Discoveries from France World Cinema

A film based on an original concept by John Galliano and directed by Sasha Kasiuha. Founded in the proposition that opened the 2024 Artisanal Show in January 2024 – “Would you like to take a walk with me, offline?” – the cinematic experience elucidates and elaborates the haute couture collection for posterity. In a fast-paced culture, it serves as an articulated desire to be present in the moment, and in the memory; values key to Maison Margiela.

A provincial ingenue leaves her mother’s tobacco shop with dreams of a life in the Parisian theater, only to become entangled in relationships with a lecherous aristocrat, his starry-eyed nephew, and an old ham actor.

Mikael is doctor on night call. It’s a vocation. Between two patient-visits in slum areas, he cares for those whom no one else wants to see: the drug addicts, the homeless… He rubs shoulders with destitution. His life is in shambles. Especially when it comes to his pharmacist cousin who makes him write false prescriptions for Subutex. Overnight, he decides to get out of drug trafficking and rebuild his life. But there will be a heavy price to pay.

Van Hekken, an old gangster, arrives in Tokyo to direct a bank hold-up in order to get a very valuable diamond.

Nothing gets by Simone, even though she's blind. An adorable, incredibly precocious ten-year-old girl, Simone sets herself the task of coping with (and sometimes manipulating) the many offbeat charact... read more ers that surround her- including her broken-hearted father, an aging anarchist beekeeper, a beloved and asthmatic quasi-mother-in-law, a priest in the midst of a crisis of faith, and a biker with a wandering heart, for whom she has unconditional love. And then, of course, there's the village in which she lives, where everyone knows your business and makes it their own. No wonder Simone feels that she lives her life like a reel of film jumping in the sprockets of a projector. Life is strange and complicated enough, and then an aviator falls from the sky, threatening everything Simone loves the most.

The film, set in 1912, is about the exploits of France's first motorized police brigade.

A small-time hood brings the attention of the law with an insurance scam and diamond theft, but things become even more interesting when his moll murders him and is slammed behind bars where she faces all manner of electric shock treatments to various parts of her anatomy

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.

Mercato takes us behind the scenes of today's soccer, a global industry with interests running into billions. Driss, a player agent, has seven days to save his skin before the end of the mercato...

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.

1965, Bob Denard, even early in his career, Battle in Congo. It strives to make its game in the middle of a bloody civil war fueled by rivalry and ambition postcolonial of a newcomer on the African scene: General Mobutu.

Alma, alone in her big townhouse, and Mina, a single mother from a housing project in another city, have organized their lives around the prison visits they make to their respective partners. When the two women meet in the room outside the visiting area, an unlikely friendship begins...

Hèdre is queen but doesn't love the king. She prefers his son Hippolytus, whom he had from a first marriage, to Theseus. A guilty love, hidden by feigned hatred, that makes her suffer and perish, and that she can't keep from confessing as soon as she hears of the king's death. But Hippolyte doesn't love her. And the monarch is only wounded. Ashamed, the queen can no longer look at him. Oenone, her confidante, tries to save her by making the king believe that the outrage comes from his son. Fanned by Theseus, the fury of the gods strikes Hippolytus. The adulteress kills herself.

Jeanne, a brilliant architect has a new assignment: renovate the sumptuous Daguerre mansion owned by an eccentric family, head of a Board Game empire. When the landlord and patriarch Cesar is found dead, everyone present becomes a suspect. Suddenly Jeanne’s mission turns intoa life-size investigation to expose the murderer...

When Marc, with the help of a juvenile court judge, is old enough to leave thewelfare system, he leaves mainland France for French Guiana to try and find the only relative he knows, his grandfather, who was deported to the penal colony of this French overseas territory. During his odyssey, he meets Françoise, a young woman with whom he falls in love, and experiences many adventures.

John - conscientious and romantic - and Michael - thoughtless and unfaithful - are surgeons at their father’s private hospital. John felt madly in love with Priscilla, a wonderful nurse. But he is betrayed by Michael who decides to marry her. Shattered by his loss, John moves to Canada. But Michael’s new project to dedicate the clinic to plastic surgery leads them to bankruptcy, forcing John to come back in the hope of saving the clinic...

