The third annual Tournées Festival of French and Francophone Films is scheduled from May 29 to 31 at UC Davis, sponsored by the Film Studies and Technocultural Studies programs.

The festival is open to the public, and admission is free — though organizers said  contributions will be accepted to the Friends of Annaïck Blanchet, a Davis-area French and English-as-a-second-language tutor and teacher who is recovering from ovarian cancer.

Five films (all in French, with English subtitles) are on the program, with each of them to be presented once. Showtimes are 7 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in the Technocultural Studies Building (formerly the Art Annex). A discussion is planned after each film.

Organizers said the festival is made possible by the support of two French organizations: Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture.

Liz Constable, associate professor of French and Italian, curated the festival, with assistance from Joy Li, film studies; Sylvie Bissonnette, performance studies; Anca Popescu, French; Daphne Potts, comparative literature; and Kristin Koster, French.

The films:

• Elle s’appelle Sabine (Her Name is Sabine), 7 p.m. May 29. Directed by Sandrine Bonnaire (2008, 85 minutes).

The director, the popular French actress (Intimate Strangers, Femme fatale, East/West), filmed this intelligent, moving and beautiful portrait of her autistic sister, Sabine, over a 25-year period. A terrible gap exists between Sabine as a teenager, an endearing and artistic young woman, and her life today as she nears 40. What happened? After the departure of her brother and sisters, Sabine felt isolated, and she became extremely panicky and violent. Her mother, who was taking care of her, was not able to cope with Sabine's outbursts and sent her to a psychiatric hospital. A tragic five-year stay there crushed her intellectual growth and many talents. European film critic Boyd van Hoeij wrote: “The rage of the director can be felt in each frame and clearly shapes the pamphletlike narrative, though the film is still a compelling examination of autism and the way the outside world tries -- and, more often, fails -- to deal with it.”

• Reves de poussière (Dreams of Dust), 2 p.m. May 30. Directed by Laurent Salgues (2006, 86 minutes).

Reves de poussière tells the story of Mocktar, a Nigerian peasant, as he tries to rebuild his life after an accident claims his entire family. He goes to Essakane, a dusty gold mine in northeast Burkina Faso, to look for work and to forget the past that haunts him. He is quickly introduced to the small community of miners and begins working in the dangerous tunnels. Little by little, Mocktar discovers that the gold rush ended 20 years before, and the people of this wasteland manage to exist simply by force of habit. Writing in Variety, Deborah Young said of Reves de poussière: “Depicting an African hell on Earth where antlike men burrow deep into the desert and risk their lives to mine gold, Dreams of Dust relies on hypnotic, widescreen photography to bind viewers to its grim drama. Salgues' screenplay is perfectly crafted in the Western tradition, while Crystel Fournier's striking cinematography connects the film to a broad African vision.”

• Lili et le baobab (Lili and the Baobab), 7 p.m. May 30. Directed by Chantal Richard (2006, 90 minutes).

This film tells the story of Lili, a 33-year-old French photographer who accepts an assignment to photograph the village of Agnam in the Senegalese desert. It is the first time she has set foot in Africa. Although she arouses the immediate affection and curiosity of the people, Lili does not really stop to take stock. The photos she takes protect her from facing the questions that she is asked about her life as a single woman. She hardly notices that Aminata, an unmarried and lonely woman of her age, lays the foundations of an improbable and powerful friendship. When Lili returns to Normandy, something has shifted or cracked, and she has a hard time resuming her past life. Writer Julie Deh hailed the film: “Faithful to reality, without pathos or political posturing, Lili and the baobab lets its images and its story do the talking. In the director's seat, Chantal Richard was largely inspired by autobiographical events. She knows her subject well, and it shows. At her side, Romane Bohringer plays the part without effort, perfect for the role, probably because she has so much in common with her character. She is open, natural, sensitive, committed, perhaps a tad clumsy. … The depictions are finely honed and authentic, the journey enriching.”

• Frantz Fanon: Sa vie, son combat, son travail (His Life, His Struggle, His Work), 2 p.m. May 31. Directed by Cheikh Djemaï (2004, 52 minutes).

Fanon was a psychiatrist from Martinique who became a spokesman for the Algerian revolution against French colonialism. During World War II, he volunteered as a soldier to help France, “the Mother Country,” against the Nazis. Embittered by his experience with racism in the French army, he gravitated to radical politics, Sartrean existentialism and the philosophy of black consciousness known as négritude. Frantz Fanon: His Life, His Struggle, His Work includes testimonies of friends, family and colleagues whom he met during the different steps of his life, and traces the short and intense life of one of the great thinkers of the 20th century.

• La faute à Fidel (Blame It On Fidel), 7 p.m. May 31. Directed by Julie Gavras (2006, 99 minutes).

The film relates the story of Anna, a precocious girl of 9 with a rather simple and comfortable life, regulated by habits and order. Her family is wealthy, she goes to a private religious school, and she often visits her grandparents who have a wine estate in Bordeaux. One day, her father's sister is forced to leave Spain —- her husband has just been killed by Franco's police force. In shock, Anna's parents change their political views radically and become left-wing revolutionaries — and Anna's stable life goes awry. Writing in Time Out New York, Tom Beer described Blame It On Fidel as "one of those rare films that maintains unwavering fidelity to a child's view of the world ... It's not (merely) a snapshot of the revolutionary politics of 1970-71; it's about the upheavals of childhood, which are timeless and universal."

Ninth annual UC Davis Film Festival.

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