiss; Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Kiberlain starrer All About Corinne; the North American premiere of Guillaume Canet’s psychological thriller Karma with Marion Cotillard; and Antonin Baudry’s two-part historical epic De Gaulle.

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 choices we make for the lineup are not innocent,” says van Riel. “What we are noticing in terms of our audiences is that American audiences seem to be seeking for answers elsewhere and with the upcoming midterm elections, art is going to be feeding on what is happening.”

She notes that this year’s selection is a “cinema or resistance”, pointing to titles such as Minotaur, Women on Trial and A Good Little Soldier as films about individuals who stand up to systems “that exist to grind them down.”

“I think it’s the tradition of French cinema to welcome resistance, whether it’s in real life or in art,” she says. “Resistance matters these days tremendously and people need to feel that we can stand up to things.”

TAFFF Executive Producer and Programmer François Truffart agrees. “Most French films can have a political message, and we are in a world where there are so many topics that can actually be used as the subject of a film,” he says. “It’s interesting in this context because we now have a lot of politicians in the world who are against globalization and want to close countries and rebuild borders everywhere. At the same time, people want to hear and see something different from what they are used to.”

TAFFF evolution

The American French Film Festival (formerly known as COLCOA) was created in 1997 and is produced by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a collaboration between the Directors Guild of America (DGA), the Motion Picture Association (MPA), France’s Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (SACEM) and the Writers Guild of America. It is also supported by Unifrance, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and France’s Society of Authors, Directors and Producers (L’ARP).

Looking back, Truffart notes that TAFFF’s transformation came long before the current wave of French films and series found a receptive audience in the U.S. He recalls that early editions were considerably smaller affairs, with a limited number of screenings and attendees.

“This is still the case in some ways,” he says. “We are very specific in the sense that we are very much connected to the industry here and have an audience that is mainly made up of people working in the industry. At the beginning, we didn’t have a goal to support the distribution of film, that came later in 2004/2005 when I joined and we decided to create a platform to support French cinema in the U.S., knowing that this is a niche market and the U.S. can be very limited and difficult for distributors.”

This strategy has since expanded into a year-round operation and TAFFF works with distributors to continue to promote titles after their festival screenings and into their U.S. releases. Its TAFFF Library, a free online resource, provides information for more than 1,000 French films and series available or coming soon to U.S. platforms.

“We are not only an event that takes place for one week at the DGA, we are a platform that is useful and used by distributors during the year,” says van Riel.

Truffart continues: “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 meaningful milestones I cherish with TAFFF. We have created the largest American community dedicated to French cinema and series and it is truly an honor and privilege to see all of our efforts come to fruition and to introduce American audiences, including guest members of the DGA, WGA, and this year, SAG, to an exclusive and diverse lineup during the heart of awards season.”

Oscar-winning director Taylor Hackford, who is a board member of the Franco-American Cultural Fund, notes that TAFFF has “always drawn and inquisitive and interested American Audience” but that over the last five to six years “the heat has really been turned up” thanks to the festival’s screening of titles such as Emilia Pérez, Nouvelle Vague and A Private Life.

“We’ve had some fantastic French Films, some of which have been the French nominees for the Oscars,” he says. “The French make wonderful movies and over the last decade, I think Hollywood has started to realize that the quality of French films are on par with the films that are made in Hollywood, and, at this point, they are hungry to see new French films.”

Looking ahead, van Riel notes that the goal is to “increase or maintain the level of cultural exchanges between the French and U.S. industries.”

“Exchange and bridging those two industries is at the center of what we do,” she says.

Hackford points to the festival’s growing industry workshops. “Currently we hold workshops during every TAFFF where we can have creative exchanges between French and American filmmakers, but these sessions are small,” he says. “I would like to see this process vastly extended so that larger numbers of our colleagues from France can engage with us here in Hollywood to tackle the major challenges that we now face.”

For Truffart, he hopes that the quality of French productions will continue well into the future. “My goal is to continue to have such a great choice of films when I do the selection but also to make sure that there is still an audience in the U.S. for the films and series,” he says. “We must continuously work to try and reach new audiences. This is one of the most important things for the future of the festival.”

The American French Film Festival takes place November 3-8, 2026.