Discoveries from France World Cinema

Two men pull off a daring daylight payroll heist in Milan, making a fast getaway. One is returning to France after years in hiding, needing money to start fresh with his family.

The year is 2048, and global warming has flooded much of Earth's land areas. A father and his two sons try to salvage treasures from sunken buildings when they are given an important assignment by the New Vatican.

The red moon threatens our existence on earth. Our only hope is the enigmatic Paul WR, the most talented astronaut of its generation. But few hours before the start of the mission, Paul disappears.

Marianne Winckler relocates to the port city of Caen in order to pass herself off as a member of a large community of itinerant workers desperate to make ends meet. She gains employment as a cleaner on a ferry travelling between Ouistreham and Portsmouth, recording the drudgery of the work she and her colleagues are required to do.

French border cop José Fernandez has just one last extradition to do before his long-awaited promotion to the crime bureau. But his detainee Akim, victim of a judiciary glitch, is outraged to find himself saddled with the identity of a potential terrorist and put on a flight back to Kabul, where he has never even set foot before! What starts as a routine trip for Fernandez and his skirt-chasing partner Guy goes haywire when their plane is grounded in Malta, forcing them to bunk up with Akim, who will stop at nothing to avoid extradition!

A young composer moves from Berlin to the island of Ibiza and begins a friendship with an elderly woman whose painful past has caused her to reject everything to do with Germany, including her native language.

Russia, 1870. A group of young anarchist revolutionaries set out to overthrow the Czarist regime through violence. Their attacks create a climate of psychosis and mutual distrust among the population, but in reality, both revolutionaries and repressors are being manipulated by a diabolical individual.

A collection of sketches that tells the story of prostitution through the ages.

Two cops portrayed by Michelin Men chase an armed Ronald McDonald through the streets of a fictionalized, stylized city.

A sophisticated and beautifully constructed account of landscape change in and around Paris in the early 1960s. The film raises complex issues about the meaning and experience of modern landscapes and the enigmatic characteristics of features such as canals, pylons and deserted factories. Rohmer also explores the role of landscape within different traditions of modern art and design and refers to specific architects, artists and engineers.

In Iran’s remote nomadic landscape, a family navigates their traditional existence in a modern world. When their sheep vanish overnight, tensions rise between the three sons and their parents.

Franck is a firefighter in Paris. He saves people. He lives at the station with his wife, who is about to have twins. He’s happy. During a call out to a fire, he puts himself in danger, to save his men. He’s going to have to learn to live again and accept to be the one being saved, this time.

Depuis peu Eric Vincent, trentenaire sans histoire, a un fort sentiment de malaise. Est-ce la peur d'avoir un enfant ou celle de voir brutalement resurgir le fantôme d'un père qu'il n'a jamais connu ? Un matin, un inconnu l'appelle pour lui proposer de récupérer les cendres de son père. D'abord réticent, il finit par accepter et se retrouve plongé au coeur d'une machination infernale.

At the end of the Spanish civil war, Fando, a boy of about ten, tries to make sense of war and his father's arrest. His mother is religious, sympathetic to the Fascists; his father is accused of being a Red. Fando discovers that his mother may have aided in his father's arrest. Sometimes we witness Fando imagining explanations for what's going on; sometimes we see him at play, alone or with his friend Thérèse. Oedipal fantasies and a lad's natural curiosity about sex and death mix with his search for his mother's nature and his father's fate. Will Fando survive the search?

At Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, a beautician on her way to a new job in Mexico accidentally meets a cook who is on his way back from America. Labor strikes, bad weather, and pure luck cause the two of them to share a room overnight at the airport Hilton hotel. Will their initial mutual indifference and downright hostility turn into a one night stand or perhaps something more?

A foundling, raised in the circus, Sam Lion becomes a businessman after a trapeze accident. However, when he reaches fifty and becomes tired of his responsibilities and of his son Jean-Philippe, he decides to disappear at sea. However, he runs into Albert Duvivier, one of his former employees. He comes to realise that he has ignored the important things in his life.

Lucie, a young dancer suffers an accident. When she wakes up from a coma, she and her partner start training for a dance show. On the way, she starts looking for her estranged father, a path that might lead her to life-changing love.

When bestselling novelist Betty Fisher loses her young son in a tragic accident, her unstable mother resorts to unusual actions to alleviate Betty's grief, actions which set off a chain reaction among a promiscuous waitress and her criminal associates.