Martine Bressac is released from a psychiatric clinic after a year's treatment and is driven home by her chauffeur, Mathias. She is welcomed by the demented hunchbacked gardener Malou and the mute servant girl Adèle, and impatiently demands the key to her mysterious private chamber. There, set out like exhibits in a waxwork, are the bodies of beautiful girls frozen in postures of terror on the point of death. With Mathias' help, Martine has just added another girl, a prostitute, to her collection when her husband and accomplice, Charles, arrives home with slides of a further prospective victim: Cécile the virginal daughter of a diplomat...

It is Christmas Eve. Separated from her young son, Helly struggles for money. A solitary man, Didier pays her to play his fiancée for the night. But the act comes to a tragic end. Left stunned, Helly meets Marie, who takes her in, on her way to the coast. There they encounter Chris. All three will end the night together. It’s their last move in joy and perdition.

The movie starts with an interview with director Claude Lelouch. He pleads viewers not to disclose the plot of the movie after leaving the projection room. Even the movie's trailer shows only a long sequence of faces gazing speechlessly in space. "Like all my movies, this one is about a man and a woman", says Lelouch in the interview.

François, a young thirty-year-old Asian, has not been back in his family for 10 years after a violent dispute with his father Meng. Since then, he has always tried to avoid questions about his origins, until he lies to believe that he has been adopted. But when he learns that he is going to be a father, he realizes that he will have to reconnect with his past and his origins. Pushed by his companion Sophie, he decides to reconnect with his family and returns to his XIIIth native district to announce the good news, accompanied by his best friend Bruno. François is welcomed with open arms by his family, with the exception of his father and his younger brother. The return to his community is not going to be so simple .

Stockholm Syndrome. Feelings arise between a young kidnapper and his victim, a woman surgeon. He seeks revenge for a medical accident that prevents him from living peacefully and decides to kidnapp the woman he holds responsible. When the latter manage to escape, she can't stop to meet her kidnapper again, for reasons of love and of vengeance.

American actor-director Arnold Barkus made this low-budget French film, a comedy set in New York, with scenes taking place in Chinatown, in a Franco-Greek cabaret, and on the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn-born Max suspects his girlfriend Sophia has been cheating on him. His French pal Jean and a young woman, Vita, step in with a scheme to get back at Sophia, a character who is never seen during the entire film. Included is a parody of the Russian roulette scene from The Deer Hunter (1978).

An elderly gentleman and his dog find themselves out of a home with little means.

A group of friends who have known each other for many years meet at Max and Lucie's house to celebrate Lucie's birthday. When they arrive, the three guests discover Max kneeling in front of the body of his wife who has been murdered. He is sure that the police will charge him because everything accuses him. Convinced of his innocence, his friends decide to give him an alibi. But the investigation tightens around Max.

Pierre Esteban is a middle-aged technology teacher, divorced from Hélène, who has two children. Jeanne Lancry is a lively estate agent in the same situation : a divorcée with two children. They discover they love visiting empty apartments together and...more than just that! Life would be just wonderful if they were fifteen years earlier. But there are the children. It would be fine to live altogether in the same place. The question is : will the kids get on well with each other?

François and Charlotte directed together a gourmet hotel and restaurant on the edge of the sea, but their marital relationship is not fixed beauty: obsessive hard, Francis wants his first star in the Michelin Guide while Charlotte, at the dawn of the quarantine, dreams of a first child. This already complicated situation will literally explode the day where Charlotte's first husband, Alex, disembarked in their lives while everyone believed him dead in the terrible tsunami of 2004...

How a young and wild tomboy Tunisian girl became a great actress by accident. Claudia Cardinale : the fanciful destiny of a paradoxical movie star, who appeared in Federico Fellini's, Luchino Visconti's, Blake Edwards' and Sergio Leone's films.

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

Fifteen-year-old Iris finds herself alone at home one evening when her boyfriend, Romain, pays her a surprise visit. What seemed like a tender and romantic evening turns out to be quite the opposite…

Using fossilized DNA, a scientist resurrects one of nature's most fearsome predators, a sabretooth tiger. Scientific ambition turns deadly, however, when the creature escapes and begins savagely stalking its prey - the human race.

25 years of the life of Marie, a Parisian party girl, first teenager leaving her mother at 17, then short star of the song, and finally mother of a teenage girl, Esther, who flees as she fled her mother.

