Lovers of French-language cinema in Vancouver are in for a treat. That’s because the Rendez-Vous French Film Festival is running at SFU Woodward’s from February 24 to March 3, followed by screenings at Fabrique St-George from March 4 to 8.
Festival passes are available for $50 on the website. This also provides access to online screenings, which continue until March 31.
Visions Ouest Productions is presenting Rendez-Vous, which has attracted several big names to Vancouver. They include Kim Thúy, who won a Governor General’s Literary Award winner for French-language fiction in 2010 for Ru. It was also shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
It’s a first-person account of a woman’s life growing up in a wealthy, large Vietnamese family and then fleeing by boat. The central character makes it to a refugee camp and later immigrates to Granby, Quebec. Even though it’s fiction, Ru has parallels with the author’s life as she fled Vietnam by boat as a 10-year-old, making her way to Quebec as a refugee.
Watch the trailer for Ru.
Rendez-Vous screens Ru at Silvercity Coquitlam
Thúy has one of the writing credits on the 2023 film adaptation of Ru, which was directed by Charles-Olivier Michaud. It will be screened at 7:15 p.m. on March 7 at Silvercity Coquitlam. Thúy will be at the theatre at 6:30 p.m. to speak to those in attendance. Registration is free through Eventbrite.ca.
She’s also scheduled to speak on the previous day at a sold-out event at La Fabrique St-George Winery in Vancouver.
In addition, Rendez-Vous will welcome filmmaker Henri Pardo, who wrote and directed the landmark documentary Dear Jackie about the history of Montreal’s Black community. Pardo’s newest movie, Kanaval, is the closing-night film at SFU Woodward’s on March 3. He’ll do a Q&A at 6 p.m., followed by a screening at 7:15 p.m.
The Canada-Luxembourg co-production is in French and Creole. Kanaval revolves around a boy fleeing Haiti with his mother in 1975 during the carnival to come to a small town in rural Quebec. Here, they must adjust to life in a new country.
Others coming to Rendez-Vous include French, Ghanaian, and Canadian actor, writer, and filmmaker Nelly Esmeralda Zarfi; documentary maker and novelist Zachary Richard—the first Louisiana author to write a major work of French-language fiction since 1894 (Les Rafales du carème); and Le Dictionnaire du Cinema Québécois co-author Michel Coulombe.
A complete list of films at Rendez-Vous is available on the festival website. Follow Pancouver on Twitter @PancouverMedia and on Instagram @PancouverMedia.
