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Common thread

2026 COMMON THREAD: AI, HUMANS AND THE LIVING BEINGS

Each year, Les Arcs Film Festival vibrates to the rhythm of a major societal question. Through our common thread, we like to use the power of cinema to understand the world around us. This central theme takes over our entire programming as well as our professional events.

After exploring major topics such as parity, the ecological urgency, or democracy, the 2026 edition will cast its gaze on the links between artificial intelligence, humans and the living beings. Faced with the technological acceleration we are experiencing, the festival proposes to open a space for collective reflection on our place in this changing world.

This questioning will be expressed through a selection of films labeled "Moving Mountains" (Déplacer les Montagnes), questioning our relationship to the mutations brought about by AI, cine-debates and workshops in the presence of experts, a night in a chalet and professional events centered on the concrete uses of AI in cinema professions.

The common thread in debate

It has become a ritual: each year, offering extended time to a group in an isolated chalet reached by snowshoes, in order to reflect deeply on a theme related to the year's common thread.

A night in a chalet will once again this year be dedicated to the subject: a group of about twelve professionals - directors, producers, distributors, exhibitors, institutional representatives... - will have one night to reflect together on the theme of artificial intelligence.

A common thread for all audiences

Programme for the general public and schools:

This common thread will be expressed through films linked to our theme. We will be organising film debates around these films with film-makers and other people who can shed light on the subject. One will be aimed at the general public, and the other will focus more on schoolchildren, who will be involved in the discussions.

In-depth work is being done in advance of the festival with the school district of Bourg Saint Maurice, our privileged partner, to involve them and give them a special role in this edition.

Film discussion with Agathe Riedinger, following the screening of her film Diamant Brut, in the presence of Camille Etienne and with the participation of six secondary school students from the Bourg-Saint-Maurice school complex.

Film discussion with Salomé Saqué, following the screening of the film Jouer avec le feu (Playing with Fire) by Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin, in the presence of actors Stefan Crepon and Edouard Sulpice, and producers Marie Guillaumond and Olivier Delbosc.