Discoveries from France World Cinema

Lucien is on vacation in the country with his mother and grandmother. He finally decides to write to his uncle. When his mother finds out, she explodes with rage.

In order to save the man she loves from jail, Mathilde takes his place by helping his break-out. While she exclusively relies on him to survive in this prison setting, Mathilde has not heard from him since her imprisonment. Isolated, with her son as her only support, she is now identified by the inmate number 383205-B. Will Mathilde become a convict like any other one?

A Dutch slave captain, on a voyage to Cuba, faces a revolt fomented by a newly captured African slave, Tamango. The slaves capture the captain's mistress, forcing a showdown.

Every summer, seasoned volunteers and friends Helen (67) and Peggy (64) give their all for the prestigious festival Art at Sea. This year promises to be special, as they have been assigned to scan tickets at the Hangar.

Two years after the death of Jean, Matthias, the coach, decides to take Selime, a young man from the suburbs he believes is gay, to accompany the Shiny Shrimps to the Gay Games in Tokyo, on a trip to pay tribute to their friend who left too early. But after they miss their connection, they find themselves stranded in Russia, in one of the not the most gay-friendly regions in the world. The start of a crazy adventure as incredible as it is perilous.

A disgraced political journalist placed in the soccer section, Miss Pove is asked to follow the presidential campaign in progress. The front-runner is a fifty-year-old heir to a powerful French family and a political novice. Troubled by this candidate, whom she has known to be less smooth in the past, Miss Pove embarks on an investigation that is as surprising as it is jubilant.

In a medieval castle, a dark magician thought to be Mephistopheles conjures up a series of bizarre creatures and events in order to torment a pair of interloping cavaliers.

Leaping forward twenty years, the trilogy continues with the death of Fanny's husband, Panisse, and the discovery of her secret by her son, Césariot. The young man resolves to track down his biological father, Marius, whose life has been fraught with calamity and poverty.

One night, Pierre decides to reveal his painful secret to his daughter-in-law, who's just been abandoned by her husband. Pierre's secret is about his secret love to Mathilde, the woman he left to instead follow an easier path in life.

After many years of rambling across Europe the aging Giacomo Casanova is impoverished. He wants to return to the Republic of Venice but he doesn't dare going there directly because he was a fugitive when he left. While he tries to find a way to get a pardon he meets a young lady named Marcelina. The more he shows his affection, the more ostentatiously she rejects him. Even so he doesn't give up on her because her lover Lorenzo has grave gaming debts. In return for the required money Lorenzo tells Casanova about a looming secret rendezvous with Marcelina. Moreover he lets Casanova take his place. Undercover of the night Casanova finally seduces her. Lorenzo later feels his honor was besmirched and demands satisfaction. Casanova kills him in a duel and then goes home to Venice.

Harsh Parisian judge Gaetan (known as Monsieur Maximum), chafing in the idleness of retirement, leaves for a seaside holiday. But Gabriel the chauffeur has his mind on his girl, not the car; Gaetan and wife Nathalie are stranded in the country, where they find shelter in a low class bistro patronized by cheerful jail birds. Once the ice is broken, they have a wonderful time, but as the judge tries to trick his new friends into reforming, inevitable exposure approaches...

Fred, the nephew of a senator,has murdered a Black man on a train. The two only witnesses are Lizzie McKay, a prostitute from New York, and Sidney, a colored man. Fred decides to seduce Lizzie in order to make her give false evidence according to which Sidney has attempted to rape her. The uncle also puts pressure on the young woman. After much hesitation, Lizzie finally accepts but Sidney, who has nearly got lynched, takes refuge at her home...

In 1977 France, tightfisted factory owner Robert Pujol is so shocked when his workers strike for higher wages that he suffers a heart attack. His acquiescent wife, Suzanne, whose father had founded the factory, takes over management duties during Robert's convalescence.

