Jean-Pierre Dardenne
To give creativity free reign, in the space of fifty minutes: this is the strength of the documentary series Cinémas mythiques. This episode gives the critic Alain Bergala complete freedom to commemorate the original Éden de La Ciotat cinema. The oldest continuously operating cinema in the world first opened as a theatre in 1889, but the very same year it also hosted its first commercial film screening, comprised of nineteen Lumière “views”. Threatened with closure in the 1980s, the cinema was reopened in 2013 after a restoration project. This luminous documentary accompanies Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne over the course of a few days in October 2021 as they walk through the Teatro Éden, the shipyard and the Palais Lumière built by Antoine Lumière, the father of Auguste and Louis. And it does not forget the legendary station from L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat.
A fable about the Goddess Mari and her two sons, born of a mortal father, whom she entrusts to the devil for their education. Mikelats decides to stay with his master but Atarrabi flees—but the devil manages to hold onto his shadow.
Paris, 1993. Selma, 17, lives in a bourgeois and secular Berber family. When she meets and is strongly attracted to Julien, a dashing young man, she realizes for the first time the heavy rules of her patriarchal family and how they affect her intimacy. As Islamism takes over her country of origin and her family crumbles, Selma discovers the power of her own desire. She must resist and fight. Through the strength of her people, she starts walking down the path of what it means to become a free woman.
A Belgian teenager hatches a plot to kill his teacher after embracing an extremist interpretation of the Quran.
London, 18th century. Casanova, famous for his taste for pleasure and gambling, arrives from Paris, forced into exile. In this city he knows nothing about, the libertine meets on several occasions a young prostitute, Marianne de Charpillon. She attracts him to the point he starts disregarding all other women. The legendary seducer is ready to do anything to get her, but la Charpillon always escapes under various excuses. She challenges Casanova: “You will only have me if you stop desiring me!”
Lisbon, Portugal, 1927. The writer and journalist Fernando Pessoa accepts from his boss the commission to create an advertising slogan for the drink Coca-Louca; but conservative government authorities consider the new drink as revolutionary as it is diabolical.
Oregon, 1851. Hermann Kermit Warm, a chemist and aspiring gold prospector, keeps a profitable secret that the Commodore wants to know, so he sends the Sisters brothers, two notorious assassins, to capture him on his way to California.
When her babysitter doesn’t show, a single mother is forced to leave her precocious five-year-old daughter with the girl’s estranged father for a long weekend.
Two American sisters, Laura and Kate, perform public seánces in Paris when they meet a French film producer who wants Laura to become in a movie star while gets obsessed with discovering the truth behind Kate's supernatural gift to summon the ghosts.
Jenny, a young doctor who feels guilty after a young woman she refused to see winds up dead a few days later, decides to find out who the girl was, after the police can't identify the young woman.
Romeo Aldea, a physician living in a small mountain town in Transylvania, has raised his daughter Eliza with the idea that once she turns 18, she will leave to study and live abroad. His plan is close to succeeding. Eliza has won a scholarship to study psychology in the UK. She just has to pass her final exams – a formality for such a good student. On the day before her first written exam, Eliza is assaulted in an attack that could jeopardize her entire future. Now Romeo has to make a decision. There are ways of solving the situation, but none of them using the principles he, as a father, has taught his daughter.
A young man who lives with his mother and has never known his father, heads off to look for him. He finds a cynical and Machiavellian man who works as a publisher in Paris. After he attempts to kill him, he finds filial love thanks to his uncle.
Directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne return to some of the key locations used in Two Days, One Night and explain how various sequences were shot.
The Dardenne brothers discuss their early documentary films, their relationship with Armand Gatti (who inspired them to become filmmakers), the impact various political events had on their career and work and the shooting of When Leon M.s Boat Went Down the Meuse for the First Time.
French Cinema Mon Amour is an ensemble film in which each contributor brings their own voice, their own particular approach, their culture, and their language to produce a portrait of French cinema.
In a despairing, fatalistic Rome, Nicola finds himself flirting with the city’s dark side. Drinking too much and living among drifters, petty criminals and anxious immigrants, Nicola becomes entwined in an insurance scam that leads him further into a netherworld he may never escape.
The new film by French director Cédric Kahn focusses on Philippe Fournier, a man who lives with his 2 sons, having decided not to give them back to their mother after she won custody of the children. The children Okyesa and Tsali must grow up in the shadow, hunted by the police but always free and on the move.
Jérôme, a senior executive, has just left his company. Determined to never work for nobody else ever again, he attempts to set up his own company, come what may, even ignoring the reluctance of his wife Laura. Ugo, their 11-year-old son, is a tennis player and a promising champion. To reach his goal, he must make it into the Roland Garros national training centre. Just like his dad, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make it. Together, Ugo and Jérôme will realize that not all rules can be bent in the quest for success.
Sandra is a young woman who has only one weekend to convince her colleagues they must give up their bonuses in order for her to keep her job — not an easy task in this economy.
Jean, a forty-year-old struggling, out-of-work actor has hit rock bottom. Although open to any kind of work, he can't get a break. At the unemployment office, his counselor has a rather odd proposal: he can get a job helping the police reconstruct crime scenes, by standing in for the dead victim. Jean's obsession for detail impresses the detectives, allowing him to take a leading role in a sensitive investigation in Megève ski resort, during low season, after a series of murders
12-year old Anton is spending his summer holidays at Kaskad military training camp, where he and 60 other Russian children are subjected to tough exercise regimens created by President Putin for the fight against Muslim Chechens.
