The American French Film Festival Reveals Powerful Documentary Film Line Up for October Event

La Scala - Anna NETREBKO Soprano as Donna Leonora 

As part of the pre-announcements of the program for the 29th edition of The American French Film Festival (TAFFF), the French American Cultural Fund  has just released this year's documentary line up. Included this year are documentary feature films that delve into the histories of a famous French icon, a legendary opera house, and a ground-breaking Holocaust film, as well as topics ripped from the headlines, including an inside look at the trial of Gisèle Pelicot and a terrifying and intimate portrait of life in Gaza. The festival takes place at the DGA Theater Complex in Hollywood October 28-November 3.

The six films in competition for the 2025 TAFFF Best Documentary Award are:

ALL I HAD WAS NOTHINGNESS / Je n'avais que le néant: SHOAH par Claude Lanzmann.  West Coast Premiere. (Written and directed by Guillaume Ribot). Forty years after the release of Claude Lanzmann's nine-and-a-half-hour masterpiece Shoah, Guillaume Ribot uses outtakes from that groundbreaking film, and a voiceover in the director's own words, to recount his relentless pursuit of truth in a quest to capture the concrete reality of the Holocaust. The 1985 landmark film is now part of UNESCO's Memory of the World register.

BARDOT. North American Premiere. (Directed by Golden Globe winner Alain Berliner. Written by Elora Thevenet, Nicolas Bary, Alain Berliner, Jessica Menendez.) In this Biopic using exclusive and rare archival footage, French star Brigitte Bardot opens the gates of her private estate in Saint-Tropez and candidly reflects upon her life. Now 90, she and those close to her recount her meteoric rise to fame, her notorious love affairs, the pioneering role she played in redefining the female image, and her lifelong battle for animal rights. 

DRUGGED AND ABUSED: NO MORE SHAME / Soumission chimique: Pour que la honte change de camp. North American Premiere.  (Directed by Linda Bendali. Written by Linda Bendali and Andrea Rawlins-Gaston.) The film follows Caroline Darian as she prepares for the trial of her father, Dominique Pelicot, who had solicited strangers to sexually assault his drugged and unconscious wife, Gisèle Pelicot for years. Struggling with that truth, Caroline has worked tirelessly to raise public awareness of the widespread scourge of drug-facilitated rape in France. 

LA SCALA: THE FORCE OF DESTINY / La Force du Destin: une saison à La Scala. North American Premiere. (Written and directed by Anissa Bonnefont.) A performance of Verdi's La Forza del Destino marks the opening of the Milan opera season at La Scala. A major cultural event since 1951, "la prima" draws opera lovers from all over the world. La Scala: The Force of Destiny takes us behind the scenes, from the company's first rehearsals to opening night.

PUT YOUR SOUL ON YOUR HAND AND WALK.  West Coast Premiere  (Co-written and co-directed by Fatma Hassona  and Sepideh Farsi.)  Denied entrance into Rafah to film the war in Gaza, director Sepideh Farsi is introduced to Fatma Hassona, a 24-year-old aspiring photojournalist living in Gaza. Thus begins a year-long series of video calls between an Iranian filmmaker in Paris, and a radiant, talented, astonishingly optimistic young woman simply trying to live her life as the bombs fall all around her.

TELL HER THAT I LOVE HER / Dites lui que je l'aime. US Premiere (Co-written by Romane Bohringer and Gábor Rassov. Directed by Romane Bohringer.)  Reading Clémentine Autain's memoir about being abandoned by a mother who died very young, director Romane Bohringer sees a carbon copy of her own childhood experience. So she plumbs their shared generational trauma, creating parallels and breaking stylistic ground in autobiographical documentary filmmaking along the way.

The Documentary Competition is presented in association with Cercamon, Federation Studio, Ginger & Fed, Kino Lorber, Janus Films, Kino Lorber, Kinology, mk2 Films, Studio TF1 and TimpelPictures.

These documentaries will compete for the 2025 TAFFF Awards, which will be awarded during a ceremony held in Paris after the Festival. The full Festival line up, including all Feature films, will be announced on September 30. All Films will be presented in English or with English subtitles.