Cinema has played a vital role in the social and cultural debates that have taken place in France since 1968. This visual medium not only has given and gives shape to critical moments of the past, but it also contributes to the creation of collective memory. Its value and role in society have recently been emphasized by a media campaign, financially supported by the Ministry for the Arts: in order to compete with the increasing flow of Hollywood films, a number of productions have been carried out that represent certain values related to the French cultural heritage. These films often refer to historical events or are adaptations of popular historical texts, such as Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) and Le Hussard sur le toit (1995), both by Rappeneau .

In my paper, I propose to discuss a number of recent films in which historical events and/or memory are central themes, for example La Reine Margot (1994), Chéreau, Ridicule (1996), Leconte, Le temps retrouvé (1999), Ruiz and L’Anglaise et le duc (2001), Röhmer, by focusing on the interplay between personal and collective memory, as well as on the dialogue between past and present. Thus, I hope to demonstrate that the relationship between subjectivity and history has a particular significance in French film, valorizing individual and collective experiences and memories.