On Screen This March: Film & TV in New York

Butterfly (Papillon) is a highlight of this year’s NYICFF shorts lineup, presented as a New York City premiere in the Short Films Three program. Directed by acclaimed French animator Florence Miailhe, this 15-minute animated short follows a man swimming in the sea as fragments of his past resurface, all of them bound to water—from the joy of childhood beaches to the darkest chapters of twentieth-century history. With its painted, hand-crafted imagery and layered sound design, Butterfly offers an emotionally powerful meditation on memory, resilience, and survival, and comes to New York already crowned with major festival awards and an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film.

François Ozon reunites with Summer of 85 star Benjamin Voisin for a sensitive, queer-inflected adaptation of Albert Camus’s existential classic, bringing Algeria to the thematic and visual foreground. Nominated for four César Awards, winner of Best Supporting Actor (Pierre Lottin).

Alpha is a 2025 body horror drama film written and directed by Villa Albertine resident Julia Ducournau. Starring Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani, Mélissa Boros, Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield and Louai El Amrousy. It follows a teen girl who, after returning from school with a tattoo, is feared to have contracted a new lethal bloodborne disease.

The film had its world premiere at the main competition of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on 19 May, where it was nominated for the Palme d’Or !

Sneak Previews + Q&As with Ducournau
Mon, Mar 16 and Tue, Mar 17 at 6:30 at IFC

A magical and beautifully animated journey through time, Arco is a dazzling adventure about a 10-year-old boy from a peaceful, distant future who accidentally travels to the year 2075 and discovers a world in peril. As Arco develops a charming and touching friendship with a young girl named Iris, they band together and along with her trusted robot caretaker Mikki, set out on a quest to get Arco home, while the two children may also be the only ones who can save our planet.  A wondrous odyssey filled with hope and optimism for our future, Arco is an enchanting fable from breakout filmmaker Ugo Bienvenu, produced by Remembers’ Ugo Bienvenu and Felix de Givry, and mountainA’s Natalie Portman and Sophie Mas. The film debuted at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and won The Cristal Award for Best Feature Film at the 2025 Annecy Awards. Don’t miss the Q&A with the movie director Ugo Bienvenu on February 5 at 7:30pm during the Animation First Festival!

Brazil, 1977. Marcelo, a technology expert in his early 40s, is on the run. He arrives in Recife during carnival week, hoping to reunite with his son but soon realizes that the city is far from being a non-violent refuge. The film premiered in the main competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it garnered widespread acclaim and emerged as the festival’s most awarded film, earning Wagner Moura the Best Actor award and Mendonça Filho the Best Director award.

Vahid, an unassuming mechanic, is suddenly reminded of his time in an Iranian prison when he has a chance encounter with Eghbal, a man he strongly suspects to be his sadistic jailhouse captor. Panicked, Vahid rounds up a few of his fellow ex-prisoners to try and confirm Eghbal’s identity.  Master filmmaker Jafar Panahi creates a deeply felt moral thriller, where high stakes tension combines with unexpected flurries of humor and thoughtful, sometimes devastating, questions regarding persecution and revenge. Winner of the 2025 Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

A five-year-old girl, Hind Rajab, is the sole survivor trapped in a car under heavy Israeli military fire in Gaza. Her emergency calls reach the volunteers of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, who desperately attempt to calm and rescue her—the latter obstructed by IDF checkpoints and the unlikelihood of safe passage. In The Voice of Hind Rahab, Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania blends the actual phone recordings—which went viral several weeks after this incident—with dramatizations of the emergency workers racing against time, and the situation’s emotional impact, to coordinate paramedics who could save her. By focusing on one life—and the lives of volunteers who risk their lives to save civilians—Ben Hania brings humanity and urgency to a war that has killed or caused the deaths of over 70,000, per a recent UN estimate.

A father (Sergi López) and his son arrive at a rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco. They are searching for Mar — daughter and sister — who vanished months ago at one of these endless, sleepless parties. Surrounded by electronic music and a raw, unfamiliar sense of freedom, they hand out her photo again and again. Hope is fading, but they push through and follow a group of ravers heading to one last party in the desert. As they venture deeper into the burning wilderness, the journey forces them to confront their own limits.

Sentimental Value follows sisters Nora and Agnes as they reunite with their estranged father Gustav, a once-renowned film director, after the death of their mother. Hoping to stage a comeback and repair old wounds at the same time, Gustav offers stage actress Nora the lead role in his new, deeply personal film, but when she refuses, he casts a young Hollywood star instead, forcing the two sisters to confront their complicated loyalties, buried resentments, and the emotional cost of turning family history into art.