François Cardinaud is one of the richest shipowners in the region. But this success arouses resentment and jealousy. When Marthe, his wife, leaves the home without warning, Cardinaud sees her life cracking little by little.

1915, Sarah Bernhardt is the world's first star. Free. Modern. Divine. Eccentric. Visionary... Between legend and fantasy, Sarah Bernhardt tells us the love story that marked her life.

A journey in the company of Bernadette Lafont, French Cinema’s most atypical actress. Tracing her career from pin-up girl, to New Wave model of sexual freedom, to drug-dealing granny in the film Paulette, by way of La Fiancée du Pirate and Les Stances à Sophie, this film pays tribute to her extraordinary life and artistic odyssey. Her grand-daughters, Anna, Juliette and Solène, revisit the dreams of Bernadette, in the family home in the Cevennes region where they, like her, grew up. Her close friends, Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon, reminisce on their artistic and human complicity. Throughout the film, Bernadette Lafont in person, with her inimitable character actress voice, re-evokes a life in cinema marked with insolence, courage and freedom.

Competitive bodybuilder Léa Pearl is preparing to compete for the prestigious Miss Heaven title. Her coach, Al, a former bodybuilding star, hopes that, thanks to Léa, he will be back in the spotlight once again. But at the last minute, Léa's ex arrives with their son Joseph, who she hasn't seen in four years.

Four young friends share the carefree, cheerfulness, laughter and dances of Bohemian life. Rodolphe the painter, Alexandre Chaunard the composer, Colline the philosopher, as well as Marcel and his friend Musette. Mimi, a romantic young girl, falls in love with Rodolphe.

The young and patriotic student Demachy joins the French army in 1914 to defend his country. But he and his comrades soon experience the terrifying, endless trench war in Champagne, where more and more wooden crosses have to be erected for this cannon fodder.

The story of a lively and curious kitten who is bored in his life as a domestic cat in Paris. His fate changes when ten-year-old Clémence takes him to her country house at the heart of the Vosges. Thus begins an extraordinary adventure through the wilderness for Clémence and Rroû...

A poor relative, cousin Bette is cast aside by a wealthy family. Embittered and jealous, she devotes herself to the systematic destruction of those around her. Max de Rieux's adaptation takes the decision to return to the initial meeting of the Hulot couple as if to show the degradation of the pure feelings and sublime aspirations of youth in bloody competition and irresistible perversion in materialist society.

Set near the end of World War II in the Netherlands, Dirty Heroes concerns a group of ex-convicts recruited into the U.S. Army to recover Dutch jewels originally stolen by the Nazis as well as confiscated Allied plans

Paris, a working-class neighborhood in the 19th arrondissement. Shaï and Djeneba are 19 years old and have been friends since childhood. One is burdened by an overbearing family. The other by deep loneliness. Over the course of a summer, they work as counselors at a summer camp, far from the tower blocks where they grew up—no longer quite children, yet officially responsible for a group of kids aged 6 to 10. On the cusp of adulthood, they will have to make choices to grow up and reinvent their friendship.

Henry Dunant, son of a Geneva francophone upper class bourgeoisie family, works for a Swiss exploitation company in French Algeria; when the colonists are thirsty, he returns determined to convince the firm and emperor Napoleon III to build a dam for them. After his Uncle, Dr. Hubert Dunant, diagnoses him not with Algerian typhus, just malaria, also his first meeting -dropping drawers in hospital for a shot- with nurse Cécile Thuillier, and meeting his careerist brother Daniel's fiancée, Léonie Bourg-Thibourg, daughter of the firm's boss, the board approves his plan. On his way to the emperor, who didn't even concede to receive him, Henry gets stuck in Castiglione, part of the Austrian province Lombardy which French troops came to 'liberate'; his Geneva friend Dr. Louis Appia saves his life by presenting him to suspicious Austrian troops as his medical assistant...

A well known Parisian inspector becomes involved in an investigation while on holiday.

After a traumatic accident during a hypnosis seance, young psychiatrist Louise opens a new office in the middle of nowhere. When she starts analyzing Theo, a dark and mysterious man, people around her start to die.

