When in New York, do like the New Yorkers do: Gorge on a feast of top-flight French films.

That’s what’s on offer with the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema” series, beginning this Thursday. The program’s 18 films include two movies — Seraphine (above), a biopic on French painter Seraphine Louis, starring Yolande Moreau, and Mesrine, with Vincent Cassel — dominating the nominations for Cesar awards (the French Oscars).

More from favorite French directors: Agnes Varda’s autobiographical The Beaches of Agnes; Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum; Benoit Jacquot’s Villa Amalia, with Isabelle Huppert; Pierre Schoeller’s Versailles, with Guillaume Depardieu (son of Gerard); Costa-Gravas’s Eden is West; and Claude Chabrol’s Bellamy, starring screen veteran Gerard Depardieu as a police detective in the mold of Georges Simenon’s Maigret.

For more information, check out Stephen Holden’s story in the New York Times, or go directly to the official site.