• the217
• Movies + TV
• The Tournées French Film Festival returns to Boardman’s

Fries aren’t the only good thing with a French label.

From mistresses to red balloons, the Fourth Annual Tournees French Film Festival, sponsored by the University of Illinois and Parkland College, begins this week with an interesting mix of films sure to satisfy everyone’s appetite. The festival, held Oct. 31 to Nov. 6 at Boardman’s Art Theatre in downtown Champaign, was started by Assistant Professor of French and Cinema Studies Maggie Flinn in 2005 with the hope of exposing college students and Champaign-Urbana citizens to “riskier” films they might not have the chance to see in theaters.

Audrey Evrard, a PhD candidate in French studies and a native of France, also wants to combat the stereotypes that surround French cinema. She said people often associate French films with “high-brow, adult cinema,” but she argues they have more to offer than just that.

“There are comedies, there are period films, there are really avant-garde and artsy films, but you also have very simple family dramas or politically charged films, and sometimes you also have really boring films,” Evrard said.

This year’s selection is anything but boring with six award-winning films in the lineup. The festival includes Blame It on Fidel, a film about a young girl whose parents abandon their traditional ways to become revolutionaries in the 1970s; Her Name Is Sabine focuses on the director’s autistic sister and the health care system in France; The Last Mistress is a provocative film about aristocrat marriages and lowly affairs; and Dans Paris is a comedy about the complications of love.

The festival also includes a francophone film, a movie spoken in French but not located in France or about France, called Daratt, which focuses on one boy’s struggles surrounding the civil war in Chad.

Intern Vanessa Bordo, a senior majoring in international studies and French, is most excited about the double feature of Albert Lamorisse’s children’s classics, The Red Balloon, about a boy who befriends a balloon, and White Mane, about a herd of wild horses. Bordo remembers watching The Red Balloon in school when she was younger.

“I had seen it a long time ago ... but it is good to be able to sit down with my family now and watch the film without worrying about the content,” Bordo said.

By including the double feature, Flinn hopes that people who watched the film when th