The New York International Children’s Film Festival (NYICFF) returns to New York from February 28 to March 15, presenting one of the most dynamic and Oscar-qualifying lineups of the year for young audiences aged 3–18 and beyond. With approximately 100 short and feature films from around the world the festival will host special events and filmmaker Q&As celebrating diversity, imagination, and storytelling through cinema. The festival will feature world and North American premieres, as well as French international short films such as My Life in Versailles or Sketches on Ice.

More information about French movies here

From March 5–15, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema takes over Film at Lincoln Center with an ambitious lineup of contemporary French films, including New York and U.S. premieres, celebrated auteurs, and exciting new talents redefining French cinema today.

Now in its 13th edition, the SR Socially Relevant™ Film Festival New York returns March 10–15, 2026 with a powerful lineup dedicated to human-interest stories and pressing social issues. Founded in 2013 by actress and filmmaker Nora Armani, this nonprofit festival champions films that refuse gratuitous violence and instead use cinema as a tool for awareness, empathy, and positive social change. This year’s selection includes a strong French presence across shorts, narrative, and documentary features :

Mac & Cheese by Elsa Leviant
Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 7:00 PM – MRHS, Block of Shorts: Mental Health

Tapage by Joséphine Madinier
Friday, March 13, 2026 at 1:00 PM – Cinema Village, Block of Shorts: Disabilities

Everyone Calls Me Mike by Guillaume Bonnier
Friday, March 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM – Cinema Village, Narrative Feature

No Filter Café by Coralie Van Rietschoten and Galaad Hemsi
Saturday, March 14, 2026 at 1:30 PM – Cinema Village, Documentary Feature

Can We Talk? by Hassan Hamza
Sunday, March 15, 2026 at 2:00 PM – Cinema Village, Block of Shorts: Race, Religion & Exile

The Maison Française at Columbia University presents a screening of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (L’Armée des Ombres). This taut 1969 masterpiece follows Resistance leader Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura) and his comrades, including Simone Signoret as the master of disguise Mathilde, as they navigate betrayals, daring escapes, and moral dilemmas under Nazi occupation. Part of a series on France and resistance, the film offers a gripping portrait of clandestine heroism where survival demands unflinching resolve amid constant peril.

La Maison Française at NYU’s Cinémathèque series continues with two poignant French gems this March: Nino, Pauline Loquès’ luminous debut feature about a young Parisian man (Théodore Pellerin) who wanders the city reconnecting with life after a cancer diagnosis, screening mid-March; and Dossier 136, a stark drama exploring personal and political reckonings, both presented with English subtitles as part of the spring 2026 program. These screenings highlight emerging voices in contemporary French cinema, blending intimate human stories with poetic urban landscapes and unflinching emotional depth.

L’Alliance New York honors the centenary of Claude Lanzmann with a special presentation of his monumental 1985 documentary Shoah, introduced by acclaimed director Arnaud Desplechin. The nine-and-a-half-hour epic will screen in two parts, offering audiences a profound encounter with one of cinema’s greatest masterpieces. Desplechin will personally introduce the March 6 and 7 screenings, sharing how Shoah reshaped his understanding of 20th-century history and artistic storytelling.

Focus on French Cinema spotlights Cobalt Miners in the DRC (Mineurs de cobalt en RDC), Luc Hardy’s eye-opening documentary available online March 9–23 as part of the festival’s 2026 online program, exposing the brutal human cost behind the cobalt powering our smartphones and electric vehicles. The film centers on Otala “Eagle” Mujinga, a former miner now managing Shabara, the largest artisanal cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as he mediates explosive tensions between desperate workers demanding fair pay and foreign buyers accused of exploitation and underpayment.

Don’t miss the live Q&A on March 9 with director Luc Hardy and Focus on French Cinema Programming Director Joe Meyers, offering rare insights into the film’s creation and the urgent ethical questions it raises about global supply chains. This urgent investigation reveals the hazardous conditions, low wages, and ethical dilemmas fueling a multibillion-dollar industry essential to green energy transitions

Anthology Film Archives is currently screening films as part of its iconic Essential Cinema program, a repertory collection of 330 essential films selected in the 1970s to define the art of cinema. Among the standout French films in this series is Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu (1939), a masterpiece in the canon, recently shown on March 7 and 8, celebrating the French master’s mastery.