When Daniel and Isabelle invite Patrick and his new flame, Emma, to dinner, it’s with some misgivings. After all, Patrick has just dumped his ex-wife — their best friend — to run off with a much younger woman. But when the ravishing Emma appears, all of Daniel’s qualms fly out of the window. He’s instantly smitten with the seductive woman...

An old aristocrat, short of money, who does not accept the new world ruled by the bourgeois class ,epitomized by the industrialist and by the doctor who finally grabs the the aristocrat's castle which soon will be turned into a hospital.

Two mismatched cops team up to investigate the murder of a business mogul's wife.

Race driver who has lost his membership card becomes the chauffeur of a gangsters pack

Eager to find a better life abroad, a Senegalese woman becomes a mere governess to a family in southern France, suffering from discrimination and marginalization.

Two less-than-splendid members of the judicial police of Perpignan arrive in the small town of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines to watch over activities at the local gem market fair. In investigating a seemingly trivial matter, they stumble onto a potentially bigger criminal network.

A failed 40 year old comedian wants to organize the first Black protests in France but meeting with other French celebrities of the Black community will make it a whole new adventure.

When Ilan Halimi is kidnapped for ransom because Jewish and supposedly rich, his family and the police start a race against time to save him from the tortures of the "gang of barbarians".

A businessman with a compulsive gambling problem which has led to his wife leaving him, travels to Reno, Nevada for some gambling therapy which takes a turn when he picks up a psychotic serial killer posing as a hitchhiker.

In the immense jungle that is the city of Casablanca, young Leila seeks to make her voice heard amid the tumult. A fervent supporter of the Casablanca Olympic Club, she is the first woman to run a supporters' club in an environment where power is exclusively in the hands of men.

Somewhere between Montmartre and Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Jean-Jacques Sempé and René Goscinny lean over a large white sheet of paper and bring to life a mischievous and endearing boy, Little Nicolas. From schoolyard games and fights to summer camp pranks and camaraderie, Nicolas lives a merry and enriching childhood – and brings friendship and newfound life to his creators, too.

Vincent and Nefeli just moved in together. They're best friends and swore to never fall in love again. That is until Vincent meets Julie.

A middle-class house in the middle of nowhere. A council estate in Sète. A mother and daughter. Two childhood friends. A vanishing. Blackmail. A clash between two worlds.

Michel is a bored, lonely, cheap-thrills-seeker. Everything changes when he finds an unusual bobble head doll in the shape of a pretty woman that can say "I love you" and falls in love with it to the point of obsession.

An anthology of four historical love affairs: at Versailles, Louis XIV shares his mistress with one of his subjects; a courtesan tries to disfigure her lover with acid; a medieval wife faces the wrath of her husband's father, who has her condemned to death; and a stage actress provides advice on life and love to her young colleague.

Michele is an MP for the Italian Communist Party who loses his memory in a car crash, though hardly anyone around him seems to notice. During a crucial water polo match on the eve of election day, he gradually begins to remember his past life, revealing a man whose personal and political identity crisis mirrors that of Italian communism itself.

A mysterious writer is involved in a love affair with his stepson's wife, leading to a web of intrigue and desire.

Mélanie Prouvost, a ten-year-old butcher's daughter, is a gifted pianist. That is why she and her parents decide that she sit for the Conservatory entrance exam. Although Mélanie is very likely to be admitted, she unfortunately gets distracted by the president of the jury's offhand attitude and she fails. Ten years later, Mélanie becomes her page turner, waiting patiently for her revenge.

Insurance broker Max's life is about one thing - keeping his walnut brain tumour in check. He eats properly, exercises and lives properly, but all of this self-consciousness makes him more and more depressed. When he realises that his beloved wife plans to leave him, he decides to take his own life.

A brilliant and determined female engineer is approached by a network of powerful women with an offer to help become the head of a CAC 40 firm. The conguest, which was at first thrilling, turns to complete war with the men who still dominate.

A little boy, obsessed with blindness and violence, slowly gets trapped in his own delusions.

Pierre is the highly successful CEO of a large family-owned company. Before signing the deal of the century, he has to settle one last formality: obtain the signature of his cousin Adrien who owns 50% of his firm. This sweet, idealistic dreamer, who makes one blunder after another, is so happy to see Pierre again that he wants to spend time with him and delay the moment of signing. So Pierre has no choice but to take his cousin with him on a turbulent business trip during which his patience will be put to the test.

