Discoveries from France World Cinema

In Tourtoirac, Périgord, Isabelle Maurin, newly crowned Queen of Araucania, is found decapitated in the château she had just inherited. Emma Lambert, a young police lieutenant from Bordeaux, joins Sacha Besson, a local gendarme, to investigate. Emma, a transgender woman, conceals that she is the daughter of Julie Dupuy, the village doctor and mayor, with whom relations soured after her transition. As more murders point to the contested legacy of the 19th-century Kingdom of Araucania, Emma and Sacha must navigate a tangle of hidden identities, buried secrets, and dangerous ambitions—while confronting their own growing attraction.

After twenty years in power, Vladimir Putin continues to implement his geopolitical strategy with Russia’s comeback on the big stage of world politics. He already announced his ambitions in 2007 – and still, it seems like the western governments were hit completely unprepared. What is behind this repeat of the Cold War?

Abel Ferrara headlines a film retrospective and a series of concerts in France dedicated to songs and music from his films. Preparations with his family and friends will form the material of this self portrait, showing another side of the director of legendary films BAD LIEUTENANT, THE KING OF NEW YORK and THE ADDICTION. Ferrara is joined on stage by past collaborators, including composer Joe Delia, actor-singer Paul Hipp and his wife actress Cristina Chiriac for concerts at the Metronum in Toulouse and the Salo Club in Paris in October 2016.

In conflict with his daughter Isaure, Alexandre discovers that she has been selected for the oral exam of a prestigious business school—her greatest dream. However, Isaure is nowhere to be found, lost in a weekend of medieval fantasy role-playing. To find her, Alexandre enters the game, taking on the role of a devious Game Master. But as the adventure unfolds, he realizes that he himself has been lost for years. Under the guise of "Renard Chafouin," he gets a chance to reconnect with his values—and to avoid losing his daughter forever.

A dozen elegant people are gathered in a writer's desirable mansion. In the grand tradition of Agatha Christie, they all have something to hide.They begin a cruel game of truth, a game where you're not supposed to tell lies. As the questions become more and more intimate and precise, the tempers rise, while outside the storm is raging. Enter a hateful person (played by Paul Meurisse, the nasty headmaster in "Les Diaboliques") who seems to know a lot about them. Someone is murdered. Whodunit?

A Syrian exile living in Australia returns when his brother is taken into custody by the Assad regime in 2011.

When Nathalie, a shoe seller, is abducted, her mother Flora wastes no time taking matters into her own hands. Reluctant to call in the police, she galvanizes her three other daughters into action.

Between 1967 and 1976, Italian writer Goliarda Sapienza (1924-76) wrote The Art of Joy, a subversive novel about the dazzling social ascent of a rebellious heroine; too scandalous to be published at that contradictory time.

After more than 20 years, Sue returns from Switzerland to her home country Egypt because her mother Fairouz is in a hospital bed. Sue ran away from the eccentric aristocrat as a young adult. Now she feels compelled to meet her again.

Digital advertising algorithms curate content precisely for users. Major tech firms claim to restrict disinformation yet still profit from harmful content, raising ethical concerns about democracy and online capitalism.

Phil Collins, with members of his band, together with conductor Quincy Jones and special guests including Tony Bennett, David Sanborn and members of the WDR Big Band, play several of Collins' songs in jazz arrangements, both as a solo artist and with Genesis, as well as jazz standards and covers.

Stéphane Goudet is all over the Tati box-set as the preeminent Tati scholar, so it is only fitting that he conclude the disc with a half hour lecture that concludes the themes and methods of the filmmaker.

Four astronauts have to stay 1000 days in a space station around Earth in order to prove that a trip to Europa, one of Jupiter's moon, is possible. The experience goes well until something happens on earth.

The life of Etienne-Jules Marey, the 19th century pioneer of photography and cinema, famous for studying animal and human locomotion.

When Frédi loses his mother, he realizes she has passed her healing gift on to him. Frédi rejects it totally, tangled up in his own unhappiness, until a fatal accident changes everything. He is forced to acknowledge that he had healing hands.

Djalil Boudaoud and Justine Lacroix are a surgeon and a television reporter who enter a romantic relationship despite the objections of their families to the cultural gap.

In 1917, the First World War is raging. Julien is from Luxemburg, so instead of having to go to war he studies piano in Paris. One day his friend Jacques, also a musician and now a fighter pilot on the front, invites him to spend a few days in his family's empty house in Bray. The housekeeper, a beautiful stoic woman lets Julien in, but his friend is late and he is obliged to wait. In the meantime, he starts reminiscing of the pre-war days spent with his friend and Jacques' girlfriend Odile.

This third opus will take us into the homes of some of the Adamant and Averroes & Rosa Parks’ protagonists, during the visits led by their caregivers.

September 2019. China inaugurates the largest airport terminal in the world, which covers 700,000 m2, the equivalent of 98 football pitches. Built in 5 years, it embodies the jewel of Chinese modernity but also of French know-how. Go behind the scenes of a pharaonic construction site.

