French Comedy Films to Watch

Going beyond the facade of French comedy is a necessary act for anyone who loves cinema. The world knows and appreciates the comédies populaires, those record-breaking box-office successes that, from The Intouchables to Welcome to the Sticks, have exported a comfortable and universal humor. But the true beating heart, the critical and innovative soul, also resides elsewhere.

This guide is an invitation to explore that territory, a cinema that seeks not just consensus but reflection. The works that follow use laughter not as an end, but as a tool: a sharp scalpel to dissect contemporary societal anxieties and the frailties of human relationships. It is a “cinema of unease” that, in the wake of masters like Jacques Tati, finds the absurd in the everyday and elevates it to an art form.

Through this selection, we will discover the surreal detours of visionaries like Quentin Dupieux and delve into the comédie sociale. This is a path that unites the most famous films with the most complex auteur cinema. These are not merely funny films; they are formally inventive, intellectually stimulating, and, in their deepest spirit, unapologetically French.

Keep an Eye Out (Au poste!)

A man, Fugain, finds a dead body in his building and goes to the police station to give a statement. What should be a routine interrogation with Commissioner Buron turns into an exhausting and surreal all-night session. Logic dissolves, the fourth wall is broken, and the very reality of the investigation is called into question in a crescendo of absurdity.

Keep an Eye Out! is the ideal gateway to the universe of Quentin Dupieux, a director who has made the demolition of narrative conventions his trademark. The film presents itself as a chamber-piece crime procedural, confined almost entirely to a single, drab office, but it uses this familiar setting only to dismantle it from within. The comedy arises not from traditional jokes or gags, but from the characters’ impassive acceptance of completely illogical events. A witness with a glass eye that repeatedly falls out, dialogues that spiral into themselves until they lose all meaning, and a stunning break of the fourth wall that is not a mere wink, but a declaration of poetics.

Dupieux reveals himself as a contemporary heir to the surrealism of Luis Buñuel, using the absurd not as a pure stylistic exercise, but as a critical tool. Keep an Eye Out! is a fierce satire on the emptiness of language and the fragility of the narrative structures we take for granted. The interrogation becomes a metaphor for the filmmaking process itself, with a director-policeman trying to extract a coherent story from an increasingly confused witness-spectator. The film is a hilarious challenge to the audience’s intelligence, an invitation to laugh at our own need to find meaning where, perhaps, there is none.

Love at First Fight (Les Combattants)

Arnaud, a quiet young man with no great ambitions, spends his summer with friends and doing odd jobs for his family’s business. Everything changes when he meets Madeleine, a girl as beautiful as she is paranoid, obsessed with military training and convinced of the imminent end of the world. Fascinated by her intensity, Arnaud decides to follow her to a grueling army prep course, sparking an unlikely story of love and survival.

Winner of the César for Best First Feature Film, Love at First Fight is much more than a simple romantic comedy; it is a generational manifesto that reinvents the rules of the genre. Thomas Cailley creates a “survival comedy” that perfectly captures the anxieties of a youth that looks to the future with a mix of disillusionment and pragmatism. The film’s humor stems from the brilliant contrast between Arnaud’s calm normality and Madeleine’s apocalyptic determination. She prepares for war, he learns to build garden sheds: from this clash of worldviews, a dynamic is born that is as comical as it is deeply touching.

The film is an intelligent metaphor for love in uncertain times. The military training, with its extreme trials and absurd rules, becomes the ground on which the two protagonists not only learn to know each other but also to define their own place in the world. Cailley masterfully blends the tones of comedy, drama, and adventure cinema, creating an original and refreshing work. It is a film that speaks of how, in the face of a future that seems threatening, the only true act of survival may be to find someone to face it with.

Bloody Milk (Petit paysan)

Pierre is a young and passionate dairy farmer whose entire existence revolves around his farm. When a bovine epidemic breaks out in France, his life is thrown into chaos. After discovering that one of his beloved cows might be infected, Pierre refuses to face the prospect of having his entire herd culled and begins a desperate and paranoid struggle to hide the truth from everyone, including his veterinarian sister.

Bloody Milk is an extraordinary work that demonstrates the ability of French independent cinema to transform a social drama into a tense and distressing rural thriller, tinged with a dark and almost involuntary humor. Director Hubert Charuel, himself the son of farmers, directs a film that is both a love letter to the farming world and a ruthless critique of its fragilities. The comedy here is never explicit; it emerges from the tragic absurdity of Pierre’s situation, a man willing to do anything to save the one thing that gives his life meaning.

His descent into paranoia is told with an almost documentary-like precision, which makes his actions, however extreme, terribly understandable. The film thus becomes a powerful allegory of the individual’s loneliness in the face of an impersonal bureaucratic system and a crisis that overwhelms him. Swann Arlaud’s César-winning performance is monumental in capturing the silent desperation and feverish determination of a man watching his world crumble. Bloody Milk is a film that ties your stomach in knots, but also knows how to make you smile bitterly at the absurdity of the human condition.

The Rendez-Vous of Déjà-Vu (La Fille du 14 juillet)

During the Bastille Day celebrations, Hector meets Truquette and falls head over heels in love. To win her over, he decides to follow her on a beach vacation with her friends. Their journey soon turns into a chaotic and surreal odyssey through a France in the midst of an economic crisis, a crisis so severe that the government has decided to move the end of the summer holidays forward, creating a bizarre division between those still on vacation and those forced to return to work.

