Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998)
Apr 3, 2009Animation/African Folk Tales
The debut film from French animator Michel Ocelot, a beautifully simple series of African folk tales about a young boy whose plain-speaking truths outwit a witch
RTBF
Tintin and I (2003)
Jul 29, 2004Documentary About Tintin's Creator
Documentary about Tintin creator Hergé based on audio recordings he made in the 1970s
The Ax (2005)
Aug 5, 2005Unemployed Man Eliminates Rival Job Applicants
Costa-Gavras, a director known for highly political films, makes a dark comedy about an unemployed man who sets out to eliminate his rival job applicants
Princess of the Sun (2007)
Mar 8, 2008Ancient Egypt Adventure/Animation
Very nicely made French animated film based around the daughter of the pharaoh Akhenaton
Vinyan (2008)
Apr 16, 2011Haunted Journey Into the Southeast Asian Jungle
The second film from Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz is an intensely haunted albeit enigmatic journey into Southeast Asian jungles in search of a missing child
Don’t Look Back (2009)
Dec 9, 2013Identity Exchange
French actress-director Marina de Van makes a film about a woman who finds her identity being occluded by someone else's life. de Van creates a superbly paranoid sense of dis-ease that compares favourably to Polanski's The Tenant
A Town Called Panic (2009)
Apr 16, 2010Stop-Motion Animated Plastic Toys/Gonzo Comedy
Film made entirely with stop-motion animated plastic toys and with a sublimely nonsensical absurdiism that has more hilarity and creativity than most mainstream animated fare you will see all year
Ernest and Celestine (2012)
Oct 17, 2012Animation/Talking Animals
Entirely charming French animated film from the directors of A Town Called Panic. This is a children's film that comes with a beautiful simplicity, a duo of winning characters and some side-splitting visual gags
The Suicide Shop (2012)
Mar 10, 2013Animation/Black Comedy
French animated film that is about as far from children's entertainment as it is possible to get – a mordantly dark comedy that operates in similar territory to The Addams Family in its tale of a family that operates a shop selling items of despatch to the suicidally minded
Mood Indigo (2013)
Nov 15, 2014Wackily Surreal Romance
After the disastrous misstep of The Green Hornet, Michel Gondry returns to the surreal whimsy of The Science of Sleep. A film where Gondry delights in scene after scene of visual nonsense and serving up all the appealingly capricious silliness he can muster – creativity for creativity's sake alone
April and the Extraordinary World (2015)
Nov 3, 2015Animation/Steampunk Alternate History Adventure
Animated film that takes place in a Steampunk alternate history. This brims over with an extraordinary degree of visual invention from the amazingly detailed vistas of the world to a script tossing in quirky twists and wacky inventions
The Brand New Testament (2015)
Aug 21, 2016God Living in the Modern World/Black Comedy
A wickedly irreverent and even occasionally blasphemous comedy in which God is a scruffy, bad-tempered man living in Brussels who spends all his time devising ways to make humans miserable
How I Became a Super-Hero (2020)
Jul 20, 2023Superpowers Film
The title suggests either a comedic take on the superhero film or a teen film about a kid discovering superpowers. The least thing you expect this to be is a French police thriller about a unit investigating super-powered crimes
Annette (2021)
Sep 11, 2021Surrealist Musical
As a follow-up to Holy Motors, Leos Carax returns with of all things a musical. As might be expected of Carax, this is a wildly surrealistic film, not the least of which is one of the characters is a singing puppet
The Pod Generation (2023)
Dec 15, 2025Future Where Babies Can Be Born Externally
SF film that plays out like it should be an episode of Black Mirror where Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor play a couple who sign up for a process where a baby can be gestated and born externally inside an egg
Flow (2024)
Dec 28, 2024Animation/Animals on a Journey
A delightful animated film from Latvia made entirely without dialogue, following a group of animals fleeing as their territory is flooded. The winner for my top film of 2024.
Reflection in a Dead Diamond (2025)
Apr 11, 2026Homage to the 1960s Spy Movie
An extraordinarily stylised homage to the 1960s spy movie, which strips everything down to a series of provocative, stylised high-end fashion poses. The visuals in the film are quite extraordinary