A still from “La Grazia” (Image courtesy University of Richmond)
Precarity, Displacements and Aftermaths are the curated sections of a journey through nine films for the inaugural Italian & French Film Festival, taking place at the University of Richmond and The Byrd Theatre March 27-30. In between the screenings, attendees can take part in roundtable discussions with filmmakers and scholars. Along with the cinema, Italian and French cuisine will be prepared by Mosaic Catering + Events, Chez Nous, and UR’s catering team at the opening and closing events. All of this is free and open to the cineaste and curious alike.
The organizers — UR professors Sonja Bertucci and Anthony Russell, and Luca Peretti of the University of Cambridge in England — took inspiration from UR’s 2025 Italian Film Festival.
“It was quite successful,” Russell explains, “so we decided to expand it; especially because we’ve been lacking the French Film Festival since 2022, which was a fairly important institution in the city.”
Bertucci describes how the Italian & French Film Festival seeks to create a variety of dialogues, “between the university and the city, the past and present — which maybe makes this festival unique for us,” he says. “We’re coordinating contemporary films from France and Italy and honoring the past with one masterpiece that belongs to the collective memory.”
The masterpiece Bertucci refers to is the 1966 movie “The Battle of Algiers.” Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo directed it using a documentary-style approach to depict Algerian rebels battling the colonialist French. Its influence can be seen in pictures such as “Inglourious Basterds,” “One Battle After Another” and the streaming series “Andor.” A 4 p.m. screening on March 28 in UR’s Ukrop Auditorium marks the film’s 60th anniversary, though it wasn’t distributed in France until 1971.
A still from “Sirat” (Image courtesy Neon)
The Precarity section on March 27 leads off at 4 p.m., in the Camp Concert Hall of the Modlin Center for the Arts, with “Il Cerchio” (The Circle), by Italian-French director Sophie Chiarello. Her 2022 documentary focuses on the diverse students at an elementary school in Rome. Chiarello will be in attendance, and a reception will follow at 6 p.m. At 7:30 p.m., see “Météors” by Hubert Charuel, a 2025 narrative about two errant boys whose friendship goes awry when authorities end their careers in misdemeanors.
The Displacements block of programming at Ukrop Auditorium begins at 2 p.m. on March 28 with a showing of Julien Colonna’s 2024 “The Kingdom.” Bertucci describes it as a coming-of-age story involving a father-daughter relationship.
After the “Algiers” showing, a somewhat lighter story airs at 7 p.m.: the 2024 drama “Napoli-New York” by Gabriele Salvatores. Set in the 1950s, it follows two orphaned street urchins who leave Naples to find their older sister by stowing away on a cruise ship.
The Aftermaths section on March 29 is also hosted in the Ukrop Auditorium. It will feature a 3 p.m. screening of Kaouther Ben Hania’s 2023 “Four Daughters,” a hybrid documentary about a Tunisian family split by religious radicalization. Following is a 6 p.m. screening of “La Grazia” by Paolo Sorrentino, concerning an elder Italian statesman who, Russell says, reflects on his past to discover “to what degree he sees through the political myths he participated in.”
The festival concludes on March 30 at The Byrd with the 7 p.m. showing of the Academy Award-nominated “Sirât.” The cinematic fest culminates with a closing reception at 9 p.m. For more information, visit filmstudies.richmond.edu.
