Bonnes nouvelles! Beginning Friday, Jan. 31 at 6 p.m., the Waccamaw Library will resume its popular screenings of foreign films with the return of the French Film Festival. As in past years, the six screenings will take place on the final weekend of January and the first weekend of February in the library’s auditorium.
On Fridays, screenings will begin at 6 p.m., while on Saturdays and Sundays, screenings will start at 2:30 p.m. The French Film Festival is sponsored by the Friends of the Waccamaw Library in partnership with the Institut Français. All screenings are free and open to the public, and will be shown with English subtitles.
This year’s lineup of movies showcases an excellent mix that offers something for everyone—comedy, adventure, thriller, romance, drama—and all these extraordinary foreign films are well worth seeing on the Library’s large screen. For the Friends groups “First Thursday” series presentation on Feb. 6 at 10:00 a.m., Philip Whalen, Ph. D.,
films on the schedule by delivering a lively presentation on French food and wine festivals, and how these have helped to create a modern cultural identity for France — especially its wine-rich Burgundy region. Whalen is Professor of History at Coastal Carolina University and has an expertise in modern and contemporary European history.
The full schedule for the 2025 French Film Festival is as follows:
• Jan. 31: “Number One Fan” (2014) -- A comedy-drama with a series of suspenseful twists as it tracks a popular singer who turns to a devoted fan for help in a desperate situation.
• Feb. 1: “The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan” (2023) -- This delightful, swashbuckling adventure follows the young D’Artagnan as he arrives in 1620s Paris and becomes friends with The Three Musketeers, who join forces to foil a dangerous plot against the King.
• Feb. 2: “Someone Somewhere” (2019) -- An original, heartwarming romantic comedy about two lonely neighbors who might be perfect for each other, if only they could find one another amid all the business of Paris and the false connections of social media.
• Feb. 6: First Thursday Speaker Series: Dr. Philip Whalen, “Making and Marketing Modern Burgundy: French Food and Wine Festivals”
• Feb. 7: “Farwell, Mr. Haffmann” (2021) -- A moving historical drama set in 1942 during the German occupation of France that focuses on a Paris jeweler’s assistant who agrees to help hide his Jewish employer from the Nazis.
• Feb. 8: “Between Two Worlds” (2021) -- A successful Paris journalist goes undercover to work in a series of low-paying, difficult jobs, including a position as a cleaner aboard a cross-channel ferry, in order to experience and expose the hardships endured by temporary workers, with whom she builds connections.
• Feb. 9: “Beautiful Minds” (2021) -- A joyful celebration of friendship between an unlikely pair, as Louis, a 58-year-old funeral director, and Igor, a 40-year-old grocery deliverer with cerebral palsy, grow close while embarking on a road trip through the south of France...in a hearse!