French cinemas added several new titles to their schedules this week, and Le Figaro published its verdicts on three of the most prominent: Minotaure, Le Corset and Les Misérables. The paper's critics also noted a new adaptation of the 1990s arcade game Street Fighter, arriving three decades after the Jean-Claude Van Damme version. The roundup appeared on Wednesday, October 14, 2026.
Why it matters
The three films represent distinct strands of French and European filmmaking at a moment when the industry is searching for what Le Figaro calls "grands films populaires" — big popular films. One is an art-house festival winner carrying France's hopes at the Academy Awards. One is an animated feature built from personal memory. One is a literary superproduction. Together they show how different the routes to a French cinema audience have become.
A Cannes winner that never names the war
Minotaure took the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and is France's submission for the Oscar for best international film, according to Le Figaro.
The film is directed by an exiled Russian filmmaker who adapts Claude Chabrol's La Femme infidèle and relocates the story to martial Russia in 2022. Le Figaro describes the result as an exposure of a marriage that doubles as an exposure of Russian society. Ukraine is never mentioned by name, the paper notes, yet the war is present throughout both the landscape and the characters' minds.
Le Figaro's critic calls the director a formalist. Every shot carries meaning, and every gesture is filmed at its own pace, with its own cruelty and its own absurdity. The accumulation of those shots, in the paper's reading, speaks all the more forcefully about the moral collapse of one man and of one country.
An animated feature drawn from memory
Le Corset is directed by Louis Clichy, who Le Figaro says drew on his own recollections to build the story. The paper describes it as a coming-of-age tale that turns a difficult experience into a universal fable about difference, family and the need to dream in order to keep going.
The film uses 2D animation that Le Figaro calls vibrant, alive and deeply human. It won the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes and then took three awards at Annecy, the animation festival. Le Figaro ranks it among the finest French films of the year.
A second animated title also reaches screens. Mochy follows an eager young dog with an unglamorous appearance who chases an unlikely goal: competing in a demanding canine contest. Le Figaro compares his ambition to the "inaccessible star" of Jacques Brel's song La Quête. The film comes from the Belgian studio nWave and is directed by Jérémie Degruson and Yanis Belaïd. Le Figaro calls it a well-written, funny and moving comedy that hits the right notes without claiming to reinvent the genre.
Hugo, barricades and a familiar strategy
Les Misérables continues what Le Figaro describes as French cinema's ongoing habit of revisiting its classics in search of large popular hits. The paper points to Les Trois Mousquetaires and Le Comte de Monte-Cristo as earlier examples — superproductions made without what it calls a true director, led instead by screenwriters and supported by experienced technical crews.
Le Figaro is not certain that Fred Cavayé, who came from crime films before moving toward comedy, brings a strongly personal vision to Victor Hugo's novel. What he has, the paper says, is craft rather than style: he knows how to shape a scene, give it momentum and give it lyricism. Le Figaro adds that such skills are necessary when the story calls for building barricades.
The same roundup mentions Street Fighter, a new adaptation of the cult 1990s arcade game. In this version, Ryu and Ken Masters — once inseparable fighters — return to the arena after the mysterious Chun-Li recruits them for the next World Warrior Tournament. Le Figaro's summary is blunt: trouble is coming.
Other outlets covered the same release week. Le Monde, Télérama, Livres Hebdo and Le Nouvel Obs all published their own selections, with titles including Le Jour de son retour, Malfaisante, Englouti and Le piège appearing across their lists. Those roundups confirm that the week's slate extends well beyond the three films Le Figaro examined in depth.
What to watch next: how Minotaure performs in the international feature race, and whether Le Corset converts its Cannes and Annecy prizes into a wider theatrical audience.
