Festival du Film Francophone d'Angoulême
Each late August, the Festival du Film Francophone d'Angoulême turns the city into a temporary capital of French-language cinema: previews, the Valois awards, masterclasses and screen stars fill the venues and squares before the autumn season.
Birth and identity of the festival
The Festival du Film Francophone d'Angoulême, better known by its acronym FFA, was founded in 2008 on the initiative of Dominique Besnehard, film agent and producer, and Marie-France Brière. The founding idea was both simple and ambitious: to create a summer cinema festival rooted in the francophone world at a time of year — late August — when Paris empties but distributors are eager to launch their flagship films before the September back-to-school season. Angoulême, a culturally ambitious city already hosting the world comics festival, presented itself as the ideal venue.
From its earliest editions, the FFA distinguished itself by its popular and accessible character: a large proportion of screenings are free or subsidised, and films are shown not only in traditional cinemas but also outdoors, on screens set up in the city's squares and gardens. This commitment to democratising quality and auteur cinema remains one of the festival's hallmarks.
The Valois: the FFA awards
The name of the festival's awards is a direct tribute to Angoulême's history: the Valois recall the royal house whose cradle the city was, with Marguerite d'Angoulême and her brother François I. These trophies, representing a cut-glass prism inspired by Renaissance jewellery, are awarded at the closing ceremony in an atmosphere halfway between Cannes glamour and provincial festival conviviality.
Valois de diamant
The festival's grand prize, rewarding the best francophone film in the selection. Regarded as a quality label that can influence a film's box-office career at the autumn release.
Valois for actor & actress
Performance awards given to the best actor and actress in the selection. Past winners include some of the most prominent names in French cinema.
Other Valois
The prize list also includes awards for direction, screenplay and a Valois de la francophonie honouring a film from francophone world cinemas outside France.
Programme and atmosphere
A typical FFA edition runs five to six days. Each day is structured around previews presented with film teams, free outdoor public screenings in the evening, and parallel activities such as industry meetings, workshops for young audiences and masterclasses led by recognised filmmakers or actors. The 'focus country' — a theme or national cinema highlighted each year — extends the programme well beyond French cinema alone to cover the entire francophone world, from Quebec to the Maghreb, from Belgium to sub-Saharan Africa.
The city of Angoulême lends itself remarkably well to this event: the streets of the upper town, the cobbled squares, the gardens overhanging the Charente provide natural settings for night-time screenings. The presence of French cinema stars — actors, directors, screenwriters — gives the city for a few days a media buzz rare for a city of this size. In fewer than twenty years the FFA has become one of the three or four reference film festivals in France, after Cannes and before the resumption of autumn releases.
Festival venues
Screenings take place in several complementary venues. The Cinéma CGR Dragon, the city's main multiplex, hosts the official previews and competition screenings. The Théâtre d'Angoulême, avenue Gambetta, accommodates the ceremonies and some masterclasses. Open-air spaces — the forecourts, the green garden and the town hall courtyard — host the free evening screenings. Exhibitions and cinema-related installations sometimes occupy the museums and galleries of the upper town, creating a cultural itinerary that spills beyond the strict film programme.
FFA and comics: two festivals, one city of images
The FFA fits into Angoulême's tradition as a 'city of images'. While the capital of comics identity rests on a January festival and permanent institutions like the Cité de la bande dessinée and the Magelis cluster, cinema is naturally the living counterpart of this vocation: the moving image has its place in the city. The coexistence of two festivals, eight months apart, builds a coherent cultural identity around visual storytelling in all its forms.