In the street, two young girls play their favorite game: "Would you rather?".

A doctor and his son fall in love for the same woman, who has lost her child.

Camille, a young, provincial, proletarian man works for Hélène Courtray, who is still beautiful and seductive. She's a sophisticated, cultivated and well-to-do woman who has engaged him to care for her reclusive son who has spent the past few years voluntarily locked up in his room. An encounter between two persons and two worlds where the relationship of the young man to this closed, strange and unknown universe rapidly turns tragedy.

Filmed along the Emeryville Mudflats near San Francisco, Junkopia captures a landscape of sculptural installations made from driftwood and discarded materials. Chris Marker, John Chapman, and Frank Simeone transform these ephemeral artworks—set against highways and the distant city—into a quiet meditation on art, decay, and the modern environment.

A young journalist, Sylvia, has to interview a writer, Claude Chatel, whose success is due to his misogyny.

A French agent goes after a gang of Asian terrorists who plan to blow up an American nuclear aircraft carrier.

For decades, pupils at the children's village of Riaumont, in northern France, run by Catholic monks and priests, were abused: until 2019, thousands of children suffered beatings, forced labor and sexual violence.

The film is a novelized biography of François Villon (1431-1463), known as the Wandering Poet, who led a troubled life due to the fact that he supported the free expression of people in a coercive climate.

Girlfriend or enemy? Does the young cleaning lady Alice really want to protect the well-heeled Hélène from a scandal or rather blackmail her? In any case, Alice not only found her lifeless body and Hélène's wallet in her employer Svende Petersen's home, but also video footage that weighed heavily on Hélène. Because the married to a budding Member Hélène has fled without help from the apartment of her lover, when she became aware that Svende no longer breathes. But now Alice knows her secret. It becomes Hélène's menacing shadow ...

Commissioner Malaise investigates a strange crime: a mannequin, stolen from the window of a tailor, is found stabbed... But his face of wax has the features of a certain Gilbert, who died a year earlier in a family, all of whose members will become more or less suspicious to the Commissioner. He thinks that, in spite of Dr. Furnelle's conclusions, Gilbert's death was not natural. But finding the cause of death and the identity of the possible culprit will require more than a mere intuition.

Fastlife: always go further, faster, to shine in the eyes of others: this is the motto of Franklin. Franklin is a megalomaniac obsessed by the desire to shine at any price. He will have to choose between becoming a man or continue to live the Fastlife...

To say that the renowned Impressionist artist, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90) had a dysfunctional family is likely to do a disservice to ordinary dysfunctional families everywhere. In this unusual drama, the family (and one friend) of the troubled artist gather together to participate in the customary ceremonies that are performed when a close relative, in this case, Vincent, dies. While Vincent's brother Theo (Jean-Pierre Lorit) and his three sisters are genuinely grief-stricken, his mother (Maria Meriko) seems to be a truly stony character, and her cold contempt and disregard for her sensitive son appears to be just as great in death as it was in life. Fans of Vincent's art will be particularly appalled by the woman's attitude to her son's vocation, and more so by at her actions.

An adaptation of Jean Racine's tragedy which depicts the thwarted loves of Antiochus, Titus (the future emperor of Rome) and Berenice (the queen of Palestine).

A live recording of an amended version of the Robin Hood story, staged at the Palaís des congrès de Paris in January 2014.

Julien is 10 years old. He pretends to go to school but then hides out under a bridge, his backpack filled with clothes. A few kilometers away, 15-year-old Joséphine does the same and waits for the bus.

June 1940. While the Germans advance inexorably on the French territory, the army is in full debacle. While the top brass played "sauve qui peut", a handful of French soldiers desperately resisted on the banks of the Loire. On one side, a company of Senegalese riflemen and a few French soldiers, on the other side, the armored tanks of the Wehrmarcht. An act with no real future, it was considered heroic by some and useless by others. But for their leader, Henri Dragance, there was no alternative but to resist or die.

Ewa is a 10-year-old girl, convinced of being a vampire. When she gets bullied by teenagers from the neighborhood for her belief, she's ready to act in the creepiest, sickest ways to prove her identity to the world.

A Swiss right-wing populist and a veiled, Kurdish Muslim asylum seeker swap bodies before an election.

Henri Verdier, a young bank manager, has made the acquaintance of Karine, a model of great beauty. Robert, who claims to be Karine's brother, forces Karine to introduce him to Verdier. This is to offer him an urgent business deal: 50 million for a uranium purchase which, within a few days, should yield double that amount. Blinded by passion, Verdier accepts and "withdraws" the necessary sum from his bank. He soon realizes he's been duped. Karine is not Robert's sister and Robert is a crook. Verdier tracks them down.

The short stories of Guy de Maupassant enjoyed a renaissance in the early 1950s, thanks in great part to the Max Ophuls production Le Plaisir. In Trois Femmes, three De Maupassant stories are dramatized, each conveying the central theme of women falling in love. In the first, a black female carnival entertainer causes an uproar when she falls in love with a white soldier. In the second, a young bride is pressured into having a baby to collect a huge inheritance. And in the final episode, a pregnant girl is "adopted" and protected by a small circle of friends. In standard De Maupassant fashion, each of the three stories in Trois Femmes is capped by a surprise twist.

