Now in its 34th year, this annual demonstration of France’s cinematic soft power is all about “resilience and limitless hope”, according to Festival Director Karine Mauris. She might have added, “. . . and zombies”. 

Two Tickets to Greece (Les Cyclades)

Two Tickets to Greece (Les Cyclades). Photo supplied.

The 2023 Alliance Française French Film Festival, the biggest showcase of French cinema outside France itself, will be a showcase of living legends – Bérénice Bejo, Juliette Binoche, Marion Cotillard, Jean Dujardin, Romain Duris and Léa Seydoux among them – but odds on it will be the living dead of director Michel Hazanavicius’s blood-soaked horror comedy Final Cut (Coupez! ) that have everyone talking. Or walking.

Using the low-budget Japanese 2017 zombie flick One Cut of the Dead as his template, Hazanavicius (director of the Oscar-winning The Artist) zooms in on a hapless movie-making crew attempting a remake. With next to no money and an uninspired team, the project looks shaky from the start, that is, until the set is overrun by real-life (so to speak) zombies. Suddenly, they have a chance to make the most gruesomely realistic zombie film ever made – if they can all...