Discover the best of French cinema at the Francophonie Film Festival this weekend

This day is an opportunity to celebrate the beauty, poetry and diversity of French-speaking culture around the world, as well as the bonds of cooperation that unite the countries that share these same words.

For the second year running, the Francophonie Film Festival will be held from 21st to 23rd March 2025 in Colombo. This annual event, coordinated by the French Embassy in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, showcases the beauty of the French language on the island and brings together, through cinema, countries linked by this same language.

The French language is spoken, written, read, put into song or poetry, translated, sung and even danced, shouted and whispered, all around the world. On all five continents and the islands of the three oceans, more than 321 million men and women speak French and are united by this same language, which they perfect, appropriate and enrich every day. In Sri Lanka, many people share an attachment to the French language and learn and speak it all year round whether at school, in the Alliances Françaises or on the Internet.

Each year, the International Francophonie Day is celebrated around the 20th of March by the International Organisation of the Francophonie, founded in 1970 and bringing together 93 countries. This day is an opportunity to celebrate the beauty, poetry and diversity of French-speaking culture around the world, as well as the bonds of cooperation that unite the countries that share these same words.

In Sri Lanka, we take this opportunity to highlight the richness of the 7th art in countries members of the Francophonie. In partnership with the diplomatic and consular representations of Canada, Romania, Switzerland, Tunisia and Vietnam, we are organising a three-day film festival in Colombo, with free screenings open to all, no reservations required. From March 21st to 23rd, the Alliance Française in Colombo will be resounding with dialogues and tirades imagined and filmed in these 6 member countries of the Francophonie. This selection of films will enable young and old, francophones and non-francophones alike, drama and comedy fans to discover, on the big screen, 5 feature films and 7 short films with English subtitles. 

The festival commenced on Friday, March 21 at 6:00 pm with the poetic tale Sous le ciel d’Alice, a fictional story about a young Swiss woman moving to Lebanon, the beacon of French-speaking culture in the Middle EastThis day is an opportunity to celebrate the beauty, poetry and diversity of French-speaking culture around the world, as well as the bonds of cooperation that unite the countries that share these same words.

On Saturday, March 22, a series of short films will be shown from 2:30 pm onwards, so that a very young audience too can discover the poetry and creativity of French-language animation. At 4:00 pm, the Tunisian romance Hedi, un vent de liberté will be screened, before the day ends with the Canadian film Kanaval, which narrates the migration of a young child between two French-speaking lands: Haiti and Quebec at 6:00 pm.

On Sunday, March 23, the Vietnamese Embassy will host a food tasting of Vietnamese food at 2:00 pm before screening the coming-of-age film Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass. At 4:30 pm, the Swiss embassy will screen a short film about the life of a Sri Lankan refugee in Switzerland, Doosra. The festival closes with a screening of the comedy-drama Good Guys Go to Heaven by the Romanian Embassy at 5:00 pm.