Discoveries from France World Cinema

A small, old-fashioned cafe in a suburban square, opposite the cemetery, the Hirondelle. Every day at half past six, the customers dance with their stories and tirades, totally amazing.

For a short comedy of rare merit this subject is unexcelled. A chalk line series of grotesque caricatures enacted in the land of puppets. A fickle maiden gets herself into numerous embarrassing complications with her host of admirers, but the artist with lightning rapidity overcomes all obstacles and brings the maiden out victorious.

Can high school friendships last a lifetime ? One thing's for sure: before long, Aurore, Nours, Jeanne, Diane and the others will say goodbye to their boarding rooms, swimming in the Drôme and parties in the mountains. Louison will cut his dreads and the little family will break up. For some of them, it's not the first time, and it hurts even more.

A famous director wants to make a film about true love, the kind his grandparents experienced when they lived together for 60 years. For this project, he holds auditions in a commercial real estate office. He asks the actors and actresses he meets to tell him about their conception of Love, with results that differ from those he expected...

A man in his mid 30's reevaluates his life and priorities after he met someone from his past.

Gérard Courant applies the Lettrist editing techniques of Isidore Isou to footage of late 70's pop culture. Courant posits that his cinema offers an aggressive détournement to the French mainstream, reifying a Duchampian view of film: "I believe in impossible movies and works without meaning... I believe in the anti-movie. I believe in the non-movie. I believe in Urgent... My first full length movie that is so anti-everything that I sometimes wonder if it really does exist!"

The island of Kiam was once a paradise place with a kind Maharaja as a ruler. But one day the villainous Malaw killed the island’s ruler and deprived the Crown Prince Shiva of the throne. The insidious Malaw had the prince locked up in a dungeon in the palace’s underground labyrinth, and he announced to the Kiam residents that he would kill Shiva if they only tried to rebel. Then the Old Sage Swami, aided by programmer Agni, came into contact with the Light of Crystal. That’s what he called a girl named Parva, who embodied radiant innocence and was born of the same astral combination as Prince Shiva. Only she and her love could save the prince and bring peace back to the island of Kiam.

Mathieu, a piano virtuoso, goes home to help his brother Paul to take care of their sick mother. Paul is into reenacting old battles, dressing up and getting into character, even dueling if necessary. Mathieu gets involved in this world and play becomes real.

A captain in the Czar's army encounters danger and romance while carrying a secret message across 19th-century Russia.

They have no roots, no seeds, no flowers, but mosses show immense survival capacities and can suspend their biological activity for long periods. Today, researchers are exploring the exceptional resistance of these archaic organisms. British ecologists have even resurrected a "zombie" moss that has been trapped in the permafrost for 1,500 years. Associated with decay and disliked in Europe, mosses are deified in Japan. With 25,000 species worldwide, bryophytes - their scientific name - are the seat of real ecosystems, and can develop in inhospitable landscapes, through an extravagant reproduction cycle.

The French-Italian border at the Montgenèvre pass. Daytime reality: tourism, capital invested to make the mountain profitable. At night: the fragile destiny of more than ten thousand men, women and children who, in four years, risked their lives to cross the border.

Max is preparing an architecture and landscape competition for the city of Marseille. He is confident, his project is daring but pioneering. The oral is going well. The garden on this square is finally emerging and with it radical changes for the inhabitants as well as for Max whose career is stalling dangerously.

Georges works in a small-town drugstore. Passionate about music, he writes songs. When Anne-Marie, whom he loves, loses her parents, he leaves with her for Paris, protecting her because she is blind. His friends Paul and Marthe put them up in the vacant apartment of the publisher Recordier. When he returns, he's irritated, but Anne-Marie sings Georges' songs so well that he makes her a radio star. Georges flies into a rage, slamming doors. An upset Anne-Marie has an accident. Operation restores her sight. All that's left for good Paul to do is reunite the brave Georges with the sweet Anne-Marie.

The plot revolves around an oil swindle in a South American country.

David and Eliab, two apprentice jockeys, get to know each other through admiration, rivalry and jealousy.

Although he's now eighty years old, Claude Lherminier is still as imposing as he ever was. But his bouts of forgetfulness and confusion are becoming increasingly frequent. Even so, he stubbornly refuses to admit that anything is wrong. Carole, his oldest daughter, wages a daily and taxing battle to ensure that he's not left on his own. Claude suddenly decides on a whim to go to Florida. What lies behind this sudden trip?

Back from Indochina, Tony and Dick, two French soldiers, are now in possession of more than 20 million, entrusted by a trafficker. They buy a nightclub in the district of Montparnasse but are soon hunted by the thug who wants to recover his money.

Victim of a train accident, a man regains consciousness in the house of the woman who shared his compartment.

Jeanne De Pincret refuses to marry Viscount Haussy De Villefort, having discovered his frivolity. After a duel against the Duke De Montgobert, whom Louis XIV recommended to Jeanne, the king forced De Villefort to marry Jeanne, then sent her to war. Separated from her husband, Jeanne discovers that she loves him.

