The best French films of the 2010s

French cinema in the 2010s was both popular and prize-winning. Intouchables became one of the most watched French films ever, The Artist won the Oscar for best picture, and French films won the Palme d'Or twice, with La Vie d'Adèle and Jacques Audiard's Dheepan. The decade saw the rise of a generation of women directors, including Céline Sciamma, Julia Ducournau, Alice Diop and Mati Diop, and new voices from the suburbs such as Ladj Ly and Houda Benyamina.

Des hommes et des dieux (Xavier Beauvois, 2010)

French Trappist monks in Algeria in the 1990s decide whether to stay as civil war closes in. Grand Prix at Cannes.

Intouchables (Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, 2011)

A wealthy quadriplegic hires a young man from the suburbs as his carer. François Cluzet and Omar Sy, in a comedy seen by more than nineteen million people in France.

The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011)

A silent film, in black and white, about a silent star ruined by the arrival of sound. Five Oscars, including best picture and best actor for Jean Dujardin.

Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012)

Monsieur Oscar travels around Paris in a white limousine to a series of strange appointments, playing a different role at each. Denis Lavant in a dazzling, baffling film.

La Vie d'Adèle (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2013)

A teenage girl falls in love with an older art student, and the film follows them for years. Palme d'Or, shared with its two actresses, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux.

Bande de filles (Céline Sciamma, 2014)

A sixteen-year-old in a Paris suburb finds freedom with a gang of girls. Its scene set to Rihanna's Diamonds is famous.

Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven, 2015)

Five orphaned sisters in a Turkish village are locked up by their family to be married off. A French production, nominated for the Oscar.

Elle (Paul Verhoeven, 2016)

Isabelle Huppert as a video-game company boss who is attacked in her home and decides not to go to the police. Provocative and very dark, with Huppert at her best.

120 battements par minute (Robin Campillo, 2017)

Activists of ACT UP Paris fight the AIDS epidemic and government indifference in the early 1990s. Grand Prix at Cannes.

Les Misérables (Ladj Ly, 2019)

A day with an anti-crime police unit in Montfermeil, where Victor Hugo set part of his novel. Tense and alarming.

Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

In 18th-century Brittany, a painter is commissioned to paint a young woman's portrait for her future husband, without her knowing. Best screenplay at Cannes.

And after

In the 2020s, French films have continued to win the biggest prizes: Julia Ducournau's Titane (2021) and Justine Triet's Anatomie d'une chute (2023) both took the Palme d'Or. For the films of the decade before, see the best French films of the 2000s, or start from the beginning with the 1910s.