25 of the best French films to watch in the UK and USA

Without even leaving home, you could find yourself transported to sun-baked Provence, the glittering Côte d’Azur, Paris, a Normandy farming village, wartime France or in the 1960s! Just watch a film or show on France Channel TV – or watch 25 of the best French films – or more!

If you love French films but struggle to find them with English subtitles, France Channel makes it easy for you. It’s a streaming service dedicated to France via cinema, TV shows, documentaries and more – showcasing culture, history, food, travel and art de vivre and everything French, and its film library stretches from classic French comedies to contemporary dramas, thrillers and romance. There are series and documentaries too, covering everything from gastronomy and fashion to art, history and travel.

New content is added weekly. All with English subtitles and/or English-language options

Easy to watch – wherever you are

France Channel is designed to work across the devices most of us already use including Apple TV and Android TV, via the France Channel apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices. You can also buy a subscription directly from Amazon Prime Video Channels and in the US only, from Roku Channels, Xumo, or Xfinity.

25 of the best French films to watch in the UK and USA on France Channel

There are hundreds and hundreds of films to watch, and more being added regularly, but here are 25 of our favourites:

1 In the Name of My Daughter

L’Homme qu’on aimait trop – Thriller/Drama featuring Catherine Deneuve, Guillaume Canet and Adèle Haenel star in and absorbing drama inspired by the real-life disappearance of an heiress to a casino fortune in Nice.

2 The Specials

Hors Normes – Drama: Two men running organisations caring for autistic children and young people with particularly complex needs. It combines humour with an immensely human story about people working beyond the conventional care system.

3 Naked Normandy

Normandie Nue – Comedy-Drama: The mayor of a struggling Normandy farming community desperate to draw attention to the agricultural crisis. Then an American photographer arrives. He specialises in photographing large groups of naked people and believes he has found the perfect location. An affectionate, gently eccentric portrait of rural France, mixing comedy with the very real pressures faced by farming communities. Jeremy Clarkson might get ideas from this one!

4 See You Up There

Au revoir là-haut – Comedy-Drama: Two traumatised French soldiers attempt to rebuild their lives after the First World War – partly by concocting an audacious scam involving war memorials. Beautiful, strange, dark and sometimes very funny.

5 A Friendly Tale

Le Bonheur des uns… – Comedy: What happens when your best friend suddenly becomes enormously successful – and instead of being delighted, you discover you are horribly jealous? Find out in this dark comedy.

6 We Need Your Vote

Le Poulain – Comedy: The world of campaigning for a French presidential candidate involving spin, rivalries, ambition and carefully manufactured appearances make for a sharp backstage comedy.

7 Father and Soldier

Tirailleurs – Drama: The ever-popular Omar Sy stars as a Senegalese father who joins the French army during the First World War after his 17-year-old son is forcibly recruited. His mission is not glory, but simply to keep his boy alive and bring him home.

8 Greed in the Sun

Cent mille dollars au soleil – Classic Adventure: Jean-Paul Belmondo. Lino Ventura. Bernard Blier. Trucks thundering across the North African desert. Wonderfully sharp dialogue features in this classic 1964 adventure film as a valuable cargo disappears, triggering a pursuit across a magnificent, unforgiving landscape.

9 The Dinner Game

Le Dîner de cons – Classic Comedy: Every week, a group of smug Parisian friends invite an unsuspecting “idiot” to dinner and compete to see who has brought the biggest fool. When one of the guests is a tax-office employee obsessed with constructing models from matchsticks – things do not go according to plan. A laugh out loud film with a great ending!

10 The Grand Restaurant

Le Grand Restaurant – Classic Comedy: Louis de Funès is at his manic, explosive best as Monsieur Septime, the tyrannical proprietor of one of Paris’s grandest restaurants. When a South American head of state disappears while dining there, Septime finds himself caught up in an absurd mixture of police investigations, disguises, misunderstandings and chases.

11 The Mystery of Henri Pick

Le Mystère Henri Pick – Comedy-Drama: A room in a library in Brittany is devoted to manuscripts rejected by publishers. Among them, a young editor discovers an extraordinary novel apparently written by Henri Pick, a local pizza-maker who has since died. There is just one problem: his widow insists he hardly ever read a book, let alone wrote one – part literary mystery, part comedy and perfect for anyone who loves books.