Antonin Peretjatko delivers a debut feature that is a breath of fresh air, an explosion of anarchy and cinematic joy that evokes the freest spirit of the Nouvelle Vague and the physical comedy of Jacques Tati. The Rendez-Vous of Déjà-Vu is a burlesque and unpredictable comedy that rejects all conventional narrative logic to embrace chaos and the absurd. The pretext of the economic crisis and shortened holidays becomes a brilliant satirical device to narrate the contradictions and anxieties of a lost country.

The film is a succession of visual gags, nonsensical dialogues, and paradoxical situations, held together by a contagious energy and a palpable love for cinema. Peretjatko plays with formats, genres, and spectator expectations, creating a work that is both a social critique and a celebration of youth and freedom. It is a cinema that is not afraid to be ramshackle, imperfect, but for that very reason, incredibly vital. A summer road movie that transforms into an escape from rationality, a hymn to the possibility of finding beauty and love even in the midst of collapse.

In Bed with Victoria (Victoria)

Victoria Spick is a successful criminal lawyer, but also a single mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her life is a chaotic balance between court hearings, two young daughters, an ex-husband who denigrates her on a blog, and a series of failed sexual encounters. The precarious balance shatters when she agrees to defend a friend accused of assault and hires a former client, a young drug dealer, as a babysitter.

With Victoria, director Justine Triet creates a modern, neurotic, and incredibly funny version of the classic American screwball comedy. The film is a ruthless yet empathetic portrait of a contemporary woman desperately trying to hold the pieces of her professional and private life together. The humor stems from the breakneck speed of the dialogue, the accumulation of embarrassing situations, and the volcanic performance of Virginie Efira, perfect in the role of a woman as competent at work as she is disastrous in relationships.

Beneath the surface of the brilliant comedy, Triet constructs a sharp and intelligent critique of the pressures and expectations placed on women trying to reconcile career and family. Victoria is not just a perfectly oiled comic machine, but also a profound analysis of loneliness, justice, and the difficulty of finding emotional balance in the chaos of modern life. It is a film that manages to make you laugh out loud and, a moment later, touch chords of genuine melancholy, confirming Justine Triet as one of the most original voices in new French cinema.

Deerskin (Le Daim)

Georges, a middle-aged man recently left by his wife, spends all his savings on a fringed deerskin jacket, fulfilling a lifelong dream. This obsession quickly turns into madness when the jacket starts talking to him, convincing him to pursue a crazy goal: to be the only person in the world wearing a jacket. To achieve this, Georges becomes an amateur filmmaker and, with the help of an editor, begins robbing people of their jackets, with increasingly violent consequences.

With Deerskin, Quentin Dupieux delivers one of his most successful and unsettling works, a black comedy that explores the themes of toxic masculinity and fetishism with icy lucidity. The film is a masterpiece of surreal humor, where laughter arises from the contrast between the apparent normality of the situations and the protagonist’s delusional logic. Georges’ descent into madness is not depicted as a psychotic breakdown, but as a rational and methodical path towards an absurd goal, which makes it all the more disturbing and comically chilling.

Jean Dujardin gives a masterful performance, playing Georges with an imperturbable seriousness that makes his madness almost believable. The film is a fierce satire on the society of the image and the need to define one’s identity through the possession of objects. The deerskin jacket becomes the symbol of a desire for uniqueness that transforms into a totalitarian and homicidal ideology. Deerskin is a work that manages to be hilarious and terrifying at the same time, a small gem of independent cinema that confirms Dupieux as a master of the absurd.

Love on the Run

Now Available

Comedy, romance, by Francois Truffaut, France, 1978.
After seven years Antoine and Christine divorce, while remaining good friends. Antoine is in a relationship with Liliane, friend of Christine, has published an autobiography about his loves and finds work as a proofreader and also begins a cheerful, if tumultuous relationship, with Sabine, a saleswoman in a record store.

It is the fifth and final film in the series of 'Antoine Doinel', which follows the life of the main character from childhood to adulthood. The film won the Jury Prize at that year's Cannes Film Festival. It is a significant representation of human relationships, an intelligent and ironic reflection on the themes of love, loss and personal growth. It is also an homage to French cinema of the 60s and 70s, a sort of synthesis of cinematic themes and styles that Truffaut had explored throughout his career. Léaud had played the character in all the films of the "Antoine Doinel" series and his performance in "Love on the Run" was considered one of the best of his career. "Love on the Run" was well received by critics and is considered one of Truffaut's best films.

LANGUAGE: french
SUBTITLES: english, italian

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The Trouble with You (En liberté!)

Yvonne, a police inspector and widow of a heroic colleague, discovers that her late husband was not the upstanding man everyone believed him to be, but a corrupt cop. Devastated, she tries to make amends for his misdeeds, particularly by helping Antoine, a man who spent eight years in prison unjustly because of him. But Antoine’s return to freedom, now prone to uncontrolled outbursts of violence, unleashes a series of chaotic and unpredictable events.

