The 2026 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema has announced the winning films, with Leyla Bouzid’s In a Whisper receiving the Best Emerging Filmmaker Award and Colors of Times by Cédric Klapisch winning the Audience Award.
The Best Emerging Filmmaker Award winner, Leyla Bouzid’s In a Whisper, stars Eya Bouteraa as Lilia, a woman who returns to her native Tunisia for her uncle’s funeral to discover surprising details about his personal life that resonate with the secrets she keeps from her family. The film had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival.
The Best Emerging Filmmaker Student Jury praised the film’s cinematography, noting how it elevates every aspect of the work and contributes to a seamless blend of emotion, storytelling and visual artistry.
The Best Emerging Filmmaker Award is designed to bring attention to the unique cinematic point of view of emerging filmmakers and their interpretation of France’s new and diverse identities, and to encourage young people to attend the festival.
Audience Award winner Colors of Time by Cédric Klapisch is set between Normandy and Paris and centers on questions of family history and generational connection, reflecting Klapisch’s continued interest in ensemble storytelling. The film follows four distant cousins who reunite at a family home in Normandy and retrace the steps of their 19th-century ancestor to Paris. The film premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival
Presented by Unifrance and Film at Lincoln Center, the 31st edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, which ran March 5–15, 2026, showcased 22 feature films, 10 are directed by women, seven were directed by filmmakers making their festival debut, and 15 directors had films in past installments of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.
The opening night of Rendez-Vous featured the New York premiere of The Stranger, François Ozon’s adaptation of Albert Camus’s landmark novel, and Alpha, Julia Ducournau’s bold return following her Palme d’Or award-winning Titane, closed the festival.
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