2022 Films On The Green DC

Films on the Green DC 2022 is a free Summer Film Festival produced by the Villa Albertine in partnership with TV5MONDE.

Free and open to the public | Bring your own chair or blanket and join us at sunset!

Films on the Green DC is made possible thanks to the generous support of our official sponsor TV5MONDE.

All the movies are in their original version and have subtitles in English.

May 18 | La Maison Française at the French Embassy | Registration is mandatory

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, directed by Luis Buñuel (1973)

The ambassador of the Latin American Republic of Miranda, M. Thevenot, his wife Simone, and her sister Florence arrive for a dinner party at the home of Alice Sénéchal and her husband Henri, only to learn that they were mistaken about the date. In director Luis Buñuel's surreal fantasy, the six bourgeois friends repeatedly gather for a dinner that never quite happens, due either to the intrusion of strangers or to unforeseen events.

The master of cinematic surrealism offers a scathing satire of Spanish social mores and provides some of the medium’s finest dream (and dream-within-a-dream) sequences. Despite its surreal side, the film is firmly rooted in the early 70s. With no plot or psychology and archetypal characters (an ambassador, two bourgeois couples, a bishop, a colonel, a minister, terrorists, gangsters) the film oscillates between past and present, between memory and fantasy, between dream and reality.

May 27 | La Maison Française at the French Embassy | Registration is mandatory

The French Minister, directed by Bertrand Tavernier (2013)

Alexandre Taillard de Vorms is tall and impressive, a man with style, attractive to women. He also happens to be the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the land of enlightenment: France. With his silver mane and tanned, athletic body, he stalks the world stage, from the floor of the United Nations in New York to the powder keg of Oubanga. There, he calls on the powerful and invokes the mighty to bring peace, to calm the trigger-happy, and to cement his aura of Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-waiting. Alexandre Taillard de Vorms is a force to be reckoned with, waging his own war backed up by the holy trinity of diplomatic concepts: legitimacy, lucidity, and efficacy. He takes on American neo-cons, corrupt Russians and money-grabbing Chinese. Perhaps the world doesn't deserve France's magnanimousness, but his art would be wasted if just restricted to his home turf. Enter the young Arthur Vlaminck, a graduate of the elite National School of Administration, who is hired as head of "language" at the foreign ministry. In other words, he is to write the minister's speeches. But just as he thinks he can influence the fate of the world, everything seems threatened by the inertia of the technocrats. 

June 6 | Anacostia Park Field 7

Simply Black, directed by John Wax and Jean-Pascal Zadi (2020)

Jean-Pascal Zadi, an actor who struggles to make a name for himself, decides to launch a campaign on the place of Black actors in the French media and politics. Through a documentary that he begins to shoot in his own living room, and of which he will be the conductor, he seeks to launch a movement that must conclude with a great Parisian protest march. To do this, he intends to convince more famous actors to rally to his cause. But the first steps are difficult, particularly since his partner, Camille, does not seem to take his step seriously.

June 9 | The Sylvan Theater 

Matthias & Maxime, directed by Xavier Dolan (2019)

In partnership with the Québec Government Office in Washington

Two childhood best friends are asked to share a kiss for the purposes of a student short film. Soon, a lingering doubt sets in, confronting both of them with their preferences, threatening the brotherhood of their social circle, and, eventually, changing their lives.

This movie is a recognized Capital Pride Partner Event

June 16 | National Mall /// THIS EVENT IS CANCELLED DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER

Nous, directed by Alice Diop (2020)

In this nuanced, sophisticated, and wonderfully engaging documentary, filmmaker Alice Diop creates a kaleidoscopic portrait of people from largely Black and immigrant communities in the Parisian suburbs, their lives and work connected by the RER B commuter train that cuts through the city from north to south. Her subjects include a migrant from Mali working as a mechanic; her own sister, a community care worker making house calls to the elderly; the writer Pierre Bergounioux, expounding upon centuries of French history and inequity; and an energetic variety of young people enjoying coveted leisure time in their own corners of the banlieues. Appearing on screen—and therefore making herself part of the “we” of the title—Diop says that in her filmmaking, she aims to “conserve the existence of ordinary lives.” Her film is not just a work of conservation, but also of intellectual rigor, and of love. A New Directors/New Films 2021 selection.

June 27 | National Building Museum /// THIS EVENT IS CANCELLED DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, directed by Jean Delannoy (1956)

Paris, 1482. Today is the festival of the fools, taking place like each year in the square outside Notre Dame Cathedral. Among jugglers and other entertainers, Esmeralda, a sensuous gypsy, performs a bewitching dance in front of delighted spectators. From up in a tower of the cathedral, Frollo, an alchemist, gazes at her lustfully. Later in the night, Frollo orders Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer and his faithful servant, to kidnap Esmeralda. But when he comes close to her, he is touched by the young woman's beauty..

June 30 | HILLWOOD ESTATE, MUSEUM & GARDENS

House of Cardin, directed by P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes (2019)

Millions know the iconic logo and ubiquitous signature, but few know the man behind the larger than life label. Ultimately, we seek to answer the question: Who is Pierre Cardin? What is the story behind this legendary icon? House of Cardin is a rare peek into the mind of a genius, an authorized feature documentary chronicling the life and design of Cardin. A true original, Mr. Cardin has granted the directors exclusive access to his archives and his empire and unprecedented interviews at the sunset of a glorious career.

July 7 | The Wharf

Band of Outsiders, directed by Jean-Luc Godard (1964)

Four years after Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard reimagined the gangster film even more radically with Band of Outsiders (Bande à part). In it, two restless young men (Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) enlist the object of both of their fancies (Anna Karina) to help them commit a robbery—in her own home. This audacious and wildly entertaining French New Wave gem is at once sentimental and insouciant, effervescently romantic and melancholy, and it features some of Godard’s most memorable set pieces, including the headlong race through the Louvre and the unshakably cool Madison dance sequence.

July 13 | National Arboretum - Movie in the Meadow

Calamity, directed by Rémi Chayé (2021)

1863, a convoy in the American West. Martha Jane needs to learn how to take care of horses to drive the family wagon—except she ends up wearing pants and cutting her hair. The scandal she provokes will force her to face all the dangers in a gigantic and wild world where everything is possible.