The painful ripple effects of recent Parisian trauma are the subject of three major films in this year’s 34^th French Film Festival. November, the biggest film at the box office in France last year, follows the manhunt as investigators race against time to hunt down terrorists following the 2015 attacks by gunmen and suicide bombers at the Bataclan concert hall, a stadium, restaurants and bars.

The festival’s artistic director, Karine Mauris, who was working in the music industry in 2015 and had friends caught up in the attacks, said she knocked back another film about terrorism because she didn’t want to overload the audience.

“In November you are not with the victims, you are with the police, and they don’t know who did it, how will they stop them, [if] will they attack again,” Mauris says.

“The director [Cédric Jimenez] has a way of putting you at the heart of the action with the camera on the shoulder. It is so interesting; there is so much interaction.”

Paris Memories is also set in the aftermath of the 2015 attacks. One of French cinema’s new generation of stars, Virginie Efira, plays Mia, whose dinner in a restaurant is shattered by gunfire that kills some and leaves others struggling to make sense of having survived. Mia has almost no recollection of the night but slowly recovers snatches of memory, like someone extending a hand and telling her to lie still, that she will be okay.

“Virginie is in two movies, and both are just extraordinary,” Mauris says. “I really fought for this movie. It is a story about the attacks, and it is made by Alice Winocour, whose brother was at the Bataclan. He survived, but he was inside, so she has been touched by this story.”

In a similar category is Notre-Dame on Fire, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, whose distinguished work includes Seven Years in Tibet and The Name of the Rose. The film re-creates the efforts made by fire-fighting teams to save the treasured landmark cathedral. (A television series, Notre Dame, on Netflix, does something similar.)

“It works well with November because here you are with firemen who have to save a building, and the interesting question inside is how far should we go to save some monuments,” Mauris says. “It is very well done, and you see how critical it all was.”

Mauris, who chose 39 movies from the 85 she saw last year, is offering a deliberately diverse program with strands of comedy, romance, thrillers, social drama and children’s films. She says they are films that should be seen on the big screen and argues it would be criminal to watch them any other way.

“The message for this festival is, ‘Come back to the theatre, to be all together in the room, to feel what others feel, even if it’s with a totally unknown person’,” says Mauris, who is cultural attaché to the French Embassy in Australia. “It is so important to create this link.”

The opening night presentation, Masquerade, harks back to old-style French glamour and duplicity on the French Côte d’Azur.

“Sea, sex and sun,” Mauris says, quoting the song by Serge Gainsbourg.

Starring Pierre Niney as Adrien, an injured dancer who becomes a gigolo to support his lifestyle, it sees the return of French beauty Isabelle Adjani, now in her 60s, as Adrien’s mark.

“It’s a thriller and it’s all about women ­– the women are all on top,” Mauris says. “For this director, Nicolas Bedos, the men are just toys. It feels very ’70s and I like the atmosphere. There is a lot of cynicism.”

Mauris says there were so many quality films this year she added another after programming was closed: Lie With Me, based on the semi-autobiographical novel of Philippe Besson, looks back on closeted first love in rural France. The film brought her to tears and she wanted people to see it.

“It wasn’t just me, everyone saw the beauty of this love story. It’s incredible.”

Movies exploring tough social issues include Saint Omer, about a young journalist who covers the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda). It is a fictionalised retelling of the trial three years ago of Fabienne Kabou, who left her 15-month-old daughter on a beach to be swallowed by the waves. Asked why, she said: “Witchcraft. That’s my default explanation because I have no other.”

Popular actress Laure Calamy (Call My Agent) is in three films, most notably Annie’s Fire, a social drama about a happily married woman struggling to access an abortion in France in 1974, a year before the procedure became legal.

“She meets the people who are fighting for the liberation of the body and the right to abortion, and it is full of humanity and characters with different histories,” Mauris says. “Laure Calamy is amazing as a woman who is perfectly happy with kids and a husband, and then she discovers this movement and its solidarity.”

Legendary actor Gerard Depardieu, 74, continues to drown out his critics, appearing in two films including Umami, in which he plays a jaded chef trying to rediscover his passion for food (Depardieu has his own cooking show, Bon Appetit, on SBS). In Robuste, he confronts himself more personally in the role of a once-famous actor, George, with a reputation for being fat, irascible and boorish, who forms an odd friendship with a young assistant, Aissa (Deborah Lukumuena).

An update of the much-loved children’s film Belle and Sébastien, titled Belle and Sébastien: Next Generation and starring a giant Pyrenean Mountain dog, is in the family program alongside Ride Above, featuring Mélanie Laurent, about a young girl with a passion for horses who suffers a devastating injury.

“It’s beautiful to see on the big screen and it’s for nine to 18 year olds – it’s a family movie that works for everybody,” Mauris says.

She says this year’s festival selection features fewer female directors than last year, but they are all exceptional and represent a new generation of filmmakers, among them Mia Hansen-Løve, whose 2021 release Bergman Island starred Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth. Hansen-Løve’s new drama, One Fine Morning, includes autobiographical elements and follows a single mum trying to balance her own emotional needs with those of her parents and child.

“Without any surprise, Mia is on the top – and she has [actor] Léa Seydoux, who we want to see because she was in James Bond!” Mauris says.

The Alliance Française French Film Festival runs from March 23 to April 19 at Palace Nova Eastend and Prospect cinemas. The festival is also presenting selected screenings in cinemas across regional South Australia.