A scene from France's In the Shadow of Women

Manship Theatre to present European Film Festival

Foreign film fans will find a home away from home this weekend at the Manship Theatre’s European Film Festival, an annual screening of seven films produced in countries as familiar as France or as isolated as Iceland. The event also includes live presentations from LSU film professors, music, wine and Pinetta’s European Restaurant food tastings from the bar, which opens one hour prior to each feature.

The festival begins at 7 p.m. this Friday, April 1, with King Georges, an American documentary about an emblematic French subject—the Philadelphia restaurateur Georges Perrier—and the closure of his famous restaurant, Le Bec-Fin.

Saturday, April 2, will deliver three more films starting at 1 p.m. with Iceland’s Rams, winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. Beautifully shot, and with a budget of less than $2 million, the film tells the charming and often humorous story of two sheep farmers whose decades-long feud must come to an end when disease strikes their flocks.

At 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, catch Germany’s Victoria, a thriller shot in a single take about a runaway party girl named Victoria and her adventure with three strangers who turn out to be more dangerous than they seem.

France’s In the Shadow of Women is up next at 7 p.m. Saturday. The film follows Pierre and Manon, a pair of poor documentary makers barely scraping by. When Pierre falls in love with a young trainee, he struggles to keep Manon at the same time.

Sunday, April 3, the film fun begins at 1 p.m. with Spain’s Loreak, a movie filmed in the Basque dialect about a lonely woman whose life turns around when she starts to receive a bouquet of flowers every week at home, always without a sender’s note.

Next comes Sworn Virgin at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, the Switzerland-Italy-Germany joint production about an Albanian woman whose culture requires her to sacrifice her femininity for her freedom. Years later, she must face dishonor as she attempts to reclaim her identity.

King Georges will screen again at 6 p.m. to close out the festival.

For tickets, visit manshiptheatre.org.