Fred, a photographer, is in Tunisia to report on the « Bezness » (male prostitutes). Thanks to Roufa, Fred will discover this surprising environment where young men are confronted with the contradictions between tradition and modernity.

Angela was 8 years old when the first McDonald's opened in East Berlin - Since then, she has been fighting against the curse of her generation: to be born "too late" at a time of global political depression. Coming from a family of activists, her sister chose the world of business and her mother abandoned overnight her political struggle to move alone to the countryside.

A Nobel Prize winning professor tired with his life retreats to the woods and starts a colony for those looking to fulfill desires.

A former crook who is believed to be dead has built a new life abroad after extensive reconstructive facial surgery. The old judge in charge of his case tracks him down and asks him to go back to his home town to infiltrate the criminal gang he used to work with under his new identity. A dark, addictive tale of betrayal and revenge.

Marie returns to live in La Rochelle, the city of her childhood, with her husband Marc, a policeman, and meets Nadia. The two young women scour the city's stores, looking for a red sofa. They soon discover one in the store of Maxime, a second-hand dealer. A few days later, Nadia seems tormented when Marie mentions the sofa. During a visit, Marie discovers Nadia's lifeless body.

At the turn of the century, Rose-Aimée, the hard working wife of photographer J.A. Martin, decides to leave her children with an aunt to go with him on his annual tour of the Québec countryside. She hopes the intimacy will rekindle their marriage.

Two unemployed men, heavily in debt due to losses at the racetrack, are hired by a criminal mastermind to harass the guests of a hotel he hopes to purchase at a below-market price in order to access a tunnel below the building that leads directly to a nearby bank.

Swaying between pleasure and despair, Elric throws himself into his pathological passion for the casino. Meeting Suzie could have saved him, but the young woman also sinks into gambling hell. The couple then start getting involved in the fearsome world of professional cheaters.

A mother and her son have left the marital home. The mother entrusts her son Jacques to a friend for the day. This is an opportunity for the little boy to play with Julie. But Jacques has a secret: he loves playing with dolls.

After lovers fight, the boy leaves for the Riviera. On her way to rejoin him, the girl meets a distinguished but embittered novelist and decides to spend time comforting him.Which is not going to help when she returns to her boyfriend.

A look back at Charlie Chaplin's early life and career, from his rough childhood and music hall success in England to his early Hollywood days and the development of his enormously popular character, the Little Tramp, also called Charlot.

Adeline's Chinese housekeeper suddenly disappears, leaving behind a little boy who doesn't speak a word of French. Helped by her sister, she takes care of the child and proceeds to locate the mother.

Kwabéna 's arrival into Enguerrand family, that the little boy takes for his biological father, will lead the whole family to many adventures and reunify them like never before.

An elderly Malaysian-Tamil couple discovers their male goat, set for ceremonial slaughter, is pregnant. Torn between faith and the expectations of their community, they struggle to decide whether to slaughter it or face the wrath of the gods.

To spice up a life that's too quiet, a couple of friends play at being gangsters, but end up meeting some real hoodlums.

Gaston Bellus, is the director of a textile house, and the research laboratory makes a sensational discovery: the elastic fabric. This new discovery is used to manufacture new modern stretchable bathing suits. His daughter Clementine, enters the beauty pageant to represent France for the swimsuit launch. But scandal ensues when the public soon discover, the photos of the event in which this new revolutionary material is completely invisible on photographs & live television.

Lewis plays a Las Vegas policeman visiting his ex-wife in France, only to be caught up in the shenanigans of a group of art thieves. His ex-wife has remarried and her husband is undercover among the art thieves, carrying out an assignment given him by his superiors in the police force. Inevitably, the current husband and the ex-husband are bound to clash.

Laura Bartelli is a stripper in a French bar. She retires after a moody landscape architect named Marco Tisserand asks her to abandon her life and share his. However, after her red Volkswagen runs off the road en route to the rendezvous, she ends up scarred and comatose in a hospital. Marco stays at her bedside.

A young journalist (Lespert) helps the French President compile his memoirs.

Jean-Pierre is a literature professor in Switzerland. Due to the vagarities of Swiss law, he is selected, basically at random, to be the guardian of a parentless teenage boy named Antoine. Conflict comes into the story as Jean-Pierre, who has just accepted a major promotion, must now deal with caring for a teenage boy he doesn't want to care for, as well as handling his own jealous boyfriend. Then his wife steps into the picture. Things get complicated from there as Jean-Pierre tries to get out of his guardianship.

Alexandre Boursault, a provincial notary, would have been the happiest man alive if his wife did not openly display her political views and participate in all kinds of demonstrations.

François Donge, a rich industrialist and womaniser, meets a girl nicknamed Bébé who he marries. Ten years later, poisoned by his wife and dying in hospital, he recalls his married life and understands how his wife who adored him suffered from his many affairs and indifference.

