The Cultural Services of the French Embassy is pleased to announce a selection of French cultural events that will be presented in Washington, DC and its consular district this summer.

This precisely wrought, emotionally penetrating romantic drama from Jacques Demy, set largely in the casinos of Nice, is a visually lovely but darkly realistic investigation into love and obsession. A bottle-blonde named Jackie (Jeanne Moreau) is at her blithe best as a gorgeous gambling addict, and Jean Fournier (Claude Mann) a young bank clerk drawn into her risky world. Featuring a mesmerizing score by Michel Legrand, Bay of Angels is among Demy’s most somber works.

 In French with English subtitles.

This wicked adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel is classic Luis Buñuel. Celestine (Jeanne Moreau) is a beautiful Parisian domestic, who upon arrival at her new job at a provincial estate in 1930s France, entrenches herself in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her philandering employer (Buñuel regular Michel Piccoli). Filmed in luxurious black-and-white Franscope, Diary of a Chambermaid is a raw-edged tangle of fetishism and murder and a scathing look at the burgeoning fascism of the 1930s.

In French with English subtitles.

In the male dominate food universe, discover the women changing the game on all levels. Vérane Frediani presents the best female chefs, including multi Michelin star chefs Dominique Crenn and Barbara Lync, and introduces rising new stars and those making incredible food in all corners of the world. A global journey exploring the female strength in gastronomy. Prominent chefs and journalists investigate on what holds women chefs back in the modern mediated world of cuisine and what needs to be done to change the way women in the food industry are viewed.
In partnership with DC FIlm Fest +.

In Chinese, English, French and Spanish with English subtitles.

An acclaimed early work by Olivier Assayas that has long remained unavailable, the deeply felt coming-of-age drama Cold Water at long last makes its way to U.S. theaters. Drawing from his own youthful experiences, Assayas revisits the outskirts of Paris in the early 1970s, telling the story of teenage lovers Gilles (Cyprien Fouquet) and Christine (Virginie Ledoyen), whose open rebellion against family and society threatens to tear them apart.

In French with English subtitles.

Having established a fervent fanbase in his native France, Fakear, aka Théo Le Vigoureux, has gifted his globally-tuned dance music to an even larger audience after dates across the US and Canada. He’s made waves, garnering deserved notice from a consistently attention.
He released his second album "All Glows" in April. This summer, he will be on tour all around the world to display his talents and play his new tracks ‘La Lune Rousse’, ‘Kids’ or ‘Morning In Japan’ which became anthems on the electronic world stage.

Jean-Luc Ponty is one the most renowned jazz violonist on the world stage. Born in France, he studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris before later emigrating to Los Angeles.
Both critics and his peers consider his music as groundbreaking in the post be-bop-era of jazz. In the seventies, most music magazines saw him as the best violonist of the world. He worked on multiple projects, with leading jazz and rock musicians of twentieth century, such as Frank Zappa, Elton John, Chick Corea and Stéphane Grappelli.

Bringing together some 60 paintings drawn from collections around the world, Cézanne Portraits is the first exhibition devoted exclusively to this often-neglected genre of his work. This revelatory exhibition explores the pictorial and thematic characteristics of Paul Cézanne's (1839–1906) portraits, the chronological development of his style and method, and the range and influence of his sitters. The exhibition traces the development of Cézanne's portraits and the changes that occurred through style and method and the understanding of resemblance and identity.

In September 1878, Claude Monet took up residence at Vétheuil, a village northwest of Paris. In 1881, Monet began to work on a group of four closely related canvases showing a private garden bursting with sunflowers. Of the four paintings, the work now in the Norton Simon collection is closest to the one in Washington, and has long been thought to have been the model for the more detailed Washington picture. Yet, recent examinations have called this theory into question. Separated in 1882, these two paintings have been reunited for the first time in this special installation.