French DVD/Blu-ray/UHD Recommendations

[Stefan Andersson]

Speaking of Gremillon (in case it passed you by), there is a North American release (Grasshopper Films) of the 4k restoration of Gueule d'Amour aka Lady Killer & the blu-ray features L'étrange Monsieur Victor (The Strange Monsieur Victor) as a bonus. It's probably my favorite of his & I highly recommend it.

OK, thanks!

[eerik]

Are there any news on a potential Lumière, l'aventure continue release? I noticed it is now available on VOD, but could not find anything about a disc release.

[tenia]

L'aventure commence was released on video, so maybe this one will too, but I haven't seen any announcement so far.

[MichaelB]

This is obviously major, but I'd remain cautious about all of them being restored. For instance, the page for Les bonnes femmes has only rough-looking images to show for.

The Kira Muratova box explicitly says "en versions restaurées".

I have the first two films already courtesy of StudioCanal's UK releases (which I assume share a common source), but I reckon the box is cheap enough to be worth buying despite the 40% content overlap.

(Subs appear to be exclusively in French, but I'd expect that.)

[Yakushima]

This is obviously major, but I'd remain cautious about all of them being restored. For instance, the page for Les bonnes femmes has only rough-looking images to show for.

The Kira Muratova box explicitly says "en versions restaurées".

I have the first two films already courtesy of StudioCanal's UK releases (which I assume share a common source), but I reckon the box is cheap enough to be worth buying despite the 40% content overlap.

(Subs appear to be exclusively in French, but I'd expect that.)

Hopefully, this means a second Muratova Box Set from Criterion is not too far off! It is strange that Potemkine does not include the recently restored "The Tuner", one of Muratova's major masterpieces. Does anyone know if the French set will have removable subs? Will there be any extras?

[nicolas]

YI YI 4K

Coming from Carlotta Films on 18 November, 2025

Édition Standard

Édition Prestige Limitée

Currently playing in French cinemas


Additionally, on the same day, a Blu-ray box set with The Terrorizers, A Confucian Confusion and Mahjong will also be released.

This is an amazing set of releases; the more Edward Yang, the better !

Also Caligula: The Ultimate Cut and Abel Gance’s Napoleon in 4K via Potemkine: https://www.fnac.com/a21901223/Coffret- ... ne-Blu-ray

[GoodOldNeon]

Potemkine also seem to be reissuing their Abbas Kiarostami Early Years boxset in separate Blu-ray and DVD versions: https://store.potemkine.fr/dvd/35450200 ... iarostami/

[Stefan Andersson]

Article, in French, about the legal dispute around seven Chabrol films (paywall):
https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/ ... _3246.html

The dispute, so far unsettled, is between the distributor and Chabrol´s inheritors. The distributor could not offer restored prints until a court administrator ordered him, in 2023, to let Tamasa manage the titles.

[kekid]

I found a watchable copy of Francesco Rosi's "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" based on the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novella. I found it to be very interesting. It cannot quite capture the effect of the nonlinear structure of the original, but it is a very good transcription to a different medium.
I don't know why this hasn't been issued on at least a good, restored Blu Ray. I found this to be far more interesting than some of the Rosis in circulation.
And if you watch it with like-minded friends, you could spend an enjoyable evening debating whether Angela lied in naming Santiago Nasar as the doer of the misdeed.
Does anyone know who holds the rights to Home Media?

[andyli]

Yasuzo Masumura upcoming from La Rabbia/The Jokers in November:
La bête aveugle, Passion, Femme de champion, Confessions d'une épouse, L'école militaire de Nakano
Source: https://www.bekindreview.fr/forum/blura ... 3-165.html - Aug. 7 post

Titles not up yet at https://thejokers-shop.com/

They are adding three more titles this November to their impressive catalog of Masumura 4K restorations: The Blue Sky Maiden, Seisaku’s Wife, The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka.

[spectre]

There's a new Guillaume Brac release from Potemkine out with English subtitles – this one packages two of his recent mid-length documentaries about high schoolers, So Long (2024) and Linda and Irina (2023).

https://store.potemkine.fr/dvd/35450200 ... aume-brac/

I've seen the latter and thought it was quite charming, if not quite on the same level as his most recent fiction feature, 2020's All Hands on Deck (which is also available via Potemkine with English subs – not advertised as such, but I have the DVD and can confirm they're there. I very highly recommend that one!).

[Stefan Andersson]

Ombre et lumiere (Calef) w/ Simone Signoret, Maria Casarès, bluray from Tamasa in 2026:
https://www.dvdclassik.com/forum/viewto ... start=1110
4K restoration by TF1:
https://www.festival-lumiere.org/manife ... miere.html

[Stefan Andersson]

La danse de mort (Cravenne, 1948) w/ Stroheim, 2K, on DVD:
https://www.solaris-distribution.com/bo ... -mort-dvd/

[andyli]

Claude Chabrol set in November. Eight discs with seven features, all from 2K restoration.