Pierre Salvadori directs a brilliant and sophisticated comedy that plays with the codes of the crime genre to create something completely new. The Trouble with You is a film with complex and layered writing, mixing farce, romance, action, and a meta-cinematic reflection on the power of storytelling. The humor arises from the paradoxical situations and lightning-fast dialogue, but also from the deep humanity of its characters, all of whom are beautifully imperfect.

The film is a celebration of narration as a tool to understand and reinvent reality. Yvonne tells her son about his father’s heroic (and fabricated) deeds, while Antoine tries to make sense of his anger through acts that are as violent as they are comical. The film, produced by the independent company Les Films Pelléas, moves with agility between different registers, shifting from pure slapstick scenes to moments of unexpected tenderness. Adèle Haenel and Pio Marmaï form an irresistible pair whose explosive chemistry is the engine of an intelligent, original, and heartfelt comedy that won over the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.

Me, Myself and Mum (Les Garçons et Guillaume, à table!)

Guillaume is a boy who grew up adoring his mother, a bourgeois woman with a strong and authoritarian character. Due to his effeminate manners and sensitivity, everyone, including his mother, considers him a girl. Convinced himself that he is homosexual, Guillaume spends his adolescence imitating his mother and searching for his own identity, on a hilarious and moving journey through English boarding schools, psychoanalysis, and improbable adventures.

Guillaume Gallienne adapts his autobiographical stage play for the screen, creating a dazzling debut feature that won five César awards. The film is a unique and courageous exploration of the themes of gender identity, sexuality, and the complex mother-son relationship. The genius of the operation lies in Gallienne’s choice to play both the role of himself and that of his mother, a move that transforms the film into a profound and hilarious analysis of the process of identification and differentiation.

The hybrid style, which blends theatrical staging with cinematic language, allows for a fluid transition from childhood memories to adult reflections, creating an intimate and universal story. The humor, always intelligent and never vulgar, arises from embarrassing situations, brilliant dialogue, and Gallienne’s ability to laugh at himself with affection and lucidity. Me, Myself and Mum is a sophisticated and deeply human comedy, a work that celebrates the freedom to be oneself, beyond any label.

Bye Bye Morons (Adieu les cons)

When Suze Trappet, a 43-year-old hairdresser, is diagnosed with a terminal illness, she decides to use the time she has left to find the son she was forced to give up fifteen years earlier. Her desperate search leads her to JB, a middle-aged civil servant in the midst of a burnout who has just failed a suicide attempt, and Mr. Blin, a blind archivist with contagious enthusiasm. Together, this unlikely trio embarks on a wild and zany adventure against bureaucracy.

Albert Dupontel, one of the most original and iconoclastic authors in French cinema, directs and stars in an overwhelming comedy, a work that masterfully blends black humor, social satire, and a deep melancholy. A triumph at the Césars with seven awards, including Best Film and Best Director, Bye Bye Morons is a film with a frantic, almost cartoonish pace that uses the language of farce to denounce the inhumanity and indifference of the modern world.

Dupontel’s comedy is physical, explosive, but always at the service of a profoundly human story. Behind the gags and surreal situations lies a fierce critique of a society that marginalizes the weakest and traps them in a labyrinth of absurd rules. The film is a hymn to the “rejects,” the losers, to those who struggle to find a crumb of warmth and meaning in a world that seems to have forgotten them. With an extraordinary Virginie Efira, Bye Bye Morons is a modern, bitter, and hilarious fable, a work that manages to make you laugh and move you to tears.

Mandibles (Mandibules)

Jean-Gab and Manu, two not-so-bright friends, accept a simple job: deliver a briefcase in exchange for easy money. During the trip, they discover a giant fly in the trunk of their car. Instead of being scared, Manu has a brilliant idea: train the insect to turn it into a robbery drone and get rich. Their mission changes radically, kicking off a series of absurd misadventures and surreal encounters.

With Mandibles, Quentin Dupieux partly abandons the darker and more nihilistic atmospheres of his previous films to embrace the tones of a sunnier and almost tender comedy. The film is a wacky buddy movie, an ode to friendship and stupidity, where the surreal element (the giant fly) is no longer a threat, but an opportunity, a catalyst for adventure. The humor arises from the absolute seriousness with which the two protagonists, magnificently played by the Palmashow duo, Grégoire Ludig and David Marsais, approach their demented plan.

Their logic is elementary, their motto “Taureau!” (“Bull!”) is a nonsensical battle cry, but their dedication to the cause is total. Dupieux builds a world where their idiocy is a form of purity, a way to navigate an equally absurd world. The film is studded with memorable characters, especially Adèle Exarchopoulos, hilarious in the role of a girl who, due to an accident, can only scream. Mandibles is a fresh, light, and irresistibly funny comedy, a film that celebrates the joy of being stupid together.

Zero for Conduct

Now Available

Comedy, by Jean Vigo, France, 1933.
The holidays are over and it's time for the kids to return to the terrible boarding school, run by obtuse and conformist tutors, unable to encourage the growth of any spirit of freedom and creativity. The only thing these austere professors are capable of is assigning a "zero" for conduct. But the boys decide to rebel with the complicity of the new supervisor, Huguet, different from all the others. Thus a real revolution is unleashed. Jean Vigo describes the children's yearning for freedom with audacity and a subversive spirit, with a ruthless critique of the scholastic institution, which closely resembles certain memorable sequences from Fellini's cinema. Perhaps the Italian filmmaker had seen the Vigo film? It seems very, very likely. The film was banned by French censorship and did not have a public screening until 1945.

