The programme for the 4th Paris Cinéma Festival (June 27-July 11) is a very enticing one, featuring screenings of over 400 films in 15 theatres in the French capital for only €4 per screening.

Presided over this year by Charlotte Rampling, the event will feature a competition of 15 films that include Into Great Silence [trailer, film focus] by Germany’s Philip Gröning (see Focus); The Court [trailer] by Abderrahmane Sissako; Beyond Hatred by French director Olivier Meyrou;Birds of Heaven (Oiseaux du ciel) by fellow French director Eliane de Latour; and The Legend of Time by Spain’s Isaki Lacuesta (see news and interview).
German and Austrian films include Montag by Ulrich Köhler and Longing [trailer] by Valeska Grisebach (both from Germany); Our Daily Bread (Unser Tägliches Brot) by Austria’s Nikolaus Geyrhalter; and the French/German co-production To Get to Heaven First You Have to Die [trailer] by Tajik director Djamshed Usmonov, presented in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at last month’s Cannes Film Festival (see article).

A rich selection of preview screenings is also lined up with several films coming straight from Cannes, such as Lights in the Dusk [trailer] by Aki Kaurismäki (news), The Weakest Is Always Right [trailer] by Lucas Belvaux (see interview), Climates [trailer] by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, La Californie [trailer] by Jacques Fieschi (see news), Nouvelle chance [trailer] by Anne Fontaine (see article) and The Page Turner [trailer, film focus] by Denis Dercourt (see news), as well as long-awaited films such as Autumn Gardens by Otar Iosseliani and The Science of Sleep [trailer] by Michel Gondry.

Also featured on the varied Paris Cinéma menu is a focus on Austrian documentary maker Nikolaus Geyrhalter; a special "renaissance in German cinema" with films by Christian Petzold, Christoph Hochhäusler, Henner Winckler and Angela Schanelec; retrospectives on French director Claude Chabrol and Spanish actress Rossy de Palma; a focus on horror films, in particular by Italian director Dario Argento; discussions between French and German industry professionals with a presentation of the Filmstiftung NRW fund; a children’s section, Paris CinéMômes (including the preview screening of U [trailer] by Grégoire Solotareff and Serge Elissalde); the Paris Project 2006 co-production workshop; open-air screenings; cinema concerts, and a shorts festival.