For the last 23 years Winnipeg has been home to Cinémental, one of the longest running French film festivals in Western Canada.

“I think I attended the first edition when I was a teenager and I kept going every year with my family,” says Chantal Vermette, the festival’s promoter. “I really like non-Hollywood movies, probably because I grew up in a household where English was forbidden, and this was always a chance to see films.”

Originally the festival took place at Cinematheque and only lasted for one weekend. Now it’s become a larger event which runs from Oct. 17 to Oct. 19 at Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain and Oct. 24 to Oct. 26 at Towne Cinema 8.

English subtitles also used to be rare, but 18 out of 20 movies being shown this year have them.

“My goal is for non-French speakers to come out and see a movie because I don’t like this idea that these movies are only for French speakers,” Vermette says. “What I like about movies from other part of the world is you get to see another mindset, another way of living, another culture and that’s what I like about non-Hollywood movies. It’s like an invitation to travel and it’s pretty cheap compared to a plane ticket.”

The focus also used to be on European movies, but now Québécois/French Canadian films make up just over 50 per cent of the programming.

“I remember noticing the shift in the 2000s, Vermette says. “I didn’t want to go see the Québécois movies originally, but then I realized they were really good and now I can’t wait to see them.”

Mommy, directed by Quebec’s Xavier Dolan, serves as one of the biggest films that’s showing at Cinémental.

“He’s only 25 and he’s already made five movies, three of which were already shown at Cannes, Vermette says. “People all over the place are calling him a prodigy.”

One local movie is Friendly Manitoba, which was directed by William Sineux, and is about a French backpacker taking a road trip through our province. The second is FM Youth, which follows three Franco-Manitoban friends spending time together before two of them move to Montreal. This is also 32-year-old director Stéphane Oystryck’s first full-length film and he says he’s been working on it over the last three years.

“The film is basically about St. Boniface and I’d say that the neighbourhood is the main character in the film, more so than the actual characters who you see on screen,” Oystryck says. “We shot it small crew documentary style to try and capture as much authenticity as possible, though authenticity is such a subjective concept.

“The film is also about being French in English Canada, which is something I think we don’t always see. I think here in Winnipeg we’re a linguistic minority so there’s kind of this clash of cultures at work. We’re trying to keep up with our culture and also trying to keep up with the rest of the world as well.”

Cinémental runs from Friday, Oct. 24 to Sunday, Oct. 26 at Towne Cinema 8.

Individual tickets are $10 and a festival pass is $50.

For the full schedule and more head to www.cinemental.com