Explore TV Series

The animated adventures of Bastian Balthazar Bux in the enchanted storybook world of Fantasia.

A collection of feature-length stories featuring beautiful, innocent heroines who regularly find themselves in danger, prey to passionate dramas, machinations or sadists with a fair share of false leads and twists and turns.

At the battle of Solferino Joseph von Trotta, a lieutenant in the Slovenian infantry, is wounded while saving the life of the young Austrian Emperor Franz-Joseph I. The Emperor rewards him by elevating him in society to a position quite out of keeping with his social rank, and which entirely alienates him from his farming background: Joseph gets promoted to the rank of captain, and is made a member of the nobility. Years later Joseph von Trotta accidentally finds a description of the battle that changed his life in a text-book belonging to his son Franz. Enraged at the over-emotional, patriotic and sentimental way in which the Emperor's rescue at the hands of "the Hero of Solferino" is depicted, he lodges a complaint at the Imperial Court.

It all begins when Lucien Lachenay (André Dussollier), famous builder of the moving sidewalk for the 1900 Universal Exhibition, saves the life of the beautiful Alice Avellano (Kristin Scott Thomas), whom her husband, who has gone mad, was trying to strangle. Lucien Lachenay is himself threatened by a group of anarchists who have instructed a young worker, Alphonse (Benno Fürmann), to suppress him. Alphonse messes up the job, but Lucien, impressed by his inexhaustible energy and thirst for knowledge, agrees to be his mentor instead of handing him over to the police. In the years that follow, Lucien, Alphonse, Alice and the young and attractive Laure (Isabelle Carré) will face the game of rivalry, betrayal and reconciliation.

La Rivière Espérance is a French TV series, 9 episodes of 90 minutes each, directed by Josée Dayan based on the novel by Christian Signol and shown in 1995 on France 2.