Mya Bollaers (as Lola) and Benoît Magimel (as Phillip, Lola’s father) seen in Lola vers la mer (Encounter). The movie will open the Francophone Film Week 2020 on September 23. Photo allocine.fr

HÀ NỘI  Cinema lovers will have chance to enjoy international award-winning films when the Francophone Film Week 2020 kicks off next week.

Organised by the Wallonia-Brussels Delegation in Việt Nam, the screenings, which are an activity to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the International Organization of La Francophonie, will take place over four days, from September 23 to 26, at the National Documentary and Scientific Film Studio.

Audiences will be offered a cultural journey through four excellent movies which were produced or co-produced by French-speaking Belgian cinematographers in 2018 and 2019.

The film event will open with Lola vers la mer (Encounter) by Laurent Micheli, who probes the pain of a widowed man (played by Benoit Magimel) facing his daughter, Lola (played by Mya Bollaers) through this drama.

Just when Lola, 18 years old and transgender, learns that she can finally have surgery her mother, who is her only financial support, dies. Abiding by her mother's last wishes, Lola and her father, who are permanently in conflict and have not seen each other for two years, undertake a journey all the way to the Belgian coast. They realise the outcome of the journey may not be the one they were both expecting.

At the Magritte Cinema Awards 2020 in Brussels in February, the movie won two awards, Best Supporting Actress and Best Production Design.

On September 24, the movie Troisièmes noces (Third Wedding) by David Lambert will be presented. The movie is about Martin, a 50-year-old widowed gay man living in Brussels, who gets into a marriage of convenience with 20-year-old Congolese immigrant Tamara. Different in every way, these two people do all they can to convince the authorities that their marriage is real – and end up loving each other, each in their own way.

At the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival in 2018, the movie was nominated for Best Film, Best Scenario, and Best Music.

The Francophone Film Week will continue with the screening of the multi-awarded-wining Pour vivre heureux (To Live Happily) on September 25.

Co-directed by Dimitri Linder and Salima Sarah Glamine, the romantic film is about a young couple from Brussels, Amel and Mashir who live a secret love story that, under the weight of family traditions, brutally threatens to collapse. The day Mashir's family decide to marry him to his cousin Noor, who is also Amel's friend, their whole world falls apart. How can they save their love without making everyone around them suffer?

The film has won several awards including Audience Award and the Critics' Prize at the 2018 Namur International Francophone Film Festival in Belgium, the Best Fiction at the 2019 Festival Brussels In Love, and the Director Prize at the 2019 Aubagne Festival in France.

The drama movie Nuestras Madres Nos mères (Our Mothers) by César Díaz will be screened on September 26.

A co-product between Guatemala and Belgium, the movie is set in Guatemala, where is riveted on the trial of the military officers who started the civil war. The victims’ testimonies keep pouring in. Ernesto, a young anthropologist at the Forensic Foundation, identifies people who have gone missing. One day, through an old lady’s story, Ernesto thinks he has found a lead that will allow him to find his father, a guerillero who disappeared during the war.

At the Cannes Film Festival 2019, the film was granted a Palme d’Or for Best Camera.

In addition, it also won the SACD Prize (La Société des Auteurs Compositeurs Dramatiques or the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers) at the Cannes International Critics' Week 2019.

All the screenings during the Francophone Film Week will start at 7.30pm. The National Documentary and Scientific Film Studio is at 465 Hoàng Hoa Thám Street. Free entrance. VNS