17 Best French Films from A Year in (French) Movies

A compilation of great movies from a country whose filmmakers understand the power of film.

This is it. Of the 210 French films I watched this year, here are the ones that I’ve kept thinking about all year. It’s hard to build a full list for this year. I’d happily have 4 Agnes Varda films, a few Truffaut, and so on, but that sounds boring to return time and again to specific directors. So, I’m casting a wide net of the 200+ films from this year.

They are not ranked. Some of these films tower in their achievement, not only inching film further, but taking full steps into the future. Some are simple pleasures executed perfectly. Ranking them would be an unfair assignment.

So, I hope you enjoy this list, and I hope even more that you’ll check out some of these great movies.

Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

No movie moved me more than this one. Alain Resnais, in his feature debut, tightly weaves a story of love and loss; both cultural and personal. An actress working in Hiroshima has a one night stand with a Japanese man living in Hiroshima. They both convey stories of the past: his about the nuclear history of Hiroshima and hers about a burning love affair with a Nazi during the Occupation. Alain Resnais would spend the next decade focusing on our collective and personal memories and refractions of time, but none of the other films (though all are truly great) can come close to the emotional weight he brings to this story. 

Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Agnes Varda often gets labeled as the “Godmother” of the New Wave, but that downplays the fact that she is more responsible than anyone else for its creation. This, here second film after Le Pointe-Courte in 1956, is her first of several masterpieces. Unlike her later films, Cléo from 5 to 7 is still cinematographically connected to her life as a photographer. Every frame is a painting as Cléo is captured in real time from 5pm to about 6:30pm, waiting on a diagnosis of cancer. Varda imbues Cléo with so much emotion (and not always flattering) that make her journey feel not only lived in and real, but makes her feel connected to the world Varda has her wander. To say this is a singular film is an understatement. The New Wave, still in its infancy when Cléo from 5 to 7 was released, had found its style, but Varda brought a soulfulness and emotional core to the movement that was yet to click in place.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

The oldest movie on this list, but among the most prescient and vibrant. Dreyer kept extreme closeups on his actors faces, without makeup, utilizing expression and light to match the story’s drama (all the dialogue is pulled directly from the actual trials of Joan of Arc). The only thing Dreyer couldn’t have seen coming was the performance of Renée Falconetti as Joan. If you’ve never seen a silent film, her performance here is reason enough why sound and dialogue might be overrated. It was the only film performance she ever gave.

Three Colours (1994)

Is it a cheat to include all 3 films here? Maybe? Probably? Whatever. Blue, White, and Red are possibly the best films of the nineties. And if you’re looking for a “Greatest Trilogy Ever” you don’t have to look any further (you pretentious film lover, you). The portrayal of grief in Blue, longing and humor in White, and connection in Red share Kieslowski’s worldview in its messiness, affection, and poeticisms. That these films exist is radical in and of itself. That he ties them all together, moving characters across films, binding lives and stories is something that hasn’t been done as successfully before or since. 

The Grand Illusion (1937)

This film feels a bit overlooked by the next film Renoir made, The Rules of the Game, but don’t miss The Grand Illusion, which isn’t as steeped in cultural specificity, but it is steeped in historical commentary. The film is an escape film on its face and Renoir maintains the tension you’d hope for, but it’s also a moving dialogue about the changing of European culture and war. 

Le Silence de la Mer (1949)

There are a number of Jean-Pierre Melville films that could make this list, but this one, his first, stands apart. Movies like Le Cercle Rouge and Army of Shadows are genre masterclasses of politics and interpersonal dynamics. But it’s in Le Silence de la Mer where dense impersonal dynamics and politics are foregrounded more than ever when, in 1941, a German Commander lives with an older man and his niece in a small village in occupied France. They refuse to say a word (and never do in the film), while he is obsessed with a unified Europe and France (under German control) returning to its former glory. That small kernel makes for a very large story.

