The 2024 Europa! Europa festival is a welcome addition to Australia’s ever-growing film festival calendar, particularly for people who love or are learning French, Spanish and Italian. The festival runs until March 11 at Classic Cinemas Elsternwick, Lido Cinemas Hawthorn (both in Melbourne) and at Ritz Cinemas Randwick in Sydney.
Europa! Europa 2024 has no less than nine films featuring French, and partially coincides with the 2024 Alliance Française French Film Festival running in 15 cities in Australia over March and April. Combined, the two festivals give us 50 French films to enjoy in cinemas over three months. Long live cinemas, I say!
A scoop for the 2024 Europa! Europa festival is the inclusion of Just the Two of Us (French title: L’Amour et les Forêts, meaning ‘Love and the Forests’). Its two leads, Virginie Efira and Melvil Poupaud (pictured at top), were nominated for the best actress and best actor awards at the 49th César Awards ceremony held in the last weekend of February.
Just the Two of Us is a gripping exploration of the perils that women face in a romance with a dangerously possessive, controlling man. It’s a situation that, sadly, is more common than you might think. In Australia alone, for example, it is estimated that at least 61 women were killed by domestic violence in 2023, and by some counts the total was as high as 74.
César Award win for Just the Two of Us
Neither Efira nor Poupaud won in their respective main acting award category at the 2024 Césars, but Just the Two of Us didn’t come away empty-handed. Writers Valérie Donzelli and Audrey Diwan won for the best adapted screenplay – the film based on the novel L’Amour et les Forêts by Éric Reinhardt. The multi-talented Donzelli directed the film.
If you like French films, you’ll have probably seen Virginie Efira in the hilarious film Adieu Les Cons (Bye Bye Morons), which dominated the 2021 César Awards. M5R
