Françoise Michaud

An aging movie actor who is preparing to shoot a death scene finds himself visited by the spirit of a dead, long-ago lover.

6.5/10

Prosecutor Vadim, who has an uneasy relationship with his glamorous wife Chanéac, vanishes at the time a psycho is offing club girls to the strains of the "Tu es si jolie ce soir" song.

6.6/10

It's the story of a young married man name Lionel who is swamped by colossal debts and whose wife is soon to give birth. At his wits' end, he decides one day to commit an irreparable act and kidnaps his millionnaire neighbors' 1-year-old baby. He demands a small ransom of €60,000. But Lionel is no criminal and all his attempts at exchanging his hostage for money fail. Meanwhile, he becomes increasingly attached to the baby. When he at last manages to get the money, he must come to terms with releasing his hostage.

5.6/10

The story of a septuagenarian, recently divorced, which in its reconstruction desire and quest for a new companion will rediscover the small pleasures of life and the art of seduction.

6.2/10

Angélique is a nursery school teacher. She loves the children: other people's, of course, and those of her partner Damien, who is going through a divorce. It is then that she realizes that she has contracted a very rare allergy... to children!

6.5/10

Put in charge of his young son, Ali leaves Belgium for Antibes to live with his sister and her husband as a family. Ali's bond with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, grows deeper after Stephanie suffers a horrible accident.

7.5/10
8.2%

In Montreal, the unemployed fashion designer Sophie Malaterre is shown a website, switch.com, where it is possible to switch houses with a stranger for vacation. Sophie seeks an apartment in Paris nearby the Eiffel Tower that belongs to Bénédicte Serteaux and they change apartments. Sophie arrives in Paris on Saturday morning. The next morning, policemen break in the apartment and arrest Sophie while she is having a bath. Detective Damien Forgeat interrogates Sophie believing that she is Bénédicte and she learns that a beheaded body was found in her room and all evidence of her life has been deleted.

6.3/10
3.3%

The story of a friendship between Victor, owner of a magazine, and Bruno, a car thief.

6.1/10

An elderly woman wants to meet her son’s murderer. A sixteen-year-old girl who has crossed paths with a young hoodlum needs an adult to accompany her to the prison visiting room. A young medical supplies delivery man is offered a deal to take the place of a gangster inmate so that the latter may escape. Two women, one man, three destinies that come together in the visiting room of a prison…

6.6/10

William’s great surprise, his cousin Clovis, whom he did not see again since around thirty years, arrives from New York to visit him. Reunion between both men creates one thousand memories: always so collusive, they become fast inseparable, living again, the space of moment, their young years… Only Elizabeth, wife of William, who has just lost her father, does not share their cheerfulness.

6.1/10

An old man who has one interest in life, collecting butterflies, has his life changed by an eight year old girl.

7.2/10
8%

In custody after she murders her middle aged photographer lover, a fourteen year old Pam reflects back on the bohemian life she spent with her mother Lily, a free spirited cabaret performer. Lily tried to elevate her stripper performances from the level of erotic spectacle to artistic expression as she dragged her young daughter from nightclub to nightclub and hotel to hotel, but ultimately lost her at nine to the Paris child authorities.

5.3/10

A highly intelligent teenage girl has an affair with a 40-year-old man.

6/10

A series of seemingly unconnected events and 50 important speaking parts make this film a jigsaw puzzle to be solved by the viewer. Martin and Claire were separated in childhood, and are brought together by a series of coincidences. A tragic car crash is central to the story, but seemingly unimportant events can hold great significance. Through a montage of different film stock and techniques director Diane Bertrand creates pieces of a puzzle, from which the viewer has to piece together a story. That's the premise of the film, and it is solvable. You just have to work a bit...

7.1/10

A short film by Joseph Morder.

A French director in Berlin creates a film letter to his lover, while reminiscing over their relationship.

7.6/10

A high-ranking Polish politburo member is banished from the party, and must find out why. Set in 1979 Poland before the Solidarity events.

5.8/10

Trio is a cinematic series of filmed portraits that shows, in a single large, fixed and silent shot of 3 minutes and 20 seconds, three people free to do what they want.

The efforts of an aspiring filmmaker to include an unwilling female in his production.

6.8/10

Poetic sci-fi film as an homage to Cinema, Cocteau, Goodis and to American B-series of the 1940s. Constructed exclusively on photograms in black and white and freely inspired on Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville.

5.4/10

The veneer of the story is a tale of chance love: two French expatriates strike up a chance romance when they meet on a ship headed back to South America.

7/10

French rocker Johnny Halliday stars as a professional thief just released from jail. He returns to stealing to support his family. After several successful thefts, he decides to include his under-aged kid into the "family business".

5.1/10

In this avant-garde exercise in self-reflection, director Joseph Morder reminisces about his youth in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where his Jewish parents settled after they left Poland. The heat of August in Paris brings forth memories and at the same time the adult Morder is involved in a love affair. There are no scenes from Ecuador here, and none of the images in the film are used to carry the narration; instead they vaguely illustrate what Morder happens to be saying at the moment.

6.5/10

Portrait de groupe is a film series of filmed portraits that shows all kinds of groups gathered under family pretexts, friendly or professional, in a single fixed, wide shot (style: family photo) and silent of 3 minutes and 20 seconds.

The insane Doctor Enger is obsessed with his plan to build a hospital to cure blind children, and goes on a killing and kidnapping spree with the police in pursuit.

5/10

Teo Hernandez films waste and scrap found on the pavements of the streets of Paris. “Sidewalks are great subjects: garbage, objects and materials, stains, signs, are a movie subject.”

Teo Hernández films some friends in a park under the Parisian summer heat.

After the death of his parents, Pierre is forced to care for his younger sister Nathalie by committing petty crimes. In a recurring motif of Gérard Blain’s cinema, Pierre is taken under the wing of an older gay man, Hubert , who offers him work and financial security; but when Hubert makes advances to him, Pierre robs him and takes up with a group of radical leftists who are planning terrorist attacks. Without employment, Pierre loses Nathalie to child services and spirals into desperation, finally erupting in an act of horrific violence. An x-ray showing the largely undiagnosed sickness of its time, and a stern warning to ours.

7.4/10

"Cocktail Molotov" is the story of the adventures of this threesome, who reach Venice only to learn of the outbreak of the May 1968 disturbances at home. Once again, Anne, Frederic and Bruno realize that the important things of their time are happening somewhere where they are not. Swindled out of their car and virtually broke, they hitchhike back to Paris, hoping to arrive in time for some of the excitement.

6.1/10

The story centers around a graduating class of "less-gifted" students in a private Versailles high school. Only a miracle has brought the students this far along, and after a practical joke misfires and the whole school is dynamited, the students are in deep trouble. They have to present themselves in court for their punishment and it could not be worse: If they don't pass their high-school graduation exams, they go to prison!

6.5/10

Reel 20 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.