Post-election and Macron’s inauguration, the CinéSalon series Liberté, Égalité, Fantasy: French Politics on Film at the French Institute–Alliance Française in New York wraps up with two final selections: a classic drama from the Seventies, and a new satire:

SECTION SPÉCIALE (1975), directed by Costa–Gavras. Tuesday, May 23, at 4 pm and 7:30 pm.

“August 1941. Following the murder of a German soldier by the Communist resistance, the collaborationist Vichy government institutes special courts to placate the Nazis with retributive executions….Costa-Gavras reveals how quickly the rule of law gives way to the rule of might, exposing the mechanisms of collaboration and repression with piercing concision.”*

GAZ DE FRANCE, (2015), directed by Benoît Forgeard. Tuesday, May 30, at 4 pm and 7:30 pm.

A comic, dystopian fantasy set in the 2020s. “With President Bird’s popularity at an all-time low, his chief strategist Michel Battement gathers a panel of advisors to plan a last-chance televised address. Cloistered in a basement bunker while activists storm the presidential palace, Battement and his gang of eccentrics plot to save their inept parvenu of a president—or sink him once and for all.”*

 

FRENCH INSTITUTE—ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE, 22 East 60th Street, New York City.

fiaf.org/events/spring2017/2017-04-cinesalon.shtml

*French Institute–Alliance Française

Section Spéciale (1975), directed by Costa–Gavras
Image credit: Pathé