Paulina is a young lawyer with a promising career in Buenos Aires, who chooses to go back to her home town. Her father, Fernando, is a well known judge. Against his will, Paulina decides to teach in a suburban high school as part of an inclusion program. One night, after the second week working there, she's brutally assaulted by a gang. With the disapproval of the people around her, she decides to go back to work, in the neighborhood where she was attacked, without realizing that her attackers may be even closer than she thought.

The battle of the sexes? The forces of despair and seduction? On S. Miguel in the Azores, Rogério, a young man with old money, and his enigmatic wife Leonor host a garden party at their villa. The intriguing guests are an older unmarried couple, the philosophical and observant Irene, and Michel, a roué. While Rogério and Irene talk, Michel and Leonor go down to the sea. The conversations upset Rogério and capture Leonor's imagination. Five years later, the four dine at the villa. Michel and Leonor again leave the other two. Intentions and undercurrents are subtle. One of the four proves strong, one weak, and two must choose. Wind and rain bring down the curtain on both acts.

The film is set in a modern war, probably between a European country and a country in the Far East. Behind the battle lines, in a medical unit, a surgeon falls in love with an idealistic nurse after an initially difficult meeting.

After World War II, a small French village struggles to put the war behind as the controlling Communist Party tries to flush out Petain loyalists. The local bar owner, a simple man who likes to write poetry, who only wants to be left alone to do his job, becomes a target for Communist harassment as they try and locate a particular loyalist, and he pushes back.

A sexy model pretends to have a new boyfriend in a wacky plan to make her ex-lover jealous.

Four-episode Franco-Italian omnibus film. Four men from different national and cultural background take refuge in a cabin after being sidetracked by bad weather on their way to conference.

In 1914, with Italy on the cusp of joining World War I, a group of foreign artists establishes a commune on the rural island of Capri, catching the attention of young Lucia, a local illiterate shepherdess who soon falls under their spell.

In their transparent house facing the ocean, Georges draws boats and Aline sculpts debris. A violent argument at sea. She wakes up in the hospital, convinced she has killed him. Meanwhile, more dead than alive, he takes in a Japanese woman and her son who are fleeing the man who is tormenting them. Soon, it is Georges who must face the furious and mysterious Japanese man... Back home, Aline finds a body washed up by the sea. Has Georges turned into a Japanese man? A story of love and ghosts.

Paris is prey to an invisible terror against which the police can do nothing: a sinister organization that sows chaos and death. The intrepid journalist Philippe Guérande and his partner embark on a long crusade to put an end to the crimes of the Great Vampire and Irma Vep, his dangerous accomplice. (A ten episode movie serial.)

Composed entirely of literary quotations from many different sources and from several historical periods, the loose narrative concerns a drifter found by a rich woman who soon falls in love with him. A drowning accident takes place and the drifter dies, but some time later he reappears in the woman’s life looking for a job. Or could it be the man’s twin brother?

Leftist radical-turned-terrorist Giorgio—hiding out in Latin America since the 1970s—turns himself in as soon as the Berlin Wall falls. Wishing to lead a comfortable, bourgeois life in his native Italy, he cuts a deal with a dirty cop, getting his sentence reduced in return for ratting former comrades out. Once released, Giorgio obsessively pursues his dream of becoming an upright citizen, but his old police aquaintance keeps dragging him down...

The yacht of millionaire Hellmann explodes in the Mediterranean Sea, with him and 8 men crew on board. Insurance agent Lucas investigates at the Cote D'Azur, because there's the suspicion that it could have been suicide. He finds out that Hellmann's villa was monitored, the tapes also contain information about the explosion. He uses them for blackmail.

Early new wave effort from Rohmer, which was the first of his six moral tales. It concerns a young man who approaches a girl in the street, but after several days without seeing her again, he becomes involved with the girl in the local bakery. Eventually, he has to choose between them when he arranges dates with them on the same day.

Laurent and Sophie called on Gagu, the home furniture assembly specialist, to assemble the crib for little Lea, who is due in a few weeks, in just one hour. But Laurent and Sophie didn't opt for the automatic delivery option, and their "GaguMan" ends up spending more than an hour at their home...

In one continuous shot, SHTTL shows the lives, loves, and inner conflicts within a Yiddish speaking shtetl on the border between Ukraine and Poland - one day before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.