Use the promo code FrenchFilmsAFI2026 for 20% off tickets to the selected screenings, with a limit of four tickets per person.
This year’s festival will showcase films from around the globe in these sections: Red Carpet Premieres, Special Screenings, Luminaries selections, Discovery films, World Cinema selections, Documentaries, films in the Short Film Competition, and the AFI Conservatory Showcase presented by AMC Global Media.For more information about AFI FEST, including ticket and pass info, go to FEST.AFI.com.
A MAN OF HIS TIME
October 23, 2:30 p.m. | Chinese 5
October 25, 11:15 a.m. | Chinese 2
Writer-director Emmanuel Marre takes an unconventional approach in this Cannes prize-winning biopic on an opportunist bureaucrat (Swann Arlaud) in the Vichy Regime whose career ambitions help oil the machinery of the Nazi occupation.
FOREST HIGH
October 25, 2:45 p.m. | Chinese 2
Belgian filmmaker Manon Coubia spent 10 years working seasonally as a mountain refuge keeper in the French Alps, a wealth of experience which imbues her debut feature film, a triptych of tales set in a mountain refuge across three seasons, with the greatest authenticity.
FULL PHIL
October 23, 10:00 p.m. | Chinese 1
Woody Harrelson and Kristen Stewart star as a father and daughter attempting to reconcile on a Parisian vacation. Quentin Dupieux (SMOKING CAUSES COUGHING, AFI FEST 2022) returns to the English language but keeps his trademark absurdist humor intact in this tale of arguments, copious amounts of food and meddling hotel employees.
IRON BOY
October 25, 11:20 a.m. | Chinese 5
Winner of the Special Jury Prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, IRON BOY is the tender tale of a young boy whose life is upended when he’s forced to wear a corrective iron brace, told through beautiful watercolor animation, a superb voice cast and enveloping classical music.
GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD
October 22, 12:15 p.m. | Chinese 5
October 25, 4:15 p.m. | Chinese 3
Félix de Givry (the lead of Mia Hansen-Løve’s EDEN, AFI FEST 2014) makes his directorial debut with this enchanting, fable-like teen romance that harkens back to the French New Wave and stars Milo Machado-Graner, known for his seismic performance as the blind son in the Academy Award®-winning ANATOMY OF A FALL.
THE BELOVED
Rodrigo Sorogoyen | Spain, France
Starring Javier Bardem, Victoria Luengo and Raúl Arévalo
October 22, 3:25 p.m. | Chinese 6
October 25, 5:15 p.m. | Chinese 1
In Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s (THE BEASTS) latest, Javier Bardem gives a frightening performance as a legendary filmmaker who casts his estranged daughter (a fantastic Victoria Luengo) in his newest venture. On set, the two get close and reopen old wounds that threaten not only their reconciliation but the entire production.
TOO MANY BEASTS
October 24, 9:30 p.m. | Chinese 5
Things go deliriously hog-wild in Swiss-Italian filmmaker Sarah Arnold’s wonderfully unpredictable, delightfully deadpan debut, which won the Europa Cinemas Label for Best European Film at this year's Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
TUTTI FRUTTI + THIS IS HOW A CHILD BECOMES A POET
Director: Céline Sciamma
October 23, 12:30 p.m. | Chinese 5
October 24, 11:10 a.m. | Chinese 5
Expanding on a solitary filmmaking practice from her 2023 short THIS IS HOW A CHILD BECOMES A POET, TUTTI FRUTTI sees Céline Sciamma at her most personal yet liberated, documenting a visual diary from pro-Palestine marches to Adèle Haenel’s sexual abuse trial, while also reflecting on the preservation of lesbian identity.
Céline Sciamma explores the documentary form for the first time in her 2023 Venice-premiered short film THIS IS HOW A CHILD BECOMES A POET, in which she pays posthumous tribute to Italian poet Patrizia Cavalli by surveying Cavalli’s house shortly before it was to be cleared after her death in 2022.