A Visit to the 2024 American French Film Festival

Written by Isabelle F. ’25

Students from Marlborough’s Honors French III, AP French Language and Culture, and Advanced Topics in French and Francophone Culture classes all had the opportunity to view a premiere of a new French film, The Count Of Monte Cristo, as part of the 2024 American French Film Festival. 

Alongside several French teachers, we arrived at the Director’s Guild of America Theater and were seated in a large screening room alongside several other groups, all made up of high school students. A representative of the Festival’s organizers came on stage to welcome us and talk a little about their work.

The American French Film Festival is an annual event organized by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, which is an organization founded by members of several American TV and film guilds and the French professional association, SACEM, in 1996. The Festival is meant to bring modern French cinema to the American stage and has screenings, such as the one we attended, specifically targeted toward high school students to cultivate a new generation of foreign film viewers.

After the short welcome, the lights dimmed in the theater and we began watching The Count of Monte Cristo, an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's classic French novel of the same name. Dumas’s novel follows the story of Edmond Dantes, a young, wrongfully imprisoned sailor who escapes his prison, finds lost riches, and utilizes them on his quest for vengeance upon those who tore him from his home and family.

The movie was a vivid, incredible representation of the novel, filled with action, twists and turns, and advanced cinematography. It was certainly a lengthy film, spanning almost three hours, but we were all glued to the edge of our seats for the duration of the film, while practicing our French auditory comprehension skills in an enjoyable context.

After viewing The Count of Monte Cristo, we had the privilege of participating in a live Q&A session with the film’s writer-directors, Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière; the composer, Jérôme Rebotier; and the actor who played Baron Danglars (a main villain), Patrick Mille. They introduced themselves and discussed their respective experiences creating the film, which was certainly a challenge, considering Delaporte and de la Patellière had to condense Dumas’ 1,400-page novel into the span of three hours. Then, the discussion moderator opened up the floor for questions from the audience. 

Many students lined up to ask questions of the creatives on stage, including several Marlborough students, such as Jade C. ’25, who asked a nuanced question about the directors’ intent regarding how the audience should perceive Edmond Dantes (who could be seen as an antihero) by the end of the film. Delaporte and de la Patellière noted how their portrayal of Dantes reflected Dumas’s representation of him in the novel—Edmond’s quest for vengeance forces the reader, and now the viewer, to question the line between justice and senseless revenge.

After the Q&A, we headed back to Marlborough, spending the bus ride back discussing the most arresting parts of the film. I found the film’s fight scenes and the audio design choices that composer Rebotier made during important moments (such as the culmination of a revenge arc against Prosecutor de Villefort) to be particularly compelling. 

This trip was an incredible opportunity to utilize our knowledge of the French language while viewing an enticing film and asking questions of some of the film’s major creative directors. I know I speak for all of us when I say that this field trip was a memorable and unique experience that we will discuss in our respective French classes for quite some time.