The 18th Lumière Festival kicked off on Saturday evening in Lyon, drawing a packed crowd to the city often called the birthplace of cinema. For nine days, the former capital of Gaul transforms into a meeting point for lovers of the seventh art, with nearly 450 screenings scheduled across some fifty venues in the metropolitan area. This year, the spotlight is on Joel and Ethan Coen, who will receive the Lumière Award on Friday 16 October.
On the red carpet, guests were asked a single question: what is their earliest cinema memory? For German director Fatih Akin, it all goes back to a Bruce Lee film, The Chinese Connection. “I must have been six when I saw it. Watching that film on Super 8 reels was like taking speed,” he recalls, evoking the intensity of that first experience.
American filmmaker Todd Haynes remembers Mary Poppins. He was three when the film came into his life. “It became completely imprinted in my body, in my mind and in my creative brain,” he explains. A first encounter with cinema that, he says, has continued to feed his imagination.
For Hong Kong director Tsui Hark, the shock came with Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa. He was 14 at the time and had gone alone into a darkened theatre. “I discovered a truly extraordinary film,” he recalls, highlighting the Japanese filmmaker's influence on his own career.
From restored classics to the Coen brothers
Beyond its opening night, the Lumière Festival puts heritage cinema centre stage, with restored films, talks and special screenings. Retrospectives dedicated to the Coen brothers, American director Norman Jewison and Italian filmmaker Ettore Scola offer a chance to immerse oneself again in major works from the history of cinema. Other events focus on Hong Kong director Tsui Hark and Todd Haynes, who is in Lyon this year.
The programme also gives pride of place to silent cinema, with cine-concerts including a screening of the restored version of Metropolis by Fritz Lang, accompanied by a symphony orchestra on 15 October, as well as numerous sessions presented by artists and experts, always a highlight for audiences here in Lyon.
Among the guests this year is Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi, who has come to present Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Ang Lee film that brought her to the attention of audiences worldwide. The festival invites viewers to rediscover the work in a restored version, shown for the first time in France. On her first visit to Lyon, the actress has also been won over by the city: after wandering its streets, she confides that she has “fallen in love” with the city and hopes to return for the festival.
The festival is taking over cinemas across the Lyon metropolitan area, giving the public a chance to discover or revisit classics on the big screen. The high point of this edition will be the presentation of the Lumière Award to Joel and Ethan Coen on Friday 16 October, followed the next day by an all-night tribute to their films at the Halle Tony Garnier. The festival runs until Sunday 18 October.
For those interested in the broader cultural landscape, the festival's celebration of cinematic heritage echoes other recent events, such as the Latvian filmmaker's win at an AI film festival, and the enduring appeal of classic films, as seen in Disney's cross-generational resonance in Poland. Meanwhile, the trend of set-jetting across Europe continues to draw travelers to filming locations, and the success of a Gaza documentary in Italian cinemas shows the power of documentary film.