[MichaelB]

...and with no subtitles, not even in French - so I won't even be able to add them via my Oppo (which requires an existing subtitle track to be present).

[rufus2056]

Tamasa lists French subtitles (Sous-titres sourds et malentendants) for all films.

[MichaelB]

This does indeed appear to be the case, although DVD.fr explicitly says "sans", and they're not visible in the specs on the (admittedly slightly cropped) reverse of the box.

[nicolas]

Le deuxième souffle (Melville) upcoming in 4K by Le chat qui fume: https://lechatquifume.myshopify.com/pro ... me-souffle

[MichaelB]

I was wondering what had happened to that! Fingers crossed it'll be a substantial upgrade on my old DVD - the film more than deserves it.

But it only seems to offer French subtitles - not remotely a surprise, but that might be a deal-breaker for some.

(Pas pour moi.)

[nicolas]

I was wondering what had happened to that! Fingers crossed it'll be a substantial upgrade on my old DVD - the film more than deserves it.

But it only seems to offer French subtitles - not remotely a surprise, but that might be a deal-breaker for some.

(Pas pour moi.)

I think the images on the LCQF website are promising. The grading looks spot-on, grain is intact and detail quite nice. Based on how their Eyes Without a Face restoration made the rounds, we can likely expect at least a Criterion upgrade at some point in the future.

[tenia]

For those looking at the Napoléon Potemkine boxset :
* French intertitles only, no subs at all; it even looks like Potemkine only has the France rights, and their boutique won't ship outside France;
* the 2 UHD-100 are Dolby Vision. They however and surprisingly port the extra features, despite the set already having a dedicated BD-50, and though the extras clearly are over-compressed in order to prioritise the movie, it does mean a few Gbs are "lost" for the movie. Total AVB looks to be around 48 Mbps (I can't decrypt the disc fully yet so haven't been able to do a proper BD Info scan), I need to recheck if the DV layer is FEL or MEL though;
* from what I spot-checked, the compression seems OK enough regarding grain structure, but I'm fairly certain it has chroma issues on some scenes like the early snowballs battle that the BDs don't have;
* both BDs are encoded at 22 Mbps despite the 2nd half being shorter, meaning 5 Gbs are left unused. Compression looks OK though. They have 0 extras, they all are on the 3rd BD.
* from what I checked, the extras on the BD are quite compressed, around 15 Mbps IIRC, which in any case obviously shows on the 1924 making of that looks ostensibly over-compressed and blocky.

[andyli]

Remy, do you have the Chanrol set with you and do you plan to test it? Would love to know similar first hand info on that. Especially on the PQ of those 2K restorations.

[tenia]

I don't have it, and won't do a review of it. There should be one soon on DVD Classik though.
I've a bit tired by Tamasa continuing practice of cramming content on badly encoded BD-25, and my understanding is that the whole set is BD-25. So I'm waiting for reviews to see how intense the expected issues will be. I have 0 clue about the restorations themselves, though.

[rrenault]

For those looking at the Napoléon Potemkine boxset :
* French intertitles only, no subs at all; it even looks like Potemkine only has the France rights, and their boutique won't ship outside France;
* the 2 UHD-100 are Dolby Vision. They however and surprisingly port the extra features, despite the set already having a dedicated BD-50, and though the extras clearly are over-compressed in order to prioritise the movie, it does mean a few Gbs are "lost" for the movie. Total AVB looks to be around 48 Mbps (I can't decrypt the disc fully yet so haven't been able to do a proper BD Info scan), I need to recheck if the DV layer is FEL or MEL though;
* from what I spot-checked, the compression seems OK enough regarding grain structure, but I'm fairly certain it has chroma issues on some scenes like the early snowballs battle that the BDs don't have;
* both BDs are encoded at 22 Mbps despite the 2nd half being shorter, meaning 5 Gbs are left unused. Compression looks OK though. They have 0 extras, they all are on the 3rd BD.
* from what I checked, the extras on the BD are quite compressed, around 15 Mbps IIRC, which in any case obviously shows on the 1924 making of that looks ostensibly over-compressed and blocky.

Potemkine's site generally ships outside France. Are they making an exception for this release? Carlotta a while back told me they couldn't ship a certain title to another EU country where I'm currently based, due to rights issues, but I was able to purchase that same release from Potemkine's site and have it shipped to the country in question. I've never encountered a UK boutique refusing to ship a specific title to specific territories because of rights issues, so it's all a bit strange.

In the case of Napoleon, one can always order from Fnac or Amazon I guess.

[Lowry_Sam]

I ordered from Amazon.fr back in September, but it still hasn't shipped yet despite showing to be in stock.