Cavaliers Seuls

Final film of Jean Rochefort.

Like every year, Inès takes the train to Mont-de-Marsan to spend a week's holiday with her grandmother. But this time around, things do not happen as usual. First, Granny is late to the appointment outside the station. And when she finally arrives, she looks strange, seems to have difficulty in finding her way back home and mostly seems to be hiding something for her granddaughter...

Short film release

After a bull is killed in a bullfight, its body parts are transported across Spain, France, Italy and Belgium. The bull's parts fall into the wide variety of people, including: an Italian actress selling the bones in a supermarket promotion, a Spanish woman who dines on its steaks, a little girl in France who imagines a world where animals are much larger than humans, and a taxidermist whose wife is simultaneously giving birth to quintuplets.

The Aviron Bayonnais is a rugby team having a streak of bad luck. Even though they fight relentlessly, they keep losing. One day, though, things change. Everything seems to be possible again. But will the team be able to keep up the momentum? Delphine Gleize films this sports odyssey with humour and passion. She is the only woman in the locker room and the men talk to her as if she were one of them. Through her camera, getting close while keeping an observational distance, the filmmaker manages to capture elements that define and clarify male bonds and relationships.

David, a professor of dermatology, has been treating 13-year-old Romain since he was a baby. Afflicted with a rare skin condition, Romain must avoid sunlight and is condemned to live in the shade. David and Romain have become the closest of friends and nothing can separate them. But then David learns that he is about to be transferred to another clinic in another town. How will he be able to break the news to Romain? And how will Romain cope with this new crisis in his life?

Alfred lives with his mother in a small village keeping chickens and selling eggs at the local market. He doesn't speak, except to his mother and to children. He has a girlfriend of sorts, although she shies away from any physical contact with her. But more than anything, Alfred wants a child. As natural fatherhood is out of the question he takes the next best option, and makes an application to adopt. With a very un-French lack of bureaucracy Alfred's adoptive son arrives, but turns out not to be the bouncing baby he was hoping for. [taken from London Film Festival 2006 catalogue]