The 38th French film festival "French Cinepanorama" will be held from Nov. 27 to Dec. 13, the Alliance Francaise of Hong Kong said Tuesday.

French Cinepanorama, one of the longest-running film festivals in Hong Kong, is set to show over 50 most-recent French long feature and short movies this year, 18 of which had never before been showed in Hong Kong. All screenings will be divided into five series, including New Film 2009 and Premieres, First Works, Short Film and Short Animation films.

The festival will open with Marina de Van's "Don't Look Back", a psychodrama in which two world-famous stars Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci collaborate for the first time. It was part of the official selection for the Midnight Screening at the 2009 Cannes International Film Festival.

Cannes award-winning film "A Prophet" by Jacques Audiard, a thriller about a young Arab man sent to a French prison where he becomes a mafia kingpin, is chosen as one of the Gala Premiere movies in the film festival.

Other selections include the love story "Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky"; the biopic of a female version Vincent van Gogh "Seraphine"; and "Villa Amalia", starring Isabelle Huppert.

The first French film festival was organized by Alliance Francaise of Hong Kong in 1953, aiming to introduce to Hong Kong audience new French films. It became an annual event since 1972 and adopted the name of "French Cinepanorama" in 1976. Cinepanorama last year attracted a total of 9,000 viewers.