Police commander Simon Weiss, head of the division that supervises Paris’s demi-monde, starts out on his nightly tour of bars, discos and strip clubs, making sure once again that the owners don’t bend the rules too far. Weiss knows he’s between a rock and hard place: it’s obvious that criminal gangs run rampant in his special domain, and even more obvious that they’re protected by higher-ups in the department.

Whilst driving through rural France, Antoine Bonfils comes across a community of babas - men and women who have turned their back on the modern commercialist world and live, free of constraints, as close to nature as they can. After a tiff with his girlfriend, he decides to swap his comfortable but empty life in Paris for a new life with the babas. Adapting to the new life-style proves to be far from easy...

Zaza is a 31-year old Israeli bachelor, handsome and intelligent, and his family wants to see him married. But tradition dictates that Zaza has to choose a young virgin. She must be beautiful and from a good family, preferably rich. Zaza's parents, Yasha and Lily drag Zaza to meet potential brides and their families. Zaza has no choice. He plays along with his family, advocates of the suffocating traditions of their Georgian Jewish heritage. But Zaza always manages to somehow get out of being engaged. What his parents don't know is that Zaza is already in love. Judith is sensuous, strong and intriguing. She's also a divorcée with a 6-year-old daughter. So Zaza has kept Judith a secret from his family. He will have to choose between respect of the strict confines of family and tradition, or the love of his life.

On his wedding day, Paul is confronted by the sudden return of Joseph, a boy he lost touch with twenty years ago. The burning memories of that summer of 1983 resurface, overwhelming him with doubts about a lifetime of choices and the emotions of a forbidden love. As teenagers, their dazzling romance sparked relentless, violent homophobic harassment—until one tragic night changed their lives forever. Now, twenty years later, the past comes crashing into the present.

In the land of Chamoux, there are powerful women from the 2020s who are unable to get a raise, hyper-efficient secret agents who are unaware of their abilities, friends who listen without seeming to, and women who believe in telekinesis. There are girls who count quickly and accurately, girls who speak too softly, and girls who think too loudly. The common thread is Elise Lucide, an insatiable and sensationalist investigative reporter, a pure product of the old-school French media landscape, determined to bring viewers the purest essence of this terra incognita: female humor. From couple's life to palliative care, from schools to Comedy Clubs, Chamouxland is a journey to the limits of the post-modern, post-feminist, and post-Me-Too world.

Passengers on a low cost flight from Djerba to Beauvais have their patience tested to destruction when their departure is delayed for eight hours because of a fault with the plane's air-conditioning. In the end, they are so fed up that they will do almost anything to get back home.

A TV weather girl is torn between an older man, a famous married author whom she loves but who won't leave his wife, and a semi-deranged young heir to an industrial fortune who loves her.

An American film-star and an unknown British actress meet on set in Rome. She is angry when he refuses to speak to her journalist father, but later they have a passionate relationship.

On 2 January 1899, starting from the French Sudan, a French column under the command of the captains Voulet and Chanoine is sent against the black Sultan Rabah in what is now the Cameroon. Those captains and their African mercenary troops destroy and kill everything they find on their path. The French authorities try to stop them sending orders and a second troop but the captains kill the emissaries who reach them. Sarraounia, queen of the Aznas, have heard about the exactions. Clever in war tactics and in witchcraft, she decides to resist and stop those mad men.

A chef seeks reconciliation with her brother by helping him run a decaying resort and health spa.

A documentary on Argentinean soccer star Diego Maradona, regarded by many as the world's greatest modern player.

Tony Curtis, the man who influenced Elvis Presley and James Dean. A sex symbol, a matinee idol, a powerful and magnetic actor, Tony Curtis was the original movie star.

A young Swiss couple, Vincent and Françoise, plan to leave Geneva and settle in Africa: a friend of theirs living in Algeria promises to give them a job there.

A slice of life of a group of young working class friends in a Northern French village coming to the end of their school years and embarking upon adult life. The film follows the choices and decisions made for their futures.