Pierre, a French professor of quantum physics, inherits an inn from his aunt Jeanne in the Lac St-Jean region. He arrives with his daughter and settles in the small village of Sainte-Simone-du-Nord, home to just 400 residents. The locals, however, greet these “strangers” with suspicion—especially the village mayor, who once had a falling-out with Jeanne, the Frenchwoman. He manages to rally the townspeople to make life difficult for these newcomers from across the Atlantic. Yet Pierre’s good humor is unshakable, and he refuses to be discouraged—even without electricity, heat, water, or a car.

Focus on the wedding of the century in 2025 between the legendary Scuderia Ferrari and the British driver Lewis Hamilton, seven times Formula 1 world champion.

The story of a man who has decided to turn his hotel into a laboratory for personal fantasies. Behind each door, in the intimacy of crossed paths in the middle of the night, scenes play out before his prying eyes. He is the only one to see what is taboo in the light of his fantasies. Unless…

Daniel Gelin and Juliette Faber star as a blissfully happy honeymooning couple. They are so happy that they arouse the jealous attentions of Satan. The Dark Prince sends an emissary to beak up the romance, but his advocate is promptly challenged by a representative from "up above."

An ex-communist terrorist tries to fit in in today's society after getting out of jail. He meets with a group of young anti-Wall Street anarchists and falls in love with a mysterious young woman.

Ex-boxer Eddie is framed for murder. While serving time, he tries to clear his name and uncover the real culprit behind the deadly setup.

La Première éducation sentimentale (the first version of L'Éducation sentimentale), re-adapting the themes of first love, the intoxication of desire, and failed ideological revolution (that culminated in the Revolution of 1848) to the May 68 generation through a chronicle of the parallel lives of a pair of childhood friends, the pragmatic Henri and idealistic Jules as they leave their bucolic, rural hometown to separately pursue their baccalaureate - and real world - educations.

Captain Justin Mollenard works for a company that sells armaments to the Far East. After an eventful stay in Shanghai, where he and his cargo are the victim of a malicious attack, he returns to his hometown of Dunkirk. Mollenard receives a frosty welcome from his wife Mathilde, who resents the way in which he has neglected his family for so many years. Mollenard’s only wish is to get back to sea as soon as he can, but a sudden heart-attack leaves him paralysed and entirely in his wife’s power...

In Paris in the early 1960s, Ronald is a son of a good family, with a carefree, pleasure-oriented life. He is one of the leading figures in the small world of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Following a trivial parking incident, he meets Arthur, a young man with a straight face who hurts his pride. It is at this moment that Ambroisine, a beautiful young woman, appears... she will be the instrument of Ronald's revenge.

Francis Vanverberghe, aka "Francis le Belge", was shot to death in September 2000 in a bar on the Champs Elysées. An old relic of the French Connection, his death sealed the faith of the french organized crime. He was a pimp, a drug smuggler and a multifaceted man risking his life and those of others every day, until the last day. Through his daugther's eyes, this film reveals the man behind the myth. A female look into a world where women don't belong...

A chronicle of the life and successful career of American actor Jeff Bridges, who for many years was a star reluctant to shine, until the hardworking and discreet actor crossed paths with a character who became a pop culture icon.

A butcher dreams of becoming a famous director. He hires stars that he begins to kill.

At 21, Zoe is sick and tired of everyone taking her for granted, just because she’s young. She dreams of a day when all millennials go on strike, so that people finally recognize their true value.

Alain Brissot, an executive in a major company, was made redundant following a redundancy plan, but decided to put up a fight by continuing to occupy his office against all odds... He soon went on hunger strike, and, after many ups and downs, ended up taking back the job of his former manager, who had himself been ousted following the failure of a lucrative contract with an African country.

Claude Pérès pushes actor/director relationship to its breaking point by asking an actor to make love with him.

Garadoux has beaten his wife. His lawyer Fremissin is young and very shy, and therefore, not very efficient... Two years after, Garadoux is trying to seduce Cecile, but she prefers Fremissin...

Jordan, 14, is bored in the small village of Mornas. His mother, a nurse, is often away, so he keeps himself busy with his best friend Patrick by playing their console, affectionately named Jessica. When Jessica dies, Jordan and his friend decide to fake an illness and set up an online fund to buy a new one. As the lie spreads across the schoolyard, everyone's attention finally turns to them. Their new-found popularity will put their unbreakable friendship to the test...

Renée is Laurence's grandmother and she intends to show her how to make rich men fall in love with her, in order to get their life insurance's money. Both women will meet several men in the course of the movie. Even the cynical Renée will fall deeply in love again. But even after getting married, Laurence and Renée don't seem to be able to love their husband for a long time. Will they manage to get rid of their rich, loving but irritating husbands? Will their husbands survive the experience? Or will true love triumph at the end?