Richard Mowe, director of the French Film Festival UK, a unique celebration of le cinéma français in many different locations including London, Edinburgh and Glasgow (from 9 November to 7 December)
1) You showcase many Francophone films, including many UK premieres – can you tell us a bit about your selection for 2011?
The 19th edition presents an unparalleled selection of Francophone cinema with French language productions chosen not just from France, but also Quebec, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium, including The Fairy, Giants, Route 132 and Special Flight. Daniel Auteuil will attend the UK Premiere of The Well Digger’s Daughter while Daniel Armogathe, the president of the Marseille Cinematheque will focus on adapting the work of Marcel Pagnol to the cinema. Jean-Pierre Améris features on the guest list to support the preview screenings of Romantics Anonymous. Perfectly timed in the current political climate is writer-director Xavier Durringer’s farce The Conquest chronicling Sarkozy’s rise to power. André Téchiné is back with Unforgivable, while Jacques Perrin plunges deep into Oceans. Angelina Maccarone’s documentary The Look places the spotlight on Charlotte Rampling. Audiences will also have a chance to sample All the Suns, with Stefano Accorsi and Anouk Aimée. The closing weekend will see 100th anniversary screenings of the second instalment in Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas silent serial, Juvé contre Fantômas accompanied by a live electronic score. Lebanese-born director Danielle Arbid returns to the festival with her smouldering and intense Beirut Hotel. Two animation hits A Cat in Paris and Titeuf (in stunning 3D) by Swiss-born animator Zep will figure prominently.
2) Who is your audience, 19 years after the festival’s opening? How has the audience changed?
Nineteen years after opening, our festival showcases French films in 11 cities in the United Kingdom. Last year, 30,000 spectators attended the screenings. Many of the films we’ve shown were later acquired by English distributors.
3) Can you give us some behind-the-scenes anecdotes or interesting stories about the guests of “French Film Festival UK”?
One of the best anecdotes is about Pierre Etaix, our guest in 2010. Following the discussion of his film, The Great Love, he managed to make a cigarette disappear behind his ear. We were on the stage next to him, and we still don’t know where the cigarette went.
Meanwhile Jean Becker claimed to have a direct line of ancestry to Scotland’s National Poet Robert Burns and proceeded to recite some of the Bard’s verses after the screening of Conversations with my Gardener. Bertrand Tavenier created a record by travelling to more than six of the cities involved in the Festival – in five days.
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Sébastien - unifrance.org 