February 1939. Overwhelmed by the flood of Republicans fleeing Franco's dictatorship, the French government's solution consists in confining the Spanish refugees in concentration camps where they have no other choice than to build their own shelters, feed off the horses which have carried them out of their country, and die by the hundred for lack of hygiene and water... In one of these camps, two men, separated by barbwire, will become friends. One is a guard the other is Josep Bartoli (Barcelona 1910 - New York 1995), a cartoonist who fights against the Franco regime.

In a small town in the West of France, during the German Occupation, a room is requisitioned by a Wehrmacht captain, Werner von Ebrennac. The house where he now stays is inhabited by young Jeanne, who makes a living by giving piano lessons, and by her grandfather. Quite upset, the two "hosts" decide to resist the occupier by never speaking a word to him. Now Werner is a lover of France and its culture, and he tries to persuade them that a rapprochement between Germany and France would be beneficial for the two nations. Quite unexpectedly Jeanne, little by little, falls in love with Werner. At the same time, the Francophile officer loses his illusions, realizing at last that what Nazi Germany actually wants is to thrall France and to stifle its culture...

Tintin and Captain Haddock are sent to guard Professor Calculus, who has invented a machine that can duplicate anything, and is staying in a village near the border of Syldavia and Borduria. However, an infamous and ruthless international criminal tries to lure Calculus and Tintin away by kidnapping two children, who live nearby, in order to get his clutches on the machine.

After rescuing a man from a suicide attempt, Geneviève's life is hijacked by his verbal and emotional abuse, yet she can't seem to tear herself from him.

Sebastien Nicolas is a reclusive realtor leading a double life – in his spare time he creates complex disguises based on acquaintances. Combined with minutely studied and rehearsed impersonations, Sebastien can disappear completely into other people's lives. Things spiral out of control after he impersonates the wrong man.

Drama set in the Second World War, focused on Jean Moulin, hero, martyr and symbol of the French resistance and the patriotism during the dark years of Nazi occupation.

During a war in an imaginary country, unscrupulous soldiers recruit poor farmers with promises of an easy and happy life. Two of these farmers write to their wives of their exploits.

Amidst a period of unprecedented world events, an eighteen-year-old girl’s life is placed on hold. Isolated in her bedroom, she falls under the spell of the mysterious vlogger Patricia Coma. As time carries on, the lines between her dreams, fears, hopes, and reality begin to blur into one another.

A truck driver ventures into the Moroccan desert to retrieve a stolen truck, facing danger, bad luck, and uneasy alliances. Chaos builds to a climactic showdown.

After getting painfully separated from the woman he loves, Julien leaves his apartment. He goes in search of his old friends but no one is to be found and the city is silent.

Juliette goes back in her hometown to spend some time with her family. She finds herself between a loving but moody father, a New Age mother, a sister in the midst of an existential crisis, and a grandmother slowly losing her mind. Buried memories and family secrets rise to the surface in this sweet, tender and sometimes extravagant family portrait.

A drunken, self-destructive woman called Betty wanders into a Parisian bar where she meets middle-aged alcoholic Laure. Laure decides to take care of Betty. Recovering in a hotel room, Betty begins to recount to Laure the story of her bourgeois life and her unhappy and unfaithful marriage.

Paris, France, December 1946. Jenny Lamour, an ambitious cabaret singer, and Maurice, her extremely jealous pianist husband, become involved in the thorough investigation of the murder of a shady businessman, led by Antoine, a peculiar and methodical police inspector.

What makes life worth living? In a set of interconnected stories, several Paris residents see their lives turned upside down when death knocks at their door: a narcissistic Italian opera singer wakes up at the morgue only to realise her own passing came unnoticed; a British stuntman finds himself questioning his own profession when his son suffers an accident; an eccentric elderly Colombian woman makes a pact with death itself... While each character strives to reconnect with what matters most, the city of light, love and endless possibility shines brighter than ever.

A successful playwright reflects on his journey from his Armenian roots to adapting in France, forty years after his family's move to Marseilles. He now goes by a new name to fit in better with French society.