My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend (1987)

The final film of Rohmer’s “Comedies & Proverbs” series and also the best. Of the 6 films in the series, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend (whose proverb is “The friends of my friends are my friends”) delights the most in its own triviality. Roger Ebert called the series “lightweight little whimsies”, which he didn’t mean as a negative. It’s what makes them so enjoyable. Rather than working as a mechanic trying to fix his characters, Rohmer lets them be problematic, naive, opportunistic, hurt, hurtful, and sometimes happy. Here, two women, Blanche and Lea, meet and become best friends almost instantly. As Lea tries to set to help Blanche find love, Lea falls out of love with Fabien, her boyfriend, and begins to fall for Blanche’s crush, Alexandre. At the same time, Blanche has become close friends’ with Lea’s soon-to-be exboyfriend, Fabien. While Rohmer’s dramas may be considered minor on their face, I won’t say anything further about plot because coming any closer to spoiling the ingenious, gleeful finale would be a crime. It is an emotional and comedic climax unlike any other rom-com.

The River (1951)

It shouldn’t be a surprise, but somehow it is that Jean Reboir managed to make one of the most astounding technicolor films of all time…in his very first film in color. Here, he tells a story of death and rebirth in India, focusing on two young English sisters and their half English, half Indian neighbor. Unlike many films of the time that are filmed in “foreign” spaces, Renoir infuses The River with a deep sense of love for both place and people. Much of the expository information has more to do with culture than character, making a story of youth paving way for adulthood into a much more sensitive affair that what you might expect.

A Man Escaped (1956)

Never before has a film title spoiled its ending and it mattered less than it does here. Yes, in A Man Escaped, a man escapes, but its his struggle that makes this one of Robert Bresson’s best. His obsession with hands and movement are born here, showing the prisoner, Fontaine, as he quietly and delicately plots his escape from a Nazi prison. The lack of any music, a Bresson staple, and very little dialogue won’t matter, you’ll barely blink as Bresson tightly tracks Fontaine’s plan. Bresson never strays from this singular focus, both his and Fontaine’s, making the audience a prisoner as well. When our man escapes, it feels like we do, too. 

Chronicle of a Summer (1961)

What this film captures is something close to magic. As cameras became small enough to  carry, Jean Roach (a director) and Edgar Morin (a sociologist) set out to bind a moment in time with Chronicle of a Summer by asking Parisians, “Are you happy?”. What that question reveals is incredibly emotional recountings of the Holocaust, racism, despair, and radicalism through its cinema verité style (a term that Jean Roach coined himself) and its participants. The “magic” this film captures is the power of a camera, now small enough to turn from the studios and starlets and onto ordinary people. Contextualizing it against today, when we always have a camera on ourselves, this was the first time many of these people got to see a video camera in their lives and it’s transformative for subject and film. What the camera leeches from its subjects here is more human and personal than just about anything else that documentary could hope to capture.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

Probably my favorite movie on this list. The slow-burn camerawork and narrative won’t surprise anyone who’s seen Celine Sciamma’s work before, but the absolutely mastery of timing and narrative structures here are what make this movie perfect. It is a controlled story of a woman in the nineteenth century hired to paint a portrait of another woman to send to a would-be suitor in Milan. That is the entirety of plot that Sciamma uses to create one of the most earnest portrayals of love in the 21st century. Being made in 2019 and already appearing in the top half of Sight & Sound’s Top 100 Films of All Time list should be enough to guarantee viewership for film nerds everywhere, but if not, know now that Sciamma makes every small scene, and every slight glance, simmer to a boil in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. 

Jules & Jim (1962)

Martin Scorsese has stolen from the opening of this film in Goodfellas, Casino, and The Wolf of Wall Street, if you need a measure of Truffaut’s influence with this movie. The title is a joke of sorts, naming the two male counterpoints to the central female character, Catherine, played by Jeanne Moreau (my favorite performance of hers). Jules & Jim the film and Jules & Jim the characters are pulled back and forth by her appetites and moods. The camera mirrors the subjective love the male characters have for her. Extreme closeups, rapid fire editing, freeze frame, and numerous other techniques capture Moreau to play up the unyielding and pixie dust-infused hold she has on the men in her life. For all the technical innovation Truffaut brings into it, the greatest achievement here is the synergy between technique, story, and character.