Food for thought
The conditioning of the family, the school and the mass media are probably the main causes of the existential failure of millions of people. They are unidentified enemies, from which it is difficult to defend oneself, which cause the loss of self-esteem and the creativity necessary to achieve ambitious goals. Social, cultural and religious conditioning are a fundamental theme in the life of every human being, and one of the main topics of the filmographies of masters of cinema such as Fellini, Truffaut, and many others.

LANGUAGE: French
SUBTITLES: English, Spanish, German, Portuguese

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L’amour flou

Romane and Philippe are separating. After ten years together, two children, and a dog, they are no longer in love. However, they still care for each other very much, too much for a traditional separation. Under the perplexed gaze of friends and family, they invent a revolutionary living solution: two separate apartments, connected by the children’s room. Thus begins an experiment in post-marital life that is as crazy as it is moving.

Romane Bohringer and Philippe Rebbot bring their own true story of separation to the screen, creating a hybrid work, halfway between fiction and documentary, that is one of the most original, intelligent, and touching comedies of recent years. Awarded the César for Best First Feature Film, L’amour flou is a film that dismantles all the clichés about the end of a love affair with humor and sincerity. Their idea of the “sépartement” is not just an eccentric gimmick, but a profound reflection on how the family can be reinvented outside of social conventions.

The film is a wonderful balance between moments of irresistible comedy, born from the practical difficulties and jealousies of their new life, and scenes of disarming honesty. The co-direction captures the daily life of this atypical family with freshness and spontaneity, involving their real children and friends (including a hilarious Richard Bohringer). L’amour flou is a hymn to emotional intelligence, a work that shows how it is possible to transform the pain of a breakup into a new, creative, and loving way of being together. A small masterpiece of humanity.

Arab Blues (Un divan à Tunis)

After living and working for years in Paris, psychoanalyst Selma decides to return to her native Tunis to open a practice. She sets up in a working-class suburb, but the venture proves more complicated than expected. In a society still poised between tradition and modernity after the Jasmine Revolution, her patients are a collection of hilarious and profound neuroses, while she herself must battle a Kafkaesque bureaucracy to obtain her license to practice.

Manele Labidi delivers a brilliant and sharp debut feature, a comedy that uses the psychoanalyst’s “couch” as a magnifying glass to observe the contradictions and hopes of contemporary Tunisia. The film is a funny and profound sociological analysis that avoids clichés to offer a multifaceted and vibrant portrait of a country in transformation. The humor arises from the cultural short-circuit between Selma’s Freudian approach and the resistance of her patients, who confuse analysis with religious confession or paid services.

Golshifteh Farahani is perfect in the role of Selma, a modern and determined woman who acts as a catalyst for the stories of a diverse and colorful humanity: from the imam who dreams of women’s clothing to the hairdresser who hides her insecurities behind a facade of gossip. The director manages to treat complex themes such as freedom of expression, the role of women, and the weight of religion with a rare lightness and intelligence. Arab Blues is a social comedy that makes you laugh and think, a necessary work that celebrates the power of words in a society that is learning to talk about itself.

Rosalie Blum

Vincent Machot is a hairdresser whose life is monotonous, divided between his job, an intrusive cousin, and an oppressive mother. One day, he randomly meets Rosalie Blum, a lonely and mysterious woman, and has the strange feeling he has met her before. Intrigued, he begins to follow her. Rosalie notices she is being followed and, in turn, asks her niece Aude to investigate Vincent. Thus begins an unpredictable chain of surveillance and discoveries.

Adapting the graphic novel of the same name by Camille Jourdy, Julien Rappeneau creates a delightful and charming debut feature, a choral comedy about loneliness and the magic of unexpected encounters. The film, a César award winner, is distinguished by its original narrative structure, divided into three chapters, each dedicated to the point of view of one of the protagonists. This choice allows the viewer to slowly piece together the story’s puzzle, discovering how perceptions and misunderstandings can generate situations that are as comical as they are touching.

The strength of Rosalie Blum lies in its ability to create a dreamy and melancholic atmosphere, populated by eccentric and deeply human characters. Rappeneau’s direction is elegant and sensitive, capable of capturing the hidden poetry in the banality of provincial life. The cast is perfect, with Kyan Khojandi (creator of the series Bref) giving his character a moving awkwardness and Noémie Lvovsky embodying an enigmatic and fragile Rosalie. It is a heartwarming film, a gentle and intelligent tale about how the courage to step out of one’s routine can lead to unexpected and wonderful connections.

The Class Struggle (La Lutte des classes)

Sofia and Paul are a “bobo” (bourgeois-bohemian) Parisian couple, he a former punk musician and she a lawyer, living in a working-class neighborhood in the suburbs. Fervent supporters of public schools and social mixing, they face a crisis when their son Corentin, the only white child in his class, begins to feel isolated. The couple is faced with a heart-wrenching dilemma: stay true to their ideals or enroll their son in the nearby private Catholic school, like all the other bourgeois parents in the neighborhood?