In Louis Malle's lauded drama, Lucien Lacombe is a young man living in rural France during World War II who seeks to join the French Resistance. When he is rejected due to his youth, the resentful Lucien allies himself with the Nazis and joins the Gallic arm of their Gestapo. Lucien grows to enjoy the power that comes with his position, but his life is complicated when he falls for France Horn, a beautiful young Jewish woman.

Grandson of a legendary rugby player, son of a legendary rugby player, and he himself a legendary rugby player, Jo Canavero raises his only son, Tom, in a small village in the Tarn region. To the great displeasure of Jo, thirteen-year-old Tom is as good at math as he is useless on the rugby field. For a Canavero, the legend can't stop there, even if it means setting up a rugby team specifically for Tom, despite the wishes of the whole village and of Tom himself.

Alex, aka DJ Wethu, is a star of the night world. On the verge of burnout, he plays concerts all over the world... Until the day when, in the middle of a festival in Morocco, Alex takes a bad fall and falls off the stage. Immobilized on the spot during his convalescence, he is placed under the vigilance of Abdel, who dreams of becoming an assistant nurse. The problem is that he is not quite! An unexpected encounter, to say the least...

A companion to the director's Le Dos Rouge/Portrait of the Artist. A famous filmmaker works on his next film, which will focus on monstrosity. He is obsessed by the idea of finding a painting that will be central to the film and will crystallize all the power and beauty of monsters.

A Parisian criminal gang fall apart after challenges to the gang's leader lessen his influence.

Paris, France, during the First World War. While thousands of soldiers die every day on the battlefields, Henri Landru, a seemingly respectable furniture dealer, married and father of four children, relentlessly feeds his own sinister factory of death.

Childhood pals Dog and Mirales live in a little village in the south of France and spend their days just hanging out. To kill time, Mirales has got into the habit of teasing Dog mercilessly. But this summer is different: Dog meets Elsa and romance blossoms.

Gaëtan Chataigner has been filming his friend Philippe Katerine for nearly thirty years. The director revisits all these accumulated images in an attempt to understand how and why his artist friend became such a phenomenon. By following him step by step, sometimes questioning him, listening to his loved ones, he weaves a touching, funny, and moving portrait of this unique artist.

A stodgy, married schoolteacher has a chance encounter with a free spirited young woman who loosens him up and introduces him to a hippie lifestyle.

A village in the South of France, 1960. A band of country boys aged 7 to 14, led by fearless young Lebrac, wages an uncompromising battle against their sworn rivals, the kids from the neighboring village. A war of honor and allegiance that's been kept alive for generations, in which humiliation is the most fearsome defeat and no tactic is too extreme, including attacking the enemy stark naked!

Mrs. Géquil is an eccentric teacher despised by her colleagues and students. On a stormy night, she is struck by lightning and faints. When she wakes up, she feels different. Will she now be able to keep the powerful and dangerous Mrs. Hyde contained?

On the eve of a future-defining championship, promising 17-year-old volleyball player Sofia is faced with an unwanted pregnancy. Seeking an illegal termination, she becomes the target of a fundamentalist group determined to stop her at any cost – but neither Sofia nor those who love her are willing to surrender to the blind fervor of the swarm.

Thirty-four year old Ramsès has established himself as a clairvoyant in La Goutte d’Or, Paris. A shrewd manipulator and something of a poet, he built a sound business consoling people. Elusive and dangerous youths, freshly arrived from the streets of Tangier, disrupt his business and the whole neighbourhood. Until the day Ramses has an actual vision.

On election night in 1981, celebrations spill out onto the street and there is an air of hope and change throughout Paris. But for Elisabeth, her marriage is coming to an end and she will now have to support herself and her two teenage children. She finds work at a late-night radio show and encounters a troubled teenager named Talulah whom she invites into her home.

A young student decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him.

After a devastating earthquake, Nga, an old elephant and probably the last of its species, and Sanra, his mahout, are about to embark on a journey to find the mythical elephant’s graveyard. The group of poachers following them will die one after the other under mysterious circumstances and spells.

Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.