Additionally, from April 17 to 30, 2026, Anthology is hosting the retrospective La Fille des étoiles: Tina Aumont, a tribute to actress Tina Aumont (daughter of Jean-Pierre Aumont), the 1970s muse featured in cult films by Philippe Garrel (Les Hautes solitudes, Le Lit de la vierge), Bernardo Bertolucci (Partner), Tinto Brass (L’Urlo), and Federico Fellini (Casanova), highlighting her Franco-American heritage and role in subversive European cinema. This series, programmed by Nina Verneret, showcases rare and mythological works, free for AFA members.

Film Forum launches a comprehensive retrospective of Agnès Varda, the trailblazing French New Wave pioneer whose six-decade career redefined cinécriture through fiction, documentary, and visual artistr. Over 20 films and shorts anchor the series, including New Wave linchpin Cléo from 5 to 7 (March 13, with author Carrie Rickey intro and Q&A), poetic gems like La Pointe Courte and Les Créatures, beloved docs The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès (Film Forum premieres), and politically charged works such as Black Panthers and Vagabond (with A.S. Hamrah Q&A). Expect special 35mm screenings of Cléo and Ulysses and the Sirens, tributes to Varda’s humanism tackling sexism, labor, immigration, and race, plus highlights from her partnership with Jacques Demy—presented with Janus Films and Ciné-Tamaris support.

French cinema takes center stage at Metrograph with special appearances by three major filmmakers.

On March 6, acclaimed director Olivier Assayas presents his cult techno-thriller Demonlover, alongside Roberto Rossellini’s The Taking of Power by Louis XIV, a key influence on his upcoming film The Wizard of the Kremlin, starring Jude Law as Vladimir Putin and premiering at Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2026.

On March 8, renowned documentary filmmaker Claire Simon introduces two of her landmark works, The Competition and I Want to Talk About Duras, together with Frederick Wiseman’s Public Housing, an important inspiration for her practice.

Meanwhile, as Juliette Binoche visits New York to present her directorial debut documentary In-I In Motion, Metrograph celebrates highlights from her remarkable career with screenings of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Mauvais Sang, The English Patient, with additional titles, including Code Unknown (35mm), Camille Claudel, and High Life.

Let the Sunshine In will be introduced by actor Juliette Binoche on Sunday, March 22nd !

On Sunday, March 15, in celebration of “La Francophonie,” the French-English Dual-Language Program Liaison Committee of PS 58 – The Carroll School proudly presents its fourth annual event featuring a day of French films, book fair, live music and author readings, highlighting the diversity of French arts from around the French-speaking world.

This event is free and open to all. All films are presented by Villa Albertine and Institut Francais and will be in French with English subtitles.

Continuing the exhibition Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination, the Paris-based collective Air Afrique presents a special evening of films exploring connections between African and African American cinema in the decades following decolonization. Founded in 2021 and inspired by the historic pan-African airline, Air Afrique brings together film, design, publishing, and exhibitions dedicated to Afro-diasporic culture. The program includes Mahama “Johnson” Traoré’s Réou-Takh (1972), following a young Black American searching for an idealized Africa in newly independent Senegal, Moustapha Alassane’s Return of an Adventurer (1966), a playful Nigerien Western set in the desert, and the blaxploitation classic Shaft in Africa (1973).

The screenings will be followed by a conversation with members of Air Afrique moderated by curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo.

BAM explores the birth of film as a constellation of parallel inventions across Niger and France, reintroducing cinema through two of its pioneering “magicians.” This special program pairs Georges Méliès’s groundbreaking silent fantasies—where his background as an actor and illusionist led to editing techniques that still shape filmmaking today, with the wayward, whimsical work of Nigerien auteur Moustapha Alassane, whose early puppet shows and shadow plays evolved into animated fables and sharp political satires. Featuring titles such as Méliès’s Le voyage dans la lune and Alassane’s Samba le Grand and Kokoa, the 75-minute screening (silent films with French intertitles and English subtitles, plus films in French and Hausa with English subtitles) offers a rare chance to see how cinema was continually reinvented across continents.

Discover our roundup of this month’s must-see programs available on the international French-language network, TV5 Monde.

Villa Albertine and Unifrance are pleased to unveil the 2026 Young French Cinema selection, featuring six acclaimed French films still awaiting U.S. distribution. From intimate auteur stories to socially engaged dramas, these bold new works spotlight the most exciting voices in contemporary French cinema, with women directors behind five of the six films. Available à la carte, the program invites art-house theaters, festivals, universities, and cultural organizations nationwide to bring today’s best French films to their audiences.