Michel Leclerc, already the author of the acclaimed political comedy The Names of Love, returns with a social satire that is as funny as it is ruthless. The Class Struggle is a crystal-clear analysis of the contradictions of the French intellectual left, a film that stages with caustic humor the conflict between theoretical principles and the practical choices of daily life. The comedy arises precisely from this short-circuit, from the involuntary hypocrisy of the protagonists who find themselves betraying everything they believe in for the “good” of their child.

The film, co-written with Baya Kasmi, is a small masterpiece of writing, with brilliant dialogue and situations that mercilessly expose the neuroses and prejudices of a certain social class. Leïla Bekhti and Édouard Baer are perfect in bringing to life a credible and complex couple, in whom the viewer cannot help but recognize themselves, even in their less noble aspects. The Class Struggle is an intelligent and necessary comedy that asks uncomfortable questions about the meaning of integration, equality, and coherence in today’s Europe.

Delete History (Effacer l’historique)

In a provincial residential neighborhood, three neighbors are struggling with the problems of digital life. Marie is being blackmailed over a sex tape. Bertrand discovers that his daughter is a victim of cyberbullying at school. Christine, a VTC driver, can’t get her customer ratings to take off. Desperate and technologically inept, they decide to join forces and declare war on the giants of the Internet, embarking on a crazy and seemingly hopeless quest.

The directing duo Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine, masters of a cinema that is punk, surreal, and profoundly human, deliver a hilarious and highly relevant comedy about our addiction to technology. Delete History is a grotesque and irresistible satire of the contemporary world, a merciless portrait of a humanity alienated and overwhelmed by social networks, call centers, and incomprehensible algorithms. The film’s humor is corrosive, at times melancholic, and arises from the depiction of clumsy and desperate characters trying to rebel against a system bigger than them.

The film, awarded at the Berlin Film Festival, is a work that manages to be both deeply rooted in reality (online scams, bullying, the precariousness of work in the gig economy) and totally surreal in its narrative solutions. The trio of protagonists, played by Blanche Gardin, Denis Podalydès, and Corinne Masiero, is simply perfect in bringing to life modern anti-heroes, as pathetic as they are heroic in their quixotic struggle. An intelligent, angry, and incredibly funny comedy.

Sink or Swim (Le Grand Bain)

A group of middle-aged men, all struggling with depression, unemployment, and existential crises, find an unlikely escape at the local swimming pool. Under the guidance of two former champions, they decide to form France’s first men’s synchronized swimming team. Despite general skepticism and their complete lack of grace, their goal is singular: to compete in the world championships.

Directed by actor Gilles Lellouche, Sink or Swim is a “feel-good movie” that transcends the genre’s limits thanks to intelligent writing, an exceptional cast, and profound sensitivity. Although it achieved enormous public success, the film maintains a fiercely independent spirit, produced by companies like Les Productions du Trésor and Chi-Fou-Mi. It is a choral comedy that tackles the theme of male fragility, a topic still too often taboo, with humor and delicacy.

The film’s strength lies in its ability to create authentic and multifaceted characters, each with their own wounds and insecurities. The pool becomes a protected space, a place where these men can finally let down their guards, show their vulnerability, and find in the group’s solidarity the strength to get back in the game. The humor does not come from mocking their clumsy bodies, but from the tenderness with which their efforts are portrayed. Sink or Swim is a celebration of friendship and second chances, a film that makes you laugh, moves you, and, above all, makes you feel good.

9-Month Stretch (9 mois ferme)

Ariane Felder is an incorruptible judge, a single workaholic, and morally irreproachable. Her orderly life is turned upside down when she discovers she is six months pregnant, with no idea how it could have happened. Paternity tests reveal an even more shocking truth: the baby’s father is Bob Nolan, a notorious criminal accused of a heinous assault. Ariane must piece together a night of madness to understand what happened.

Albert Dupontel writes, directs, and stars in a wild and irresistible comedy, a work that combines the rhythm of burlesque farce with a sharp satire of the judicial system and the media. Winner of two César awards, including Best Actress for the amazing Sandrine Kiberlain, 9-Month Stretch is a film that gives the viewer no respite, overwhelming them with unstoppable comic energy. The comedy is physical, verbal, and situational, based on an accumulation of gags, misunderstandings, and plot twists.

Beneath the surface of the slapstick comedy, Dupontel inserts a fierce social critique. The world of the courthouse is depicted as a theater of the absurd, populated by vain lawyers, bizarre experts, and a system that seems to have lost all contact with reality. Ariane’s transformation, from an aloof judge to a woman forced to break every rule, is the engine of a story that is both a critique of bourgeois respectability and an unexpected love story between two opposites. A hilarious and intelligent film.

Love Songs for Tough Guys (Cette musique ne joue pour personne)

In a desolate port town in northern France, a group of middle-aged gangsters leads a life of violence and petty extortion. Their routine is disrupted when love and poetry burst into their lives. Jeff, the leader, falls for a cashier and tasks his henchmen with delivering clumsy love messages to her. Meanwhile, one of his most trusted men joins a theater company to win over a woman, ending up playing Jean-Paul Sartre.

Samuel Benchetrit directs a poetic and surreal work, a tender and melancholic comedy that finds beauty in the absurd and grace in brutality. The film is a choral tale populated by unforgettable characters, gangsters with soft hearts who discover the transformative power of art. The humor, delicate and whimsical, arises from the contrast between the violent world of crime and the delicate feelings the protagonists begin to experience.

