Happy New Year 2024

Back to the future

L'Etrange Festival poster

Going against the overflow of formatted or prefabricated recent movies, of no value except the monetary* one, your quite strange and favorite festival aims to quell this hysterical output by allowing you to (re)discover a plethoric crop of treasures from filmmakers around the world, covering half a century, and we’ve exhumed some films and authors that will surprise you in many respects.

From Iranian Farsi films, unbridled genre movies made in an era when mollahs didn’t make the rules, to the surprising and marvelous creations from INA, made in those glory days when French public television had nothing to envy to movie theaters, or the tribute to the immense Masahiro Shinoda, one of the last great masters of Japanese cinema, you won’t know what to watch. If her name often evokes popular comedies, showing little knowledge of her career, Victoria Abril, from her beginnings, never shied away from making upsetting and committed movies. A hidden secret of US flamboyant gay cinema, like Kenneth Anger’s, the “Magic” work of Steven Arnold only wishes to embrace you. Here and now. Better known as a producer, Filipino Mike de Leon nonetheless remains a thrilling director to be urgently rediscovered.

A festival favorite from its inception, Spaniard Alberto Vasquez is here with his second feature film. A perfect opportunity to showcase his entire filmography. Your appetite being unquenchable, the usual feature film and short competitions, our exclusivity section, Mondo and Nuggets, will further inebriate this gargantuan feast. Serge Bromberg’s essential Retour de Flamme spoils you even more with a magnificent world premiere, Canal+ offers free first screenings of three exclusive films and our traditional Cartes Blanches are this year curated by Ovidie, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Dominik Moll, one of our most astute French directors. Finally it would have been impossible not to celebrate the great production company Le Village, the stunning breeding ground that saw the beginnings of many of today's recognized talents, a promise of a highly recommendable evening.

Have a great festival !

*In these inflational times, the festival has taken the risk not to raise entry fees to facilitate access to this feast to the widest audience...

L'ÉTRANGE FESTIVAL