Grenoble International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (France)
Vues d'en face, in short...

This project originated with some twenty people, voluntaries from different origins and with different sensitivities, who got together with the aim to create a film festival driven by a desire to promote cinematographic works presenting gay and lesbian characters or themes, and by the wish to present French and foreign films that had been passed over by the official distribution and exploitation circuits. This is how the Festival International du Film Gay et Lesbien de Grenoble was born, in March 2001.

If the screening of films that are rarely distributed in France is the festival's raison d'être, it also aims to play a part in the evolution of mentalities in the acknowledgement and respect of differences with a challenging film selection, the visibility of its communication schemes, and by not limiting its audience to the gay community.

"Vues d'en face" has found its niche in the Grenoble cultural landscape with the support of private and public sponsors, as well as that of film business professionals. Every year, for a week, a wide array of cinematographic works can be seen on a big screen. It is a congenial week, favorable to exchanges between the organising team, the public and the professionals.

Each edition of "Vues d'en face" draws more than 2,000 viewers and offers a selection of some twenty feature length films and as many short ones from the world over. The films that have remained unreleased in France are translated and subtitled by the festival's team.

Eight years after the birth of "Vues d'en face", the offer of cinematographic works dealing with the various aspects of homosexuality are still few and far between, in spite of several big public hits and the creation of other gay-lesbian-bi-trans festivals. This is why "Vues d'en face" is keen on programming a great number of atypical films, and practices an open policy by trying to appeal to an ever-wider audience.