With an all-star cast that brings together some of the best actors in French and Belgian cinema (François Damiens, Vanessa Paradis, Gustave Kervern, Bouli Lanners, JoeyStarr), Benchetrit creates a unique atmosphere, halfway between the poetic realism of Marcel Carné and the absurdism of Aki Kaurismäki. The scenes where these rough men try their hand at acting or attempt to write poetry are both hilarious and moving. Love Songs for Tough Guys is an unclassifiable film, a modern fable about the ability of love and culture to redeem even the most hardened souls.

Smoking Causes Coughing (Fumer fait tousser)

The “Tobacco Force” is a team of five superheroes whose powers derive from the harmful substances in tobacco: Benzene, Nicotine, Methanol, Mercury, and Ammonia. After defeating a giant turtle, their boss, a drooling rat named Didier, sends them on a forced retreat to strengthen the group’s cohesion, which has been worn down by internal squabbles. During the retreat, to pass the time, they begin telling each other horror stories around a campfire, while the evil emperor Lézardin plots to destroy the Earth.

Quentin Dupieux strikes again with a brilliant and demented parody of superhero films and Japanese sentai series like the Power Rangers. Smoking Causes Coughing is a work that deconstructs all the clichés of the genre with iconoclastic humor. The film’s true genius, however, lies in its episodic structure, a container film in which the main plot (Lézardin’s threat) becomes a mere pretext for a series of horror stories that are as gruesome as they are hilarious.

Dupieux has fun playing with the viewer’s expectations, abandoning the main narrative to get lost in absurd and amusing digressions. The result is a comic-horror anthology that celebrates the pleasure of storytelling for its own sake. The film is a concentrate of his unique style: impassive dialogue in the face of the absurd, sudden and cartoonish violence, and total creative freedom. With a cast of regulars (Gilles Lellouche, Vincent Lacoste, Anaïs Demoustier), Dupieux delivers one of his funniest and most accessible works, a celebration of cinema as pure play.

Junkyard Dog (Chien de la casse)

In a small, sleepy village in the south of France, Dog and Mirales have been friends forever. Their bond, almost brotherly but deeply toxic, is dominated by the exuberant and cruel personality of Mirales, who never misses an opportunity to humiliate the milder Dog. Their precarious balance is shattered by the arrival of Elsa, a young woman who starts a relationship with Dog, unleashing Mirales’ jealousy and resentment.

Winner of two César awards, including Best First Feature Film, Junkyard Dog is the dazzling debut of Jean-Baptiste Durand. The film is a raw, authentic, and powerful portrait of a male friendship and life in provincial France, far from tourist postcards. More than a pure comedy, it is a dramatic comedy that finds humor in the folds of reality, in the sharp dialogues and the relational dynamics of its protagonists. The writing is precise, capable of capturing the language and tensions of a youth that fights boredom with bravado.

The film is supported by two extraordinary performances: Anthony Bajon in the role of Dog and, above all, Raphaël Quenard, a true revelation, who gives Mirales an incredible complexity, making him both unbearable and vulnerable. Durand’s direction is immersive, capable of capturing the harsh beauty of the landscapes and the claustrophobia of a world where everyone knows each other. Junkyard Dog is a powerful and sincere work, a coming-of-age story that tells with lucidity and without moralizing the difficulty of growing up and freeing oneself from the bonds that suffocate us.

The Worst Ones (Les Pires)

A film crew arrives in Boulogne-Sur-Mer, in the north of France, to shoot a movie. For the main roles, the director decides to cast four teenagers from the working-class neighborhood of Cité Picasso, kids considered “the worst” because of their reputation and difficult family histories. The shoot becomes an intense and destabilizing experience that blurs the lines between the fiction of the set and the harsh reality of their lives.

Winner of the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, The Worst Ones is a powerful and complex debut feature that explores the ethical questions of cinematic representation with intelligence and sensitivity. Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret, with a background as casting directors, deliver a meta-cinematic film that is both a dramatic comedy and a documentary about its own creation. The humor, often bitter, arises from the embarrassing situations and conflicts that occur on set.

The film asks fundamental questions: is it right to ask vulnerable young people to relive their traumas for the sake of a script? Where does art end and exploitation begin? The Worst Ones does not offer easy answers but shows with great honesty the complexity of the relationships that form between the directors and their young, non-professional actors, who are extraordinary here for their naturalness and intensity. It is a film that makes you laugh, angry, and reflect, a necessary work that questions the role and responsibility of cinema in telling the stories of others.

Bloody Oranges (Oranges Sanguines)

In France, over the course of a single night, the stories of several characters intertwine. An elderly farming couple, drowning in debt, enters a rock competition to win first prize. A powerful finance minister is dealing with a tax evasion scandal. A teenage girl prepares for her first date, but the encounter turns into a nightmare. Their seemingly distant trajectories will converge in an explosion of cathartic violence.

Jean-Christophe Meurisse directs a pitch-black comedy, a fierce and uncompromising satire that tears contemporary French society to shreds. Bloody Oranges is a shocking, brutal, and, at the same time, incredibly funny film. The humor, corrosive and politically incorrect, arises from the subversion of expectations and the grotesque representation of the ills of our time: economic precarity, political corruption, sexual violence, and rampant hypocrisy.

