On February 3, the annual festival "French Movie Evenings" will start. The event will return to an offline format and will be held in cinemas in major Ukrainian cities throughout February.

Evenings of French cinema is a festival that annually opens new works of French cinema to the audience. In 2022, it will be held for the seventeenth time, and unlike the previous year, screenings will be held exclusively in cinemas.

The festival is organized by the French Institute in Ukraine and implemented by Arthouse Traffic. The exclusive partner of cinema and innovation is UKRSIBBANK BNP Paribas Group. They are supported by media partner France24.

The festival will open with the drama film "Prêt-à-Porter" directed by Sylvie Oaion with Natalie Bai and Lina Kudry in the lead roles. The film revolves around a young sewist who discovers the world of haute couture through an unexpected meeting with a Dior sewing workshop worker. The screening will be held as part of the Ukrainian Fashion Week programme, which starts on February 3.

The program included the dramatic thriller "Amants" directed by Nicole Garcia, a participant in the main competitive programme of the Venice Film Festival 2020. The tape tells about a chance meeting of two lovers who have not seen each other for three years. Their relationship ended after the disappearance of a guy who unwittingly became a criminal. The film starred French stars Stacey Martin ("Nymphomaniac"), Pierre Nine ("Black Box"), Benoît Magimel ("Pianist").

Also in the selection is the drama "Petite Maman" - the work of the French director, screenwriter and femme activist Celine Siamma. Like her previous film “Portrait of a Girl on Fire”, the new film successfully represents the female gaze in modern cinema. The world premiere of the film took place in 2021 as part of the main competition of the Berlinale (Germany), and at the International Film Festival in San Sebastian (Spain) the work received the Audience Award. The New York Times named the performances of the young female leads one of the best of the year, alongside Kristen Stewart and Benedict Cumberbatch.

The best European comedy of 2020, Emmanuel Courcol's "Un triomphe" tells the story of a newly minted director living the dream of a triumphant premiere in Paris. Meanwhile, his troupe consists of the prison theater circle members, who are just waiting for permission to leave the prison.

"Envole-moi" is a dramatic comedy by Christophe Barratier about the big-time partygoer Thomas and 12-year-old Marcus with a congenital disorder. When fate brings these two together, their lives change profoundly and forever.

The 17th French Film Evenings festival starts on February 3 at the Zhovten cinema in Kyiv (grand opening), the Multiplex cinema in Kharkiv at the Nikolsky shopping center and the Planet Cinema in Lviv at the Forum Lviv shopping mall. The event will also take place in Odessa, Dnipro, Zaporozhye and Rivne during February.