Robert De Niro and Elizabeth McGovern in Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984)

© DR / Coll. Christophe L

In October...

The Greater Lyon Film Festival will be from 13 to 18 October.  We picked October because we wanted to prolong the summer and bring together people from all walks of life in the last days of sunshine. The city is beautiful in October, the river waters are still gentle and their banks accessible.  Lyon will also be hosting its international Contemporary Art Biennial in the autumn.

The Festival joins other autumn film festivals, coming after San Sebastian and New York and just before Rome, as well as those in France, including Italian cinema in Annecy and the Asia-Expo festival in Lyon itself, and many others.  It’s different from other “heritage film” festivals, complementing Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato and the annual July festival in La Rochelle, and is close to the silent film festival in Pordenone (Italy).

It also comes just before the Toussaint school holidays, a peak time for Greater Lyon’s cinemas, which could not’ve handled the Festival then because of the many new films that’re traditionally released at that time.