Movieversalfilm Exclusive · Thursday 12 November 2026
Fred Cavayé’s new, non-musical Les Misérables, with Vincent Lindon as Jean Valjean and Tahar Rahim as Inspector Javert, opens in UK cinemas on Friday 16 April 2027. StudioCanal has set the date on the Film Distributors’ Association’s UK release schedule, alongside spring dates for two more European films: Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Violette on 14 May and Volker Schlöndorff’s Visitation on 26 March.
The UK Dates
- Visitation: Friday 26 March 2027, StudioCanal
- Les Misérables: Friday 16 April 2027, StudioCanal
- Violette: Friday 14 May 2027, StudioCanal
- See them sooner: Les Misérables and Violette both screen at the French Film Festival UK from 13 November
- Certificates: BBFC certificates to be confirmed for all three
Les Misérables: Lindon’s Valjean, Rahim’s Javert
Cavayé’s film tells Victor Hugo’s story straight, without the songs. Lindon plays Valjean, freed after 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread, who rebuilds his life under a new name and promises the dying Fantine (Noémie Merlant) that he will save her daughter Cosette (Megan Northam) from the Thénardiers (Camille Cottin and Benjamin Lavernhe). Vassili Schneider plays Marius and Marie Colomb plays Éponine.
It runs close to three hours and opened in France on 14 October. It marks a change of pace for Cavayé, best known for the thriller Pour Elle (Anything for Her), the film later remade in Hollywood as The Next Three Days.
Violette: Jeunet’s return to the big screen
Violette is the Amélie director’s adaptation of Valérie Perrin’s bestseller Fresh Water for Flowers (Changer l’eau des fleurs), co-written with Guillaume Laurant. Leïla Bekhti plays Violette Toussaint, a cemetery caretaker whose quiet routine is upended when a police officer arrives and forces her to face her own past. Matthias Schoenaerts, Melvil Poupaud, Anouk Grinberg, Sergio Castellitto and Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon co-star.
The French Film Festival UK calls it Jeunet’s return to cinema after a gap of 13 years, since The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet. It opens in France on 9 December, so UK festival audiences see it first.
Visitation: a century of German history in one house
Schlöndorff, who shared the Palme d’Or in 1979 for The Tin Drum, adapts Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel Visitation (Heimsuchung). The film follows the changing owners of a lakeside property near Berlin through the Weimar Republic, the Nazi years, the war, the GDR and reunification. Martina Gedeck, Lars Eidinger, Susanne Wolff, Ulrich Matthes and Detlev Buck lead the cast.
It premiered in the Cannes Première strand in May and opened in Germany on 15 October, running 118 minutes. In an interview published by the Festival de Cannes, Schlöndorff said the house on screen is not a set but Albert Einstein’s former holiday home, which Einstein had to leave when the Nazis came to power.
Where to see two of them first
The French Film Festival UK is previewing both French titles before their spring releases. Les Misérables screens at Leicester’s Phoenix on Saturday 14 November, Edinburgh’s Filmhouse on 22 November, Hereford’s Courtyard on 27 and 28 November, Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema on 28 November, Nottingham’s Broadway on 6 December and Chichester’s Cinema at New Park on 8 and 10 December.
Violette screens first, on Friday 13 November at the Courtyard in Hereford, then plays Glasgow Film Theatre (20 November), Tyneside Cinema (21 November), Sheffield’s Showroom (23 and 24 November), Edinburgh’s Filmhouse (27 November), Dumfries’ Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre (28 November), Plymouth Arts Cinema (4 and 9 December) and Nottingham’s Broadway (5 December).
A packed StudioCanal calendar
The three dates fill out a busy run for StudioCanal in UK cinemas. The 50th anniversary 4K restoration of The Man Who Fell to Earth arrives on Friday 13 November, Danny Boyle’s newspaper drama Ink follows on 8 January, and Simon Stone’s Elsinore on 29 January.
Movieversalfilm Takeaway
British audiences know Les Misérables best as a musical, so a sweeping, near three-hour version with no songs is a real test of how far the story alone can carry a UK audience. With Lindon and Rahim facing off, a new Jeunet and a Schlöndorff epic all landing within seven weeks, spring 2027 is shaping up as a strong season for European cinema on UK screens.
Would you watch a Les Misérables with no songs, or is it the musical or nothing for you? Tell us below.