The second film out of four of Augustana’s annual Francophone Film Festival was shown in the Olin Auditorium on Tuesday, March 3. “The Balconettes,” a dark comedy by Noémie Merlant, focuses on Marseillaise roommates Elise, Ruby and Nicole, who are dealing with a sequence of events after a late-night meeting goes wrong during a heat wave. 

The film festival focuses on allowing students at Augustana and Quad City community members to experience cinema from French-speaking parts of the world. Most of the attendees were community members who wanted to experience a French film, not Augustana students.

One group of attendees was from a French-speaking club in the Quad Cities. Randy Lewis attended the first installment on Feb. 24 and brought three of his fellow club members this time. 

Lewis said the film was similar to what he expected based on the director, and that he plans to attend the next installment of the festival. 

“Last week I was here, and [the other members] didn’t come, so I kind of talked it up, and I persuaded them to come … I kind of knew what to expect, because I know Noémie Merlant, who played [Elise]. She was the director … and I’ve seen her in some other French shows,” Lewis said.

One of the few student attendees was junior French major Anandi Hoogheem. She said that she has been unable to attend the film festival for the last two years, but enjoyed having time in her schedule to see “The Balconettes.” 

“It’s a good experience to see movies for free that you might not otherwise get to see and to practice listening to French,” Hoogheem said. 

The film screening did not include its usual post-discussion because no facilitator was present. Organizers hope to bring that element back to future events. 

According to professor Kiki Kosnick, director of the festival, an important part of the film festival is having a discussion with the people around you to see how others experienced and interpreted the film. 

One of the film festival’s goals is to expand perspectives. Whether it is through watching people on the screen experience a series of events in a location viewers will not visit or a language they won’t speak, viewers can experience human emotion through film. 

Kosnick said one of the reasons they chose “The Balconettes” was the themes the director explores in her films. 

“Showing the difficult parts of being alive and being human are important [and] cinema can help us understand things a little bit differently, get outside of our perspective, have an emotional experience. … It’s not just a one-note film,” Kosnick said. “I think it is really valuable to the experience of the film, to be able to have different kinds of emotions and maybe come to relate to something or think about something a little bit differently.”

The remaining two installations of the film festival are “When Fall is Coming” on March 10 and “Little Amelie” on March 17. The films will be shown in the Olin Auditorium at 7 p.m. 

Note: “The Balconettes” contains explicit sexual violence.