When her father files bankruptcy and then dies, Rose's fiancé jilts her; she takes a job as a maid in a Montmartre kindergarten with 150 poor children. Rose gives each child loving attention, and soon she's their favorite. An especially needy child is Marie, a prostitute's daughter. Rose and she bond, and Marie is jealous of all attentions paid Rose, especially those of Dr. Libois, the school's physician. When Rose inadvertently guides the children through the educational experiment of a visiting scholar, and then discloses she has a college degree and is working beneath her station, the principal wants to fire her. Is there any way she can stay? And what will happen to Marie?

On the outskirts of Parisian council housing estates lies a vast wasteland that still retains its mysteries in this day and age, and serves as a refuge for people who, in their spare time, escape or are often ejected from their overcrowded dwellings. They form small, rather harmless bands, share their first secrets, build up their "treasures" and submit to strict rituals. The sanctity of their rebellions is underscored by initiation through blindfolded jumping and a blood test. An impossible love story is born between two members of the same clan, Dan, a beautiful, tomboyish girl, and Lucky, a sweet but feisty boy.

In a nursing home for disabled near Toulon, René is unanimously hated by all. With fifty years and suffering from myopathy, has an irascible, rebellious character. But not resist provocations candor and uprightness of Julie, a special educator rookie. He confesses he wants to make love to a woman before her degenerative disease definitely catch it. Then Julie goes after one of the prostitutes who work in caravans along the N7.

Ça cartoon hosts introduce a TV special dedicated to the spinach-lover Popeye!

Two young French officers get lost in the Sahara desert and find themselves prisoners of Antinéa, who rules over the lost city of Atlantis. Under her evil influence, one of them, blinded by his love for her, loses his mind and goes so far as to murder his comrade... Jean Kerchbron adapts Pierre Benoît's book for this film, which is more concerned with social reflection than fantasy.

Daniella, a fashion model, goes to Rome to replace a model who's been murdered. Once there, she meets two men, Count Castellani, whose clothes she'll model, and Karl Bauer, a reporter in the hotel room next to hers. Castellani gives Daniella the spotlight, which prompts jealousy from another model. Is he merely trying to seduce her? It's soon apparent that he has other plans as well: the line of clothes is a cover for smuggling and perhaps espionage. Daniella may be in danger - one model is dead already. Is Bauer to be her protector, or is he after something too? Is anyone who they seem?

In the 1970s, Nassim presents ‘Talk Chaud’ in front of a sizable audience. However, he is confronted with the return of his old friend Oumar, to whom he must be held accountable for betrayal.

50 years after the death of General De Gaulle, this film retraces his life, from his birth in 1890 to his burial at Colombey-Les-Deux-Eglises in 1970.

Marco Baroni spent four years in an English school. When he returns to Rome, the behavior of his family members finds him unprepared: his father, mother and sister Marzia have changed so much that they have not been recognized. He is deeply troubled by their immoral behavior.

A delightfully classic French comedy of high sophistication and light hearted wit, that in the end suffers for it. This is immensely watchable simply for the presence of Maria De Medeiros, the central two of the film are captivating. What spoils it is the stereotypical and under developed second characters and an overly wistful outlook. But I defy any man watching this film not to fall madly for Aimee and everyone will cherish the scenes between Aimee and Maurice.

A manuscript delivered to a playhouse is eventually turned into a major hit with critics and audience alike. The only problem is that no one knows who wrote it. The actress of the play receives a call from the author and the two quickly becomes friends, but the man won't give any details about himself- He has a secret.

A documentary that details the process of restoring 270 of the 520 lost films of pioneering director Georges Méliès, all orchestrated by a Franco-American collaboration between Lobster Films, the National Film Center, and the Library of Congress.

Having just lost her mother, Anna finds herself facing a nightmarish situation...a fur monster appears in her home. She will have to live with this strange being.

Ana and Yves loved each other passionately, then parted ways. Years later, their daughter Cécile made a documentary about their meeting. They meet again. Still scarred by their past love, they set out to find a way back to each other.

Lucien Mazerand, a bookseller from Châteauroux, goes to Paris to spend a few days in the French capital. At the music-hall, he discovers Stella Losange, a singer who literally enthralls him. Determined to seduce her, he is aware that a mere bookseller from the provinces stands no chance. So he resorts to a stratagem: posing for a globe-trotter who has gone through millions of adventures. The scheme works but the lady wants more : why doesn't he take her along with him so that she can share his dangerous life?

The adventurous and dangerous life of a nineteenth-century Anjou poacher hunted by the local justice system for several years. Betrayed by the woman who loved him, he is arrested and sentenced to deportation to Cayenne.

Under the German occupation, in a small French town, the arrival of a new priest arouses the interest of all women... Barny, a young communist and atheist woman, can not however be more indifferent. Driven by curiosity, the young skeptic went to the church in order to challenge this.