48 creations to discover until Monday and Costa-Gavras as guest of honor in Carcassonne

The 7th edition of the Carcassonne international political film festival takes place from January 16 to 20, 2025. 8 films are in competition in the fiction category. One of the highlights of this event will be the preview screening of Costa-Gavras’ new production “The Last Breath”. The filmmaker maintains a very strong link with the Aude festival.

Henzo Lefèvre can’t really believe it. Started in 2018, the adventure continues. A 7th edition, and yet the director of the festival who is also one of the co-founders remembers that for the first, the doubts far outweighed the certainties.

Without lying, we were afraid of not finding our audience. Not for a moment did I think that the festival would still be here years later.

Henzo Lefèvre, director of the Carcassonne international political film festival.

All information on the festival website.

From 2018, attendance is there, with between 4,000 and 4,500 spectators attending the screenings. The following year confirmed public interest.

The second birth certificate of the festival comes the day after the Covid fracture. After two years of interruption linked to the health crisis, has the spell broken? No, Carcassonne and his date have even found a second wind. The latest edition gives an idea of ​​the progress made, 19,000 festival-goers took their places in the dark rooms. The initial intuition of the Aude founders is confirmed: to fill a void. Cinema, so rich in works of political significance, has found its forum, its place of exchange.

This year, 8 films are in competition in the fiction category. Henzo Lefèvre highlights a very internationally oriented vintage. The jury will have to decide between the following creations:

• Aïcha by Mehdi M. Barsaoui (Tunisia)
• Harvest de Rachel Athina Tsangari (United Kingdom)
• The girls at the station de Juana Macias (Espagne)
• April de Dea Kulimbegashvili (Géorgie)
• The pampas by Antoine Chevrollier (France)
• Work-to-do by Park Hong-Jun (South Korea)
• In the land of our brothers of Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi (Iran)
• On Falling by Laura Carreira (Royaume-uni)

The 5 members of the “Fiction” jury for this 2025 edition of the festival have been revealed. They are Pierre Deladonchamps, Mounia Meddour, Alice Isaaz, Christophe Rossignon and Anne Consigny.

Note that 7 documentaries and 6 short films are competing in their respective categories. The festival director underlines the difficulty of selecting the works which will be submitted for the appreciation of the jury.

“225 films were viewed to establish the selection, the choice was sometimes difficult to make due to the number of quality productions. We are all absolutely certain of the interest of the films selected for this edition” explains Henzo Lefèvre.

In total, 46 films from 38 nationalities to discover. Without forgetting, testimonies, meetings and reports in our editions HERE 12/13 at 12:25 p.m. and HERE 19/20 at 7:15 p.m., until Monday.

This 7th edition will also be marked by the presence of Greek director Costa-Gavras. The author of Z, de l’Aveu and d’Amen will come to present to the public, before its release, his new film “The Last Breath”.

An adaptation of a book by Régis Debray and Claude Grange on the end of life. At the end of the screening, the filmmaker will answer questions from the public in the dome room. 700 people will be present to hear who will receive an honorary César during the 50th edition of the ceremony.

A return to the first breath of the festival since in 2017, the creators of the political film festival presented their project to the director. Costa-Gavras has since continued to encourage them to persevere and he closely follows the development of this new unmissable event in French cinema.