If French cinemas have experienced difficult times in 2022, the 7th hexagonal art can boast of having shone all over the world. Witness Barack Obama’s list of favorite movies of the year, which the former US president unveiled on Friday. Of the 17 feature films mentioned, two (and a half) are French productions.
to get started little mamathe fifth film by French director Céline Sciamma (girl band, Portrait of the girl on fire), released in France in 2021. In competition at the Berlinale that year, it was one of the nominees in the category of best foreign language film at the Bafta (British Oscars) 2022.
Barack Obama, who served in the Oval Office for two terms between 2009 and 2017, also retained The event (renowned happening in the English-speaking world), by the French Audrey Diwan. She expressed her joy on Twitter.
This adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, in which she narrated the difficulties of abortion in France in the 1960s, had received the Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice Film Festival. It was also nominated for the Bafta 2022, in the same category as little mama.
To these two French films is added the feature film A hero, by Iranian Asghar Farhadi. If this feature film released last December was shot in Iran, with Iranian actors, it is a Franco-Iranian production.
eclectic tastes
These feature films rub shoulders with American hits like The Fabelmansthe late Steven Spielberg, or Everything everywhere at onceone of the most acclaimed feature films of the year across the Atlantic, as well as Asian and European films.
As every year, Barack Obama also released the list of his favorite books (his wife Michelle Obama’s This light in us appears at the top—”I’m a little partial to that one,” she admits in parentheses—as well as her favorite songs of the past twelve months.
They reflect his eclectic tastes: there is reggaeton (tamagotchi by Omar Apollo saoko by Rosalia, Titi I wonder Bad Bunny) rap (the heart part 5 by Kendrick Lamar) or pop, sometimes alternative (break my soul by Beyonce, american teenager by Ethel Cain, shirt of SZA).
Source: BFM TV
