FrancoFilm Festival Bahrain is back for a fourth year, opening on Thursday | 10 September, with Whispers in the Woods (Le Chant des forêts), screening at 7:00 pm at EPIX Cinemas, Dana Mall.
Vincent Munier spent years crouched in the snow waiting for a leopard that had no interest in being found. That patience became The Velvet Queen (La Panthère des Neiges), and it earned him a César. His follow-up trades the Tibetan plateau for somewhere much closer to home: the forests of the Vosges, where Munier grew up learning to sit still in exactly the way his father taught him.
Bahrain has a soft spot for French cinema that has little to do with how many people here speak French. Arthouse retrospectives and one-off premieres tend to pull crowds well beyond the embassies putting them on, and FrancoFilm is the clearest example of it.
The French Embassy in Manama did not build this as a single night of goodwill. It built an annual fixture, pulling in a dozen or so partners each year. It’s turning EPIX Cinemas over to the wider French-speaking world for a run of evenings. Four editions in, that groundwork shows. This has become the kind of event Bahrain’s cultural calendar would notice the absence of.
Featured image: IMDB
About Whispers in the Woods
The film follows three generations of the Munier family working the same stretch of Vosges woodland: Vincent, his father Michel, and his son Simon. Between them, they track deer, rare birds, foxes and lynx, and occasionally catch sight of a capercaillie, a large, easily spooked forest grouse that most people never get close to.
At the 2026 César Awards, the film took home two prizes: Best Documentary Film and Best Sound, the latter recognising just how carefully the team captured the forest’s own noise alongside its wildlife. It is Munier’s second César for a documentary, following The Velvet Queen’s win in 2022.
The Rest Of The Lineup Is Still Under Wraps
FrancoFilm Bahrain has three editions behind it already, organised by the Embassy of France in Bahrain alongside the Alliance Française, with past years bringing together films handpicked by embassies from across the French-speaking world for screenings held around Manama.
This year’s full programme has not been released yet. Organisers say it is coming, so treat opening night as the first chapter rather than the whole story.
Getting Tickets
The opening screening runs Thursday | 10 September at 7:00 pm at EPIX Cinemas, Dana Mall. Seats are limited, and registration is required to attend.
READ MORE: A Collectors’ Expo is Coming To Bahrain This October: Here’s What We Know So Far
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