The film is structured as a choral tale that builds to a crescendo of tension and absurdity, culminating in a finale where the “weak” take a bloody and liberating revenge on their oppressors. The direction is sharp, the dialogue is cutting, and the cast is in a state of grace, bringing to life characters memorable in their pettiness or their naivety. Bloody Oranges is an extreme work, not for everyone, but of a rare lucidity and power. A punch to the gut that forces you to laugh at your own miseries.

Yannick

In the middle of a performance of a mediocre Parisian boulevard comedy, a spectator, Yannick, stands up and interrupts the show. He is a night watchman, has traveled an hour to see the play, and finds it terribly boring. He therefore decides to take the actors and audience hostage to rewrite the ending himself, in an attempt to turn a disappointing evening into a moment of genuine artistic sharing.

Filmed in secret and released as a surprise, Yannick is yet another gem from the inexhaustible Quentin Dupieux. The film is a brilliant and tense chamber comedy, a work that takes place almost entirely in real-time on a theater stage. With this minimalist setup, Dupieux constructs a profound and hilarious reflection on the relationship between the work of art, the artist, and the audience. Who has the right to judge? What happens when the spectator, from a passive consumer, becomes an active creator?

Raphaël Quenard, a rising star of new French cinema, gives an extraordinary performance, making Yannick a complex character who is at once ridiculous, threatening, and strangely moving. The film is a tour de force of writing and direction, a tight and unpredictable dialogue that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat. The humor arises from the embarrassment of the situation, the growing tension, and the implicit critique of a certain type of bourgeois and self-referential art. Yannick is an intelligent, provocative, and incredibly timely work.

The Sweet Escape (Comme un avion)

Michel, a fifty-year-old graphic designer with a passion for aviation, dreams of an adventurous life like that of the Aéropostale pilots. One day, he has an epiphany: a kayak, after all, resembles the fuselage of an airplane. Driven by an irrepressible impulse, he buys a kayak and, encouraged by his wife, sets off on a solo journey down a river. His “great expedition” will turn into an adventure of small encounters and a rediscovery of himself.

Bruno Podalydès, along with his brother Denis, is one of the most important figures in French auteur comedy. The Sweet Escape is perhaps his most representative film: a gentle, bizarre, and profoundly humanist work. The comedy is never loud, but arises from the delicacy of the situations, the protagonist’s clumsiness, and the poetry of chance encounters. Michel’s journey is not a heroic escape, but a modest rebellion against the monotony of everyday life, an attempt to rediscover a sense of wonder.

The film is a celebration of the little things, an invitation to slow down and look at the world with different eyes. Podalydès, who also plays the protagonist, has a unique talent for creating a dreamy and slightly surreal atmosphere, populated by eccentric and adorable characters (including a magnificent Sandrine Kiberlain). The direction is contemplative, attentive to details and landscapes, and the screenplay is full of brilliant dialogue and acute observations on human nature. The Sweet Escape is a comedy that makes you smile and think, a small gem of sensitivity and intelligence.

My Donkey, My Lover & I (Antoinette dans les Cévennes)

Antoinette, a schoolteacher, is eagerly awaiting the summer vacation she has planned with her lover, Vladimir. When he tells her at the last minute that he is going on holiday with his wife and daughter to the Cévennes, a desperate Antoinette decides to follow him. She signs up for the same trek, a route in the footsteps of the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, and finds herself facing the mountains in the company of a travel companion as unexpected as he is stubborn: a donkey named Patrick.

Caroline Vignal directs a delightful comedy, a road movie at a donkey’s pace that has won over audiences and critics, earning Laure Calamy a well-deserved César award for Best Actress. The film is a funny and touching coming-of-age story that uses the journey as a metaphor for a path of personal emancipation. The film’s comedic strength lies mainly in the extraordinary chemistry between the protagonist and her donkey.

Patrick is not just an animal, but a character in his own right, with a strong personality and irresistible expressiveness. Their relationship, made of quarrels, misunderstandings, and moments of deep tenderness, is the beating heart of a film that celebrates resilience and the ability to find happiness where you least expect it. Laure Calamy is simply perfect in the role of a woman initially pathetic in her romantic obsession, but who gradually rediscovers her own strength and independence. My Donkey, My Lover & I is a breath of fresh air, an intelligent and charming comedy.

The Names of Love (Le Nom des gens)

Bahia Benmahmoud is a young, extroverted woman politically active on the left. She has a very particular mission: to convert right-wing men to her ideas by sleeping with them. Her strategy, until then infallible, is thrown into crisis when she meets Arthur Martin, a man with a very common name who, despite appearances, hides a complex past and a series of neuroses. Their encounter will give rise to a love story as improbable as it is hilarious.

Winner of two Césars, for Best Actress (Sara Forestier) and Best Original Screenplay, The Names of Love is one of the most intelligent and daring political comedies in French cinema. Director Michel Leclerc tackles complex themes such as national identity, the weight of history (particularly the Algerian War), and the coexistence of different cultures with humor and without taboos. The comedic pretext of “sexual conversion” becomes an original way to explore ideological differences and to dismantle the prejudices of every political side.

