This French director swaps genres, from postwar drama to mushroom mystery

François Ozon is a French director whose recent films move between periods and tones. His 2024 drama When Fall Is Coming began as a family story about his great aunt and a mushroom meal, and it arrived straight after The Crime Is Mine, a 1930s murder farce. Relay has 3 of his films, all from the last decade, from the postwar drama Frantz to the mushroom mystery.

Screen Daily called him "tirelessly inventive" and said his surprises tend to come when he plays it muted. In 2019 his abuse drama By the Grace of God won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize, a top prize at the Berlin Film Festival.

What is Ozon's newest film about?

When Fall Is Coming follows Michelle, a retired grandmother played by Hélène Vincent, who lives in a village in Burgundy near her friend Marie-Claude, played by Josiane Balasko. A visit from Michelle's daughter Valérie and her grandson Lucas goes wrong, and the film stays uncertain about why. Screen Daily found subtle hints of thriller inside a domestic melodrama.

Ozon has said the idea came from his great aunt. At a family meal she served mushrooms she had picked in the forest but did not eat them, and everyone who did became sick. He became fascinated, he said, by the possibility that she had darker intentions.

He describes it as an intimate drama about older women in nature, a reaction to the comedy before it. He had already directed Vincent and Balasko in By the Grace of God and called Vincent an obvious choice who carries the film on her shoulders. It opened in French cinemas on 2 October 2024. At the San Sebastián festival in Spain, Ozon shared the Best Screenplay prize and Pierre Lottin, who plays Marie-Claude's son, won the Silver Shell for Best Supporting Performance.

Drama

Why did a 1934 play become a French hit?

The Crime Is Mine is a loose adaptation of a 1934 play by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil. Two American films had already used it, True Confession in 1937 and Cross My Heart in 1946. Ozon sets it in 1930s Paris. Madeleine, a young actress played by Nadia Tereszkiewicz, is accused of murdering a famous producer. Her best friend Pauline, an unemployed lawyer played by Rebecca Marder, defends her. After an acquittal Madeleine finds fame, until the truth comes out. The French film star Isabelle Huppert is in the cast.

Ozon has described it as a story about the triumph of sisterhood. It opened in France on 8 March 2023 and drew about 1.1 million admissions there. Variety's review headline called it a feathery French farce.

Comedy

Why is Frantz mostly black and white?

Frantz is set in a German town after the First World War. Anna, who is grieving, meets Adrien, a Frenchman who lays flowers at the grave of her fiancé Frantz. Paula Beer and Pierre Niney play them, and the characters speak French and German.

It is a loose adaptation of Ernst Lubitsch's 1932 film Broken Lullaby, which was based on a 1930 French play by Maurice Rostand. Ozon has said he was adapting the play when he learned Lubitsch had already filmed it.

His answer was to tell it from the German side. He has said he wanted the point of view of the losers of the war, and that Germans are usually cast as the baddies in French films.

He has said black and white matches how we picture the First World War today and suits a time of mourning, and that colour returns when the characters seem to come back to life. The film competed at the Venice festival in 2016, where Beer won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for young actors. It received 11 César nominations in France and won one, for cinematography.

Drama

What to watch first

Start with When Fall Is Coming for the newest Ozon and its mushroom mystery. Choose The Crime Is Mine for a lighter evening, and Frantz for the film that looks most like the past.