Contemporary politics and cinematographic innoation made a dramatic comeback in French cinema with the 1996 winner of the French Césars award for best film, La Haine, by Mathieu Kassoitz.

A brilliant and strikingly original portrayal of exclusion and racism in the Paris suburbs, La Haine is worlds away from the early Eighties movies that used Paris as a backdrop, such as Dia and Subway. This trend has broadened as young film-makers like Laurent Cantet confront the socio-economic challenges of their own generation, as in his acclaimed Ressources Humaines (2000), and its follow-up L'Emploi du Temps (2001). Another southern French director, Robert Guédiguian, uses hometown Marseille as the backdrop for his gritty proletarian-flaoured works, like Marius et Jeanette (1997) and À la place du coeur (1998).

The 2000 Cannes festial was marked by a return to period dramas, including two seventeventh-century dramas: eteran Roland Joffré 's atel, and Patricia Mazuy 's Saint Cyr, both an improement on the glossy star-ehicle "heritage" movies of the late Nineties, like Beaumarchais L'Insolent (a French equialent of The Madness of King George) and Le Hussard sur le Toit, which broke budget records and flopped, lapping up funds. Reasonable thrillers have also surfaced in recent years, such as Chantal Akerman 's La Captie (2000), and controversial and censored Baisse-Moi (2000) by irgine Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi .

Although French cinema has not returned to the world domination of the New Wae period, it is now a healthy and dierse industry. In addition to the film-makers named aboe, directors to watch out for include Cédric Klapisch whose Chacun Cherche Son Chat (When the Cat's Away) (1996) about day-to-day life in the Bastille area of Paris was followed by Un Air de Famille (1998), a black comedy about a dysfunctional family set in a local bar; and Jacques Dillon, whose poignant Ponette (1996) recounts the tale of a four-year-old girl who refuses to accept the death of her mother.

The earlier theatre generation of Genet, Anouilh and Camus, joined by Beckett and Ionesco, hasn't really had successors. In the 1950s, Roger Planchon set up a company in a suburb of Lyon, determined to play to working-class audiences. It became the Théâtre Nationale Populaire, the number-two state theatre after the Comédie Française, and now does the classics with all due decorum. Bourgeois farces, postwar classics, Shakespeare, Racine and Cyrano de Bergerac make up the staple fare in most theatres. But certain directors in France do extraordinary things with the medium. Classic texts are shuffled to produce theatrical moments where spectacular and dazzling sensation takes precedence over speech.

Their shows are overwhelming: huge casts, ast sets - sometimes in real buildings never before used for theatre - exotic lighting effects, original music scores. They are a unique experience, even if you haven't understood a word. Directors' names to look out for are Peter Brook (the English director who has beven in Paris for decades; he is based at the Centre Internationale de Création), Ariane Mnouchkine, Patrice Chereau and Jérôme Saary.

Café-théâtre, literally a reue, monologue or mini-play performed in a place where you can drink and sometimes eat, is probably less accessible than a Racine tragedy at the Comédie Française. The humour or puerile dirty jokes, wordplay, and allusions to current fads, phobias and politicians can leae even a fluent French speaker in the dark.

In cities other than Paris, the theatres are often part of the Maisons de la Culture or Centres d'Animation Culturelle; local tourist offices usually have schedules and tickets are not expensie. The two major theatreFestivals are the Festial Mondial du Théâtre in Nancy (June) and the Festial d'Aignon (July).

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