Founded in 1993, the French Film Festival located in Richmond, Virginia is an American-led initiative. Richmond, the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, has a population of just over one million inhabitants. A political center and administrative city, Richmond is home to one of the 13 U.S. Federal Reserve Banks, in addition to numerous multinational corporations.

The city is home to several historic universities. Only 110 miles from Washington, D.C., and less than an hour away by plane from New York, Richmond is at the crossroads of the East Coast.

The first Festival was created in 1993 by Drs. Peter and Françoise Kirkpatrick, professors of French literature, culture and film studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and University of Richmond respectively, to gauge the true interest in the latest French film productions largely unknown to audiences in an average-sized American city. From day one, the Festival proved the existence of a true yearning, demand for French films by the general public in the US that American distribution companies were failing to satisfy.