The professional and emotional cross-currents between two romantically entwined theater actors played by the director’s son Louis and Anna Mouglalis.

Manga tries to tell his parents he is gay and in love with Sory, another twenty-year-old. His parents don't believe him and his mother attempts witchcraft.

Héloïse has nowhere to go. She meets Mallorie, who offers to let her stay in the flat she shares with two other young women. Héloïse finds a new home and a new family there. But their past wounds threaten the fragile balance between these women who appear so strong on the surface.

An experimental movie based on a poem of the French writer and director Jean Cocteau about a servant who fantasises about killing the lady of the house.

What happens to people, ethics, and morality when alcohol and capitalism are unleashed in a poor, corrupt country with few restrictions?

Nadine is a French young woman. Fausto is an Italian young man trying to make it in Paris as a restaurant waiter. They accidentally meet at a five-star hotel. Both are fragile, alone and obsessed with the idea of an unattainable happiness. Their intense love is challenged by their own individual ambition and desperation.

A young woman passionate about reading immerses herself in the adventures of a fictional character who makes reading her profession. As she explores different neighborhoods and wintertime Provence, her imagination blends with reality, revealing the mysteries behind each word.

When Blanche meets Grégoire, she thinks she has found the one. The ties that bind them grow quickly, and a passionate affair ensues. Together, they relocate. For Blanche, far from her family, from her twin sister, Rose, a new life begins. But little by little, she finds herself caught in the grip of a deeply possessive and dangerous man.

The story of a rabbi and his talking cat, a sharp-tongued feline philosopher brimming with scathing humor and a less than pure love for the rabbi's teenage daughter.

Patrick is a tenacious lawyer specializing in environmental law. France is a schoolteacher who becomes an activist after her husband develops cancer from exposure to a pesticide. Mathias is an ambitious lobbyist working for an international chemical corporation. The paths of these characters collide as the lives of thousands are affected by a tragic act that sparks a powerful movement while the corporation fights to prevent the truth from being revealed.

After discovering a fragment of a Phoenician amphora while in Corsica, 25-year-old scuba diver Gerard goes hunting for a treasure Troilus is alleged to have lost in the sea following the Peloponnesian War. His meeting with the lightkeeper's beautiful daughter Manina jeopardises his goals.

At a wedding where the husband runs away, everyone has his own story to tell about the trivial misfortune of a person in love with someone that slips away. The guests paint a full picture of clumsiness, lies, and bad luck, that makes impossible, whatever the age, all attempts of seduction... or close enough !

A muggy Saigon, late 1945. Stationed at a military camp in French Indochina, two young men--Robert and André--become close friends as they share the boredom and excitement of waiting for their first mission. But when they discover that instead of freeing Indochina from foreign aggressors, they will be fighting natives struggling for independence, their friendship is jeopardized.

After decades abroad, Iona returns to her childhood home on Fiji, sensing that there she might find the answers to many questions she has about civilisation and its discontent.

Aurore has separated, just lost her job, and learns that she is going to be a grandmother.

Elba island, 1814. Martino is a young teacher, idealist and strongly anti Napoleon, in love with the beautiful and noble Baroness Emily. The young man finds himself serving as librarian to the Great Emperor in exile, whom he deeply hates, yet soon begins recording Napoleon's memoirs, getting to know and learning to value the man behind the myth. Among seductions and affairs, expectations and fears, he will craft a precise portrait that nevertheless will not manage to hide a final, inevitable, disappointment.

In 1942, in an occupied Paris, the apolitical grocer Edmond Batignole lives with his wife and daughter in a small apartment in the building of his grocery. When his future son-in-law and collaborator of the German Pierre-Jean Lamour calls the Nazis to arrest the Jewish Bernstein family, they move to the confiscated apartment. Some days later, the young Simon Bernstein escapes from the Germans and comes to his former home. When Batignole finds him, he feels sorry for the boy and lodges him, hiding Simon from Pierre-Jean and also from his wife. Later, two cousins of Simon meet him in the cellar of the grocery. When Pierre-Jean finds the children, Batignole decides to travel with the children to Switzerland.

Right in the middle of a school inspector’s visit, Ari, a 27-year-old student teacher, collapses. Angry with him for being a failure, his father kicks him out of the house. Emotionally raw, and alone in the city, Ari reluctantly forces himself to rekindle his relationships with old friends. As his memories of the previous months successively ebb and flow, Ari discovers that other people aren’t doing as well as he imagined, and that perhaps he has been sleepwalking through his own life.