Open air cinema festival

Fed up with summer blockbusters in over-air-conditioned cinemas? Feel like an activity that’s both outdoorsy and cultural? Head for the parc de la Villette. Get out your picnic, crack open your bottle of rosé and lie down in the soft grass. As night falls, the stars begin to twinkle and the giant screen lights up. Lights, camera, action!

The annual La Villette open air cinema festival runs until 22 August. The festival, which is free (deckchairs can be rented for 7 euros) and open to all, is this year celebrating its 20th birthday with the appropriate theme "Avoir 20 ans" (Being 20).

And what filmmaker doesn’t have a soft spot for what is supposed to be the best year of your life, where everything is possible but where the decisions you make are so life-changing and unalterable…

Like the world which creates it, youth is golden, carefree, rebellious, distraught, violent, suicidal.

And watching these films will perhaps confirm that even if twenty isn’t necessarily the best age in life, there is hardly any other age that we miss so much!

Filmmakers from around the world have the honour of blowing out the 20 candles at Paris cinema-fans’ favourite event: Europe – François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Loach, Maurice Pialat, Leos Carax, Abdellatif Kechiche, Cristian Mungiu; America – Woody Allen, Sofia Coppola, Jim Jarmusch; Asia: Liu Jie, Hong Sang-Soo... and many others.



See full details of the event

To get there from the Hotel Aviatic, take line 4 northbound from Montparnasse-Bienvenüe, then change at the Gare de l’Est and take line 7 northbound to Porte de la Villette.