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Francofonia

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

France, Germany, Netherlands · 2015
1h 27m
Director Aleksandr Sokurov
Starring Louis-Do de Lencquesaing, Vincent Nemeth, Benjamin Utzerath, Jean-Claude Caër
Genre Drama, History

Master filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) transforms a portrait of the world-renowned museum into a magisterial, centuries-spanning reflection on the relation between art, culture and power.

Stream Francofonia

What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

80

Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl

Skipping across ages and genres, this cine-essay beguilement from Russian Ark director Alexander Sokurov considers the Louvre — and the miracle of the transmission of art and culture across its history.

70

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

When I first saw the movie, at a festival, it wavered on the brink of the precious. That changed on a second viewing. Most of Francofonia now seems tender, stirring, and imperilled.

70

The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young

The subject of Francofonia is art as the spoils of war, and the example he gives is the period when the Louvre – called at one point “the capital of the world” – came under Nazi control. Making the barest hint about the destruction of historic artworks in Syria at the hands of ISIS, Sokurov gently reminds the viewer why all this is terribly relevant today.

70

Variety by Jay Weissberg

Does it all come together? Well, yes, if viewers think of the film as a freewheeling poetic essay, highly personal yet captivating.

80

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

The mood’s often as fun as it is funereal, and though the film occasionally feels clever in a way that isn’t necessarily a compliment, Sokurov’s ideas have a philosophical depth and richness that are found almost nowhere else in cinema.

75

Slant Magazine by Sean Nam

For all its congratulatory spirit, the film has the persistent feeling of an elegy bidding adieu to a bygone time.

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