After this year’s Oscar-fuelled success of The Artist and more recently Untouchable, which is on course for place in history as France’s most successful film, the French Film Festival UK celebrates its 20th anniversary against a background of euphoria. The 20th edition, embracing French and francophone cinema in all its diversity, in key towns and cities around the country features a bumper programme bursting with variety and vitality. The main Festival runs from 8 November – 2 December 2012. The event opens with a bang: the UK première in four cities - London, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee, of Astérix and Obélix: God Save Britannia. The Festival puts a major retrospective focus on the work of Chantal Akerman, the Belgian filmmaker, who as been described as one of the boldest cinematic visionaries of the past quarter century and has a body of work that is singular and influential. The Panorama section features contemporary dramas with insights into the way we live now and vital global concerns by such directors as Philippe Lioret (All Our Desires), Cédric Kahn (A Better Life) and Moussa Touré (La Pirogue) to a hard-edged thriller from Pierre Jolivet (Armed Hands) and sophisticated comedy from Anne Fontaine (My Worst Nightmare) and Noémie Lvovsky (Camille Rewinds) and childhood nostalgia (War of the Buttons). The French Film Festival began in 1992 in a modest way in two Scottish cities, Edinburgh and Glasgow and gradually has grown to encompass many key locations throughout the UK from Dundee and Kirkcaldy to Inverness and Aberdeen as well as London, Bristol, Warwick and Manchester. The festival presents a wide spectrum of French-language cinema from major hits to cutting edge new directors and classics and retrospectives. Click here for the complete programme of the event!