NEWS
🎬 Tribute to Aleksandar Petrović: Le Maître et Marguerite (1972) screened at the Fauvettes
An evening of memory, masterpiece and a new partnership with Pathé
📍 Pathé – Les Fauvettes Cinema, Paris
📅 Thursday, April 16, 2025 at 8:00 p.m.
This Thursday evening, Europe by Europe paid a vibrant tribute to the great Yugoslav director Aleksandar Petrović, through the exceptional screening of his cult film “Le Maître et Marguerite” (1972). A highlight of this 20th edition of the festival, which also marked the birth of a new partnership with the Pathé – Les Fauvettes cinema, a Parisian mecca of cinematic heritage.
🎞 Le Maître et Marguerite : a labyrinthine film, between satire and transcendence
A loose adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s legendary novel, “Le Maître et Marguerite” is a monumental work, at the crossroads of fantasy, political criticism, and metaphysics. Petrović deploys a bold, explosive, and poetic staging that has lost none of its power.
In this rich fresco, the Stalinist era becomes a theater of apparitions, absurd trials, miracles, and inner revolts. The devil himself visits Moscow, while a lost writer tries to save his love from persecution and oblivion.
✨ A disconcerting and magnificent work, where irony, beauty, and resistance intertwine. Petrović offers us a cinema that is both political and profoundly human, where freedom of the mind becomes the last refuge.
Restored and screened in optimal conditions, the film immersed viewers in a world rich in symbolism, narrative ruptures, and surreal visions. A true cinematic experience, acclaimed by an attentive and moved audience.
🎬 Aleksandar Petrović: a free, unclassifiable and essential filmmaker
Born in 1929 in Paris, Aleksandar Petrović is one of the most influential filmmakers of the former Yugoslavia. A figure of the “Black Wave,” his work uncompromisingly explores collective memory, the madness of power, the excesses of conformity, and the place of the individual in a troubled world.
Director of major films such as “Trois” (1965), “Jeux de réflexion” and “J’ai même rencontré des tziganes heureux“, he received several international awards and left his mark on several generations of viewers with his bold, committed, often censored, but always powerful cinema.
“Le Maître et Marguerite is his latest feature film. It encapsulates his art: free, poetic, rebellious. “
This rare and precious film is also a posthumous tribute to a man of conviction, intuition and artistic courage.
🤝 Pathé – Les Fauvettes: a new partner for a shared vision of cinema
This event also marked the beginning of an exciting collaboration between the Festival and the Pathé – Les Fauvettes cinema, a temple of heritage cinema and rare films in Paris.
Before the screening, a sincere and warm exchange took place in front of the big screen between Manon Duperret – Deputy Director of the Pathé Les Fauvettes cinema and Irena Bilic, Founder of the Festival.
🎤 Manon Duperret :
“This Festival is fully in line with our editorial policy: it celebrates the richness of European auteur cinema, opens horizons, and fosters dialogue between stories across borders. In today’s world, this type of encounter is essential. “
🎤 Irena Bilic :
“Les Fauvettes welcomed us with tremendous speed and generosity. This venue, with its commitment to retrospectives, rare films, and heritage works, resonates perfectly with the DNA of the Festival, which we have been cultivating for 20 years. “
This new partnership promises to further promote little-known or forgotten European works, in a place that offers them the best possible showcase.
🎞 A luminous evening, in memory of a forgotten master
The audience praised the film’s power and the quality of its restoration. It was a moment of shared emotion, a film-loving evening just the way we like it: full of memories, beauty, and horizons to rediscover.
The Festival continues its journey, with other meetings, other films, other favorites to come…
