Poetical Refugee
Like a Candide dreaming of Eldorado, Jallel lands in France, hoping to try his luck. From encounter to encounter, hostel to social welfare group, Jallel will make his way through a Paris of outcasts. Although failing to achieve his hopes, he discovers and shares in the solidarity felt by the destitute. –uniFrance
Abdellatif Kechiche
Casts & Crew
Sami Bouajila
Élodie Bouchez
Bruno Lochet
Bruno Lochet
Aure Atika
Olivier Loustau
Virginie Darmon
Mustapha Adouani
Sami Zitouni
Carole Franck
Jean-Michel Fête
Manuel Le Lièvre
François Genty
Mariam Serbah
Francis Arnaud
Nejlb Nekales
Also Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
The true story of Saartjes Baartman, a black South African worker who moves to London with her master in the early 19th century. Although she dreams of being an artist, once in Europe she is exploited as a sideshow attraction due to her large buttocks and genitalia.
A group of teenagers living in a housing project in the outskirts of Paris rehearse a scene from Marivaux's play of the same name. Krimo is determined not to take part, but after developing feelings for Lydia, he quickly assumes the main role and love interest in the play.
Amin, an aspiring screenwriter living in Paris, returns home for the summer, to a fishing village in the South of France. It is a time of reconnecting with his family and his childhood friends. Together with his cousin Tony and his best friend Ophélie, he spends his time between the Tunisian restaurant run by his parents, the local bars and the beaches frequented by girls on holiday. Enchanted by the many female characters who surround him, Amin remains in awe of these summer sirens while his dionysiac cousin throws himself into their carnal delights with euphoria. Armed with his camera and guided by the bright simmer light of the Mediterranean coast, Amin pursues his philosophical quest while gathering inspiration for his screenplays. When it comes to love, only Mektoub (‘destiny' in Arabic) can decide.
Adèle's life is changed when she meets Emma, a young woman with blue hair, who will allow her to discover desire, to assert herself as a woman and as an adult. In front of others, Adele grows, seeks herself, loses herself, finds herself.
It's the end of summer vacation for Amin. The young photographer spends cozy evenings with Charlotte, the ex-girlfriend of his Casanova cousin. She talks to him about literature, he photographs her. Nobody knows that they see each other, especially not Ophélie, his childhood friend, who instead confides her troubles to Amin : her father wants her to take over the family farm, her fiancé Clement will return soon from Iraq for their wedding, she is pregnant with Tony’s baby, and Tony wants to keep their affair secret instead of having a serious relationship. Ophélie constantly contemplates her choices : would it be better to get an abortion in secret and marry Clement or to follow her maternal instinct and keep the child, perhaps seeking refuge with Amin in Paris?
Director Abdellatif Kechiche’s reedit of Rym’s belly-dancing sequence in THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN, a visual and aural interpretation of that film’s passionate climax. NOTE to TMDB and Letterboxd editors: this is not the same film as THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN and should not be merged with that film's record.
At the port of Sète, Mr. Slimani, a tired 60-year-old, drags himself toward a shipyard job that has become more and more difficult to cope with as the years go by. He is a divorced father who forces himself to stay close to his family despite the schisms and tensions that are easily sparked off and that financial difficulties make even more intense. He is going through a delicate period in his life and, recently, everything seems to make him feel useless: a failure. He wants to escape from it all and set up his own restaurant. However, it appears to be an unreachable dream given his meager, irregular salary that is not anywhere near enough to supply what he needs to realize his ambition. But he can still dream and talk about it with his family in particular. A family that gradually gives its support to this project, which comes to symbolize the means to a better life. Thanks to its ingeniousness and hard work, this dream soon becomes a reality...or almost...