The film is a firework of brilliant dialogue, politically incorrect situations, and surprising visual inventions. Sara Forestier is overwhelming in the role of Bahia, a character full of energy and contradictions, while Jacques Gamblin is perfect as a man who is seemingly boring but deeply tormented. The Names of Love is a comedy that is not afraid to be complex and provocative, a work that shows how one can laugh at the fractures of society without ever trivializing them.

La Belle Époque

Victor, a disillusioned sixty-year-old illustrator in crisis with his wife Marianne, is kicked out of the house. His son offers him an unusual gift: the chance to relive an era of his choice, thanks to a specialized agency that creates meticulous historical reconstructions with actors and sets. Victor has no doubts and chooses to return to May 16, 1974, the day he first met the great love of his life, Marianne.

Nicolas Bedos writes and directs a romantic comedy with a brilliant concept and impeccable execution. La Belle Époque is a film that elegantly blends nostalgia, humor, and a profound reflection on time, memory, and the nature of love. The idea of a theatrical “time machine” allows Bedos to create a fascinating play between past and present, between reality and fiction, where memories are staged and, perhaps, reinvented.

The film is supported by an exceptional cast. Daniel Auteuil is magnificent in the role of a man who rediscovers the joy of living by immersing himself in the past, while Doria Tillier is luminous in the dual role of the young Marianne and the actress who plays her. Guillaume Canet, as the neurotic director of the reconstruction, adds a touch of meta-cinematic comedy. La Belle Époque is a sophisticated and moving comedy, a work that celebrates the power of stories to make us fall in love again, not just with a person, but with life itself.

The Speech (Le Discours)

Adrien is at a family dinner. His girlfriend, Sonia, asked for a “break” 38 days ago, and he is anxiously awaiting a text from her. The evening, already a nightmare in itself, takes an even worse turn when his future brother-in-law asks him to give a speech at his wedding. As panic sets in, Adrien gets lost in a whirlwind of thoughts, memories, anxieties, and tragicomic fantasies about his past, present, and future.

Based on the graphic novel by Fabcaro, The Speech is a brilliant and innovative comedy, built almost entirely on the protagonist’s stream of consciousness. Director Laurent Tirard successfully translates Adrien’s inner monologue into images, creating a film that is both hilarious and deeply relatable. The humor stems from the character’s neurosis, his tendency to catastrophize every situation, and his ruthless (and hilarious) analysis of family dynamics and social conventions, like the absurd tradition of the “chenille” (the conga line) at weddings.

Benjamin Lavernhe, an actor from the Comédie-Française, is extraordinary in giving body and voice to a character perpetually balanced between self-pity and lucidity. The film is a small masterpiece of writing and editing, skillfully alternating between timelines and narrative registers, moving from romantic comedy to farce, to moments of unexpected tenderness. The Speech is a celebration of anxiety as a comedic engine, a work that speaks to anyone who has ever felt out of place at a family dinner.

Yves

Jérem, a young, broke rapper, moves into his grandmother’s house to try to make it in the music world. His life changes when a start-up offers him the chance to test a new smart refrigerator named Yves. He soon discovers that Yves is not only capable of managing groceries and giving dietary advice, but also has an exceptional talent for musical composition. The fridge starts writing hits for Jérem, turning him into a star, but their collaboration will take an unexpected and surreal turn.

Benoît Forgeard directs an original and amusing sci-fi comedy, an intelligent satire on our dependence on technology, artificial intelligence, and the music industry. Yves is a film that starts from a completely absurd premise and develops it with impeccable logic, creating hilarious situations and sharp reflections. The humor arises from the relationship between the human, imperfect and ambitious, and the machine, efficient, rational, and, ultimately, more creative than him.

The film is a funny critique of the performance society and the obsession with success, where even a home appliance can become a pop icon. William Lebghil is perfect in the role of the mediocre rapper who lets himself be manipulated by his fridge, while Philippe Katerine, as a start-up executive, is as irresistible as ever in his extravagance. Yves is a comedy that makes you laugh heartily, but also leaves a bitter aftertaste, making us question the future of creativity in a world increasingly dominated by algorithms. A bizarre and brilliant work.

Apnée

Céline, Thomas, and Maxence are an inseparable trio. They love each other, live together, and want to get married. All three of them. Faced with the mayor’s refusal to perform a three-person marriage, they begin a picaresque and anarchic journey across France, searching for a place in the world that will accept their unconventional way of life. Their path is a succession of bizarre encounters and surreal situations, a radical critique of all societal institutions.

Presented at the Cannes Critics’ Week, Apnée is the cinematic debut of Jean-Christophe Meurisse and his theater company, Les Chiens de Navarre. The film is an extreme work, a concentrate of black, provocative, and politically incorrect humor. Structured as a series of seemingly disconnected sketches, the film is actually a fierce and coherent critique of social norms: marriage, private property, family, work.

The comedy of Apnée is abrasive, often disturbing, and based on the improvisation and physical performance of the actors. The film is not afraid to be unpleasant, to push the viewer out of their comfort zone. It is a cinema that screams its anger against a world perceived as absurd and restrictive. Beneath the chaotic and iconoclastic surface, however, lies a deep tenderness for its characters, three lost souls just trying to live their love freely. A courageous and unforgettable debut feature, for those who love cinema that pulls no punches.