The French Connection
As a tribute to William Friedkin, the most indomitable of New Hollywood filmmakers, we present his first major success, which won him the Oscar for Best Director: The French Connection. Blending realistic aesthetics and action cinema tricks, the filmmaker revisits the gangster film and shakes up American cinema by filming dubious anti-heroes in a grimy setting. In the process, he produced one of the greatest chase scenes in cinema history and launched the careers of two talented actors: Roy Scheider and Gene Hackman.
Winner of 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director.
Two police officers specialized in narcotics are investigating a major heroin trafficking network supplying New York. They lead a shadowing operation full of twists and turns in an attempt to dismantle this major network, which has its roots in France.
William Friedkin
William Friedkin was an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer, who was closely identified with the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s. Beginning his career in documentaries in the early 1960s, he is best known for his crime thriller film The French Connection (1971), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and the horror film The Exorcist (1973), which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Friedkin's other films in the 1970s and 1980s include the drama The Boys in the Band (1970), considered a milestone of queer cinema; the originally criticized, now lauded thriller Sorcerer (1977); the crime comedy drama The Brink's Job (1978); the controversial thriller Cruising (1980), and the neo-noir thriller To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). Although his works suffered an overall commercial and critical decline in the late 1980s, his last three feature films, all based on plays, were positively received by critics: the psychological horror film Bug (2006), the crime film Killer Joe (2011), and the legal drama film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023), released two months after his death. He also worked extensively as an opera director from 1998 until his death, and directed various television films and series episodes for television.
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