The Hope College French Film Festival, sponsored by the college’s Department of Modern and Classical Languages, will show three films on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 5 and 6, at the Knickerbocker Theatre in downtown Holland.
“Two Days, One Night (Deux Jours, Une Nuit)” will run on Friday, Feb. 5, at 7:30 p.m. Sandra has just returned to work after recovering from a serious bout with depression. Realizing that the company can operate with one fewer employee, management tells Sandra she is to be let go. After learning that her co-workers will vote to decide her fate on Monday morning, Sandra races against time over the course of the weekend, often with the help of her husband, to convince each of her fellow employees to sacrifice their much-needed bonuses so she can keep her job. With each encounter, Sandra is brought into a different world with unexpected results in this powerful statement on community solidarity.
“Marie’s Story” is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 6, at 3 p.m. At the turn of the 19th century, a humble artisan and his wife have a daughter, Marie, who is born deaf and blind and unable to communicate with the world around her. Desperate to find a connection to their daughter and avoid sending her to an asylum, the Heurtins send 14-year-old Marie to the Larnay Institute in central France, where an order of Catholic nuns manages a school for deaf girls. There, the idealistic Sister Marguerite sees in Marie a unique potential, and despite her Mother Superior’s skepticism, vows to bring the wild young thing out of the darkness into which she was born. Based on true events, “Marie’s Story” recounts the courageous journey of a young nun and the lives she would change forever, confronting failures and discouragement with joyous faith and love.
“Timbuktu,” a 2015 Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, will show on Saturday, Feb. 6, at 7:30 p.m. Not far from Timbuktu, now ruled by the religious fundamentalists, Kidane lives peacefully in the dunes with his wife, Satima, his daughter, Toya, and Issan, their 12-year-old shepherd. In town, the people suffer, powerless, from the regime of terror imposed by the Jihadists determined to control their faith. Music, laughter, cigarettes, even soccer have been banned. The women have become shadows but resist with dignity. Every day, the new improvised courts issue tragic and absurd sentences. Kidane and his family are being spared the chaos that prevails in Timbuktu, but their destiny changes when Kidane accidentally kills Amadou, the fisherman who slaughtered “GPS,” his beloved cow. He now has to face the new laws of the foreign occupants. Timbuktu is Mauritania’s first entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
Admission to each film will be $4 for the general public. Tickets will be sold at the door but are also available in advance at the Events and Conferences Office located downtown in the Anderson-Werkman Financial Center (100 E. Eighth St.). The office is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and can be reached at (616) 395-7890.
The Knickerbocker Theatre is located at 86 E. Eighth St.