Sawt Falasteen - Oscar hopefuls to bookend US French film festival

The festival will open on October 29 with the buzzy "Emilia Perez," a genre-defying musical about love and redemption by auteur director Jacques Audiard.

Critics at Cannes, where the film premiered, lapped it up, and the four stars -- Karla Sofia Gascon, Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz -- scooped a collective "Best Actress" award.

The festival closes on November 3 with the lavish "The Count of Monte Cristo," the most expensive French film this year, and one that has already proved a smash with French audiences.

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere's film is a three-hour adventure based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas.

Both films are under consideration for France's official entry for the Academy Awards -- a choice that will come under close scrutiny after the country's Oscar committee last year passed on "Anatomy of a Fall."

That film ultimately won Best Screenplay, and was nominated for four other awards. The official French entry "The Taste of Things" failed to register with Academy voters.

"We are beyond excited to have 'Emilia Perez' as our curtain-raiser and 'The Count of Monte Cristo' wrap up the Festival this year -- two films that feature music in spectacular ways," said Cecile Rap-Veber, president of he Franco-American Cultural Fund, which produces TAFFF.

"The American French Film Festival has become the place to shine for French films and series at the beginning of Awards season in Los Angeles."

Z.Ramadan--SF-PST