This year's Alliance Francaise French Film Festival showcases a diverse selection of films from blockbusters and biopics to comedies and gripping thrillers for Australian audiences.

I've written before about how this annual event, now in its 36th edition, is, in terms of tickets sold and films screened, the largest film festival dedicated to contemporary French cinema outside of France.

The 2025 program once more shines a spotlight on the established icons and rising stars of French cinema.

In the this year's festival, 30% of the films are directed by women and thorny issues such as slavery, consent and caregiving are presented sensitively and provocatively.

But from a competitive bunch, here are the best five films I saw this year.

It's Christmas in the Jura, France's picturesque eastern region full of mountains, snow and pine trees. When Michel (Frank Dubosc) accidentally crashes his truck into a car, killing its driver and passenger, his wife Cathy (Laure Calamy) tells him he may have left fingerprints at the crime scene.

They return - and discover two million euros in the car boot, and a loaded gun in the glove box.

From this point on, How To Make A Killing features one improbable but amusingly nerve-wracking twist after another. There's a local policeman in over his head and drug lords and contract killers who want their money back.

Oh, and a black bear is on the loose.

Writer-director Dubosc pays homage to the Coen brothers and sprinkles in a typically Gallic dose of black humour. What really gives the film zip and pizzazz is the fabulous Calamy. She has risen to the apex of contemporary French stardom and her performance is a delight.

Sarah Bernhardt can lay claim to being the first film celebrity. Born in Paris in 1844, Bernhardt was first a legendary stage actress, performing Shakespeare and Racine across the world (including Melbourne and Sydney in 1891) before gravitating to silent cinema.

Known for her extraordinary talent and intense stage presence (hence "divine"), she refused to play just female roles, famously playing Hamlet. Her eccentricity was equally renowned: she often travelled with an extensive menagerie of exotic pets.

Guillaume Nicloux's sumptuous biopic unfolds in a radical way. Rather than tracing Bernhardt's career in the fairly bog-standard biopic way, Nicloux jumps around, focusing on key events from her life - the amputation of a leg, her death, her bisexuality, her hedonistic lifestyle.

Through this bold achronological prism comes another daring choice: we never see Bernhardt act on stage or film. Her stardom emerges through the extraordinary effect she has on people who enter her orbit.

At the centre is a remarkable performance by Sandrine Kiberlain. She captures Bernhardt's glamour and narcissism but also taps into her vulnerability to reveal her gradual hollowing out as the vagaries of fame take their toll.

It's a cautionary tale that speaks to our current ambivalence towards stage-managed celebrity and "stardom at all costs".

Ever since its Cannes debut last May, Emmanuel Courcol's My Brother's Band has received rave reviews. It is sure to be an instant classic.

Two brothers are separated at birth and are only reunited decades later when Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe) needs a bone marrow transplant. The only suitable donor is long-lost Jimmy (rising star Pierre Lottin).

All that bonds the two is a shared love of music. Thibaut is an esteemed orchestra conductor while Jimmy plays the trombone in a local brass band.

Lavernhe's and Lottin's scenes together are wonderfully wry and tender as the two brothers learn to appreciate each other's lifestyles and ways of seeing the world. We also see how music can bind communities together during times of personal and collective crisis.

Courcol shuttles between the stuffy, cathedral-like spaces of a Paris conservatorium and the cramped parish halls of northern France. Think Brassed Off meets Tar. My Brother's Band brings the feel-good to the festival.

When Fall is Coming, the latest work by prolific auteur Francois Ozon, is a broody family drama set in Burgundy.

Behind the autumnal landscapes and off-the-beaten-track villages lies hidden trauma. Michelle (the outstanding Helne Vincent, now 81) nervously awaits the arrival of her grandson and the daughter from whom she is long estranged (for reasons we don't understand until much later).

An innocuous first night meal turns to tragedy, and kickstarts a deeply engrossing, often menacing film. Pierre Lottin features again, this time as an ex-con slowly drawn into this unsettling web of secrets and lies.

The "fall" in the title can be read any number of ways. Suffice to say, this slow-burner reminds us of Ozon's knack in withholding plot points and revealing them gradually. With its blend of spiteful intimacy and startling revelations, When Fall is Coming quietly chills. You'll not look at mushrooms in the same way again.

French filmgoers love to laugh. The top ten grossing French films in history are all comedies.

Lucky Winners is a jet-black comedy about four different winners of France's national lottery. Each becomes a millionaire overnight - but that's when their troubles begin. Romain Choay and Maxime Govare's witty film features a fine ensemble cast and a healthy dose of cruelty and squabbling.

The dream sours. Money does not bring happiness, only guilt, revenge and greed. Feel-good quickly descends into feel-bad. I imagine Hollywood will be remaking this very soon.

The Alliance Francaise French Film Festival is in cinemas around Australia on various dates until April 27.