Yoyo (1965)

Pierre Etaix is, perhaps, considered minor compared to the larger-than-life French comedic export, Jacques Tati. But you won’t feel that way watching this whimsical, deeply hilarious ode to cinema, theater, and comedy itself. It’s not often a comedy can comment on comedy well, but here it’s done so thoughtfully you can’t help but smile throughout. Yoyo moves from a silent film to a modern studio picture to blending laugh tracks; imitating the growing trend in television. Pierre Etaix does it all, and it all works because his world signals its intentions from the start - this is something different, something you haven’t seen before, while also feeling like a loving mixtape of ideas past and present. 

Army of Shadows (1969)

Since he made Le Silence de la Mer, Jean-Pierre Melville became the poet laureate of the gangster noir in the 50s and 60s. Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos, Le Samourai, Les Deuxieme Souffle are all worth watching if for no other reason than to see the breadcrumbs that led to Army of Shadows. All those years ironing out how to hold an audience in his hand with goodies, baddies, light, and shadow led to this film; his magnum opus about the Resistance fight against the Occupation. But this isn’t a flashy film, it’s mired in death more than daring; each character infused with a sense of impermanence and wariness. There’s no one to trust as they move silently through the streets of occupied France, walking past Nazis who they seek to dismantle. The characters really are an army in the shadows, and no one knew what or who could hide or thrive in shadow better than Melville.

A Summer’s Tale (1996)

In the 90s, Rohmer turned to Tales of the Four Seasons; making 4 films and naming each after the season in which they predominantly take place. Similarly to all of his films since the 1960s, they seem light and waifish, but in his simple stories he captures as much truth as an epic. By the time he came around to A Summer’s Tale, a summer beach hang movie about a young man torn between 3 women, Rohmer has completely let go of the leash. Every moment feels more alive with possible outcomes. Every trivial argument and conversation has the tension of will-they-won’t-they and you truly don’t know which way it will go. This film has so much confidence in character and story that it readily jumps into rom-com tropes, only to dismiss them just as quickly; opting for realism over expectations. Uncertainty fills the story, making simple problems feel earned, dramatic, and suspenseful. 

Caché (2005)

Of all of Michael Haneke’s films - many of them considered masterpieces - this one is far and away my favorite. Haneke’s manipulation of both character and audience has never been more seamless. The red herring at its heart, a family harassed by video tapes of someone watching them in their house, sets the story into motion. The preoccupation it creates within the family (and audience) is as tense as Hitchcock; teasing us through the family, while never letting us or them off the hook. Haneke is one of the more astute audience readers working today, keenly aware of how audiences indulge on films and how to manipulate appetites. To say it’s genius is easy. That Caché is also so challenging and engaging is what makes it truly great. 

Beauty & the Beast (1946)

I have underestimated this film since first seeing it in the first few months of 2023, but here, at the end of the year, it’s still lodged in my memory. I took the story for granted. I was lulled by the performances. I connected more deeply with Orphée and Testament of Orpheus, but at the end of the year, this is the one that stands out. Yes, you know the story, but Jean Cocteau is not only one of the greatest thinkers and artists of his or any time; he’s also a maverick of practical effects. The classic story of Beauty & the Beast is seeped in magic in Jean Cocteau’s vision. He brought everything he’d been learning about how to manipulate our imaginations with film since The Blood of the Poet in 1932 to create a fantasy film as fantastical as possible.

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Other notable movies if you want to continue watching:

Bay of Angels, Rififi, Soleil O, Celine & Julie Go Boating, La Chienne, Panique, The Earrings of Madame de…, Night & Fog, Elevator to the Gallows, Le Trou, La Jetée, The Young Girls of Rochefort, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, One Sings, the Other Doesn’t, Daguerrotypes, My American Uncle, Mauvais Sang, La Haine, Code Unknown, Certified Copy, Amour