12 The Visitors

Les Visiteurs – Classic Comedy: A medieval knight and his servant are accidentally propelled through time into modern France. Cue cars, telephones, toilets, electricity and almost everything being greeted with bewilderment. The film was a huge French box-office phenomenon, and it’s not surprising – it’s brilliant!

13 Baby Bumps

Telle Mère, Telle Fille – Comedy: Thirty-year-old Avril is organised, responsible and pregnant. Her mother Mado is carefree, chaotic, living under Avril’s roof – and then discovers that she is pregnant too.

14 Three Days and a Life

Trois jours et une vie – Thriller: A child disappears from a small community in the Ardennes in 1999, setting in motion a chain of events that will haunt another boy for years. An atmospheric psychological thriller.

15 Heartbreaker

L’Arnacœur – Romantic Comedy: For a fee, a professional heartbreaker seduces women who are stuck in unhappy relationships, making them realise they could do better. Then he is hired to break up the apparently perfect relationship of Juliette, played by Vanessa Paradis. It’s a sparkling romantic comedy.

16 Julia(s)

Le Tourbillon de la vie – Drama: What if one tiny decision could change your entire life? An inventive drama, which follows the different lives someone might have lived depending on apparently insignificant moments and choices. Drop a book. Miss a train. Meet someone – or don’t. A romantic, philosophical exploration of chance, destiny and all those tantalising roads not taken.

17 Big Bang

Photo de famille – Comedy-Drama: Gabrielle, Elsa and Mao are siblings. They are also very good at avoiding one another. Then a family funeral brings everyone together and leaves them facing a difficult question: what are they going to do about their grandmother? Funny, melancholy and very French.

18 The Last Deadly Mission

MR 73 – Thriller: Dark, brooding and uncompromising. A Marseille detective is shattered by personal tragedy and struggling with alcoholism while hunting a serial killer. At the same time, a murderer he arrested decades earlier is about to be released.

19 The Dazzled

Les Éblouis – Drama: Camille is 12, loves the circus and lives with her large family. Then her parents join a religious community and their lives become increasingly controlled. As the seemingly supportive community becomes more oppressive, Camille begins fighting for her own freedom and that of her younger siblings.

20 My Father’s Glory

La Gloire de mon père – Comedy-Drama: You can almost smell the warm thyme and rosemary of the Provençal hills when you watch this film, based on a Marcel Pagnol book. Pagnol was one of the great storytellers of Provence and the film perfectly capture childhood summers in southern France.

21 It Takes All Kinds

Le Goût des autres – Comedy-Drama: A beautifully observed film that brings together people from very different social and cultural worlds and asks what happens when their paths unexpectedly cross.

22 Female Agents

Les Femmes de l’ombre – Wartime Drama: A French Resistance fighter recruited by Britain’s Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. She assembles a team of women for a dangerous mission connected to preparations for D-Day – first in Normandy and later in Paris.

24 The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez

Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez – Classic Comedy: Sunshine, the old port of Saint-Tropez, a squad of hopeless gendarmes and Louis de Funès in a képi – what more could you want? This is absolute classic of French cinema and as good today as when it first came out in 1964.

24 Alice and the Mayor

Alice et le maire – Comedy-Drama: The long-serving mayor of Lyon develops a serious problem: after 30 years in politics, he has run out of ideas.

25 Husband, Wife, Kids… and Lovers

Tout nous sourit – Comedy: A couple appear to have everything: successful careers, three children and a happy marriage. There is just one snag. They are both having affairs. And when each secretly decides to spend a romantic weekend with their lover at the family country house, they arrive to discover that the other has had exactly the same idea. Then the rest of the family starts turning up. Awkward – but fun for us to watch!

A French film festival – without leaving home

One of the joys of this collection is its sheer range with new films being added constantly.

Available in the UK and the US – discover French films, series, documentaries and more at France Channel. And until 31/12/2026, there’s a 30% discount for our readers – In the UK use promo code 30GLFUK

For viewers in America, you can also use the 30% discount code to celebrate 5 years of France Channel TV in the US.

To redeem visit www.francechannel.tv and Start Free Trial and enter promo code 30GLFUK for an annual subscription.

The post 25 of the best French films to watch in the UK and USA appeared first on The Good Life France.