Lumiere...moteur...on tourne! for the 2010 French Film Festival

Où est la gare, s'il vous plaît? That's about the only piece of French I can remember from those long, painful classes I was forced to take in High School, the odd petits pois, lapin and stilo also tucked away at the back of my mind.

I know wonder why we were always left with dull drawings of oranges and the Eiffel Tower when we could have been introduced to the odd classic French film once in a while?

I'm sure that a crime film such as Jean-Pierre Melville's (no relation) Le Cercle Rouge, or  perhaps a romantic comedy in the shape of Gerard Depardieu in Cyrano de Bergerac, would have encouraged a few pupils to delve deeper into the language, instead of most of us avoiding subtitled movies for years to come.

Thankfully, next week sees a whole raz-de-marée (or tidal wave (I'll admit I had to Google that one)) of French cinema coming to Edinburgh, as the Filmhouse hosts the annual French Film Festival from Thursday 11 until Sunday 28 November.

As with any decent festival, there's a chance to see both old and new films, with 1969's The Great Love kicking things off. Impressively, the film's director, Pierre Etaix, will be introducing a restored print of the film on Thursday and will take part in a Q&A afterwards.

Well known faces include the aforementioned Depardieu in new film, Dumas, which tells of the relationship between Three Musketeers author Alexandre Dumas and his assistant; Sophie Marceau in 2008's LOL, which looks at a young girls fraught relationship with her boyfriend and her mother; and Jean Reno in historical drama The Round Up.

One of the most notorious films being shown is Rachid Bouchareb's Outside the Law, which premiered at Cannes this year. It looks at the origins of Algeria's National Liberation Front and it isn't for the faint-hearted.

Being a fan of Canadian filmmaking, I'll also throw 2008's Straight to the Heart into the mix, the festival's closing film. It's a comedy set in Montreal featuring a car thief who encounters a beautiful woman while stealing a Jeep.

There are 25 films on offer, so there should be something for everyone, even those who remember as little French as me. All it's left to say now is lumiere...moteur...on tourne!, or in rough translation, lights, camera, action!