RTL Today – Festival in Luxembourg: Why you should go to the Francofolies!
It’s more than a festival! Headliners of course – Clara Luciani, PNL, Damso, Sofiane Pamart…– but also the celebration of the Francophonie. Loïc Clairet, director of the festival, explains to us why 2022 launches the real start of the Francofolies in the Grand Duchy.
The beginnings were in their infancy, but this 2022 edition of Francofolies in Luxembourg seems to want to mark a big blow and proudly assume the reputation of the famous festival created in La Rochelle in France in 1985, and whose label subsequently developed in Montreal in Canada, in Spa in Belgium, in Blagoevgrad in Bulgaria, in New Caledonia, in Saint-Pierre La Réunion and now in the Grand Duchy.
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“FINALLY WE CAN MEET”
“We are very happy to do it in this year 2022 in its complete version, to congratulate Loic Clairetgeneral manager of the festival. Because finally, we had to do it in 2020 and we couldn’t do it for the reasons that everyone knows. Then in 2021, we made a smaller edition, with a reduced gauge. And there, we are relieved. That’s it, finally we can get together and party together.“
During the five days of the festival, which will be held from Wednesday June 8 to Sunday June 12, spectators will see some thirty artists parade in different places, from the Arche de Villerupt to the Kulturfabrik in Esch. But it is at the Gaalgebierg park that the three main meetings will take place from Friday.
“The strong points, continues Loïc Clairet, it’s both the program – it’s still a music festival, we still have great headliners, big names from France, Belgium and Luxembourg –, but it’s also a festival very much rooted in its territory. This is also what interests us, the sustainable development side that we put in place in the project. Since there is a social dimension with a whole series of partnerships, an economic dimension with a short circuit, this desire to create a kind of festival economy.“
Organizer of the Francofolies in Luxembourg, it is a reminder that the Grand Duchy, if not an authentic French-speaking country, is at the very least a multilingual country. If the Francophonie is known there from ups and downs, Luxembourg remains a country very steeped in French culture and where the language of Molière is the most spoken at work.
“IT’S ALSO THE FRENCH ART OF LIVING”
To make a success of his festival, its director believes that several criteria must be met: “One is the francophone and the francophile. That is to say the sharing of French culture and language, but it is also the whole art of French living. We can work on gastronomy, architecture, we can work on reading. That makes it possible to hang up a bit on everyone in Luxembourg since we know that not everyone necessarily speaks French. So building in Luxembourg means putting that in place. It is the city of Esch, which is the nearest city in a border way. We will have programming at the Arche, this new room in Villerupt. So there we have a whole combination of things that make the Francofolies could have found their place in Esch-sur-Alzette, and perhaps not elsewhere in Luxembourg.“
Among the Luxembourg artists programmed for this edition, two – Maz and Delicate Bartleby – provided specific support, called “Francos-Fabrik”, in this case a weekend of preparatory work for the stage.
“We are very vigilant about the fact that we are not a festival that is only in French, Discovered Loic Clairet. We have artists who sing in English, who can sing in Luxembourgish, who could even sing in Cape Verdean. In fact, we do not forbid ourselves anything on the festival.”