A drama centered on the friendship between two young women who grew up in the same orphanage; one has found refuge at a convent in Romania and refuses to leave with her friend, who now lives in Germany.
A woman kills with her eyes and protects herself with dark sunglasses. She suffers with her condition and roams the city looking for love.
Abandoned by his father, a young boy is left in the hands of an unqualified childcare provider.
Transport Minister Bertrand Saint-Jean is awoken in the middle of the night by his head of staff. A bus has gone off the road into a gully. He has no choice but to go to the scene of the accident. Thus begins the odyssey of a politician in a world that is increasingly more complex and hostile.
Documentary about the making of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's 2011 film "The Kid with a Bike"
Warsaw, Poland, end of the Seventies. Following the workers’ revolt against the rise of prices violently repressed by the communist power, a group of opponents create the KOR (Workers’ Defense Committee). Heir to the currents of opposition to the Communist regime since the end of World War II, sponsored by intellectual and moral personalities who had been standing up against social injustices since the Twenties, the KOR tries to break the information monopoly of the State and to set up an autonomous labor organization.The action of the KOR leads in 1980 to the birth of Solidarnosc, first independent trade union of Eastern Europe.Three members of the KOR remember and tell us the story of a victory against communist power in Europe.
Documentary about the Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne trying to reveal their 'secret working method'
In order to become the owner of a snack bar with her boyfriend, Lorna, a young Albanian woman living in Belgium, becomes an accomplice to a diabolical plan devised by mobster Fabio.
First day in a new school. Margot is scared to become the scapegoat once again. Only this time could shift.
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
Eleven years after the genocide, the film accompanies survivors and executioners before and after the first Gacaca trials where they come face to face. There is Obede, accused of killing children and whose request for forgiveness is just a cynical strategy to be released. There is Gahutu, who has "no remorse" and who in front of his judges, always speaks of "snake" to talk about those who were exterminated. Finally, there is François, forced to kill his own brother in order to survive and who is now trying to reconcile with his sister-in-law. Through these three stories, the film weaves a portrait of a society at war with the ever-present ideology of genocide.
Is it possible, when you come from a family of Maghreb immigrants and you are a girl or a woman, to invent your life, to choose to leave the traditional universe, to break up with your family, without renouncing that which bases you, to the recognition of your own? Four portraits of women bear witness to a generation that lives its life through its own choices. Their mothers were illiterate but dreamed of a university education for their daughters. They invested their children with their hopes, but also with their lacks, their solitudes.
Il fare politica - Cronaca della Toscana rossa (1982-2004) is a 2005 documentary film written and directed by Hugues Le Paige. For over twenty years, starting in 1982, the director has periodically met and filmed four militants of the Italian Communist Party in the Tuscan town of Mercatale, telling their individual stories within the transformations of their party and Italian society as a whole.
The poet Jean Sénac is also a radio presenter. A Pied-noir, he opted to stay in Algeria after the country achieved independence in 1962. Ten years later he is monitored by the police of the present regime. His poems have a large public following and his radio show is a great success, especially with the young. The poet allies himself with two students, aspiring playwrights Hamid and Belkacem, to fight for the freedom and culture of Algerian youth.
Award-winning filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne profess their love for the classic "Modern Times". The directors expose their views on the many aspects of the film, Chaplin's brilliancy and they also provide interesting details about the making of Chaplin's masterpiece.
The psychiatry department of a young doctor Cora has just admitted a young lady who refuses to speak and whose identity remains unknown. Cora becomes fond of her patient and establishes a relationship which goes beyond the usual course of treatment. She feels a kind of "call" from this woman as a strange and strong tie grows between them. One day, Cora learns that the identity of her patient has been discovered. Her name is Loa, she is a stranger, she has been sent back home…to Iceland. Cora, who had no idea of this woman's life outside their relationship, is deeply moved : she decides to meet up with her in order to finish the treatment.
Romances of earth and Water is a film designed for a choir of 14 adult characters and 6 children, each of whom also recognizes himself in the echo of the words of others. No lamentation or reproaches, the characters of the film do not complain, they are lucid. Through voice but also through music, poetry, dances and clay-based creations, they tell the fragility of every moment, couples who love each other, drought, the owner, dreams, culture, animals, the future for children, the price of things, money, and the earth.
Igor, aged 15, and his father Roger deal in housing and peddling illicit labor in the outlying districts of Liege, Belgium. Scams, lies and swindling rule their lives. When one of his father’s illegal workers gets injured on the job and asks Igor to promise to take care of his wife and baby, Igor finds himself at a crossroad. He wants to keep the promise, but the price would be to betray his father.
Belgium, 1980. On the banks of the Meuse river, against the background of a steel-producing city, factories close down one after another and lay off workers. One of those made redundant is Fabrice, who, at thirty-five, is proud of his trade, rendered mythical by fire and steel, but feels he has become useless. His wife, Céline, tries to renew his interest in life. Despite a few moments of rediscovered happiness, Fabrice remains trapped in his confusion and one day disappears. Céline, her intense love leading the way, goes looking for him and eventually finds him. Once again, she tries to save him from himself. Can love resuscitate a languishing man? That is Céline's wager.
In an apparently empty airport, a Jewish family has gathered to greet one of its members who has come there to be with them. However, the airport is actually the ante-room of Death, and the family member is a recently deceased American survivor of the Holocaust. Although the party begins by greeting the man with warmth and affection, the gathering soon degenerates into a squabble about why most of those assembled failed to heed the warnings about the Holocaust and flee Germany.
John, a television director, is preparing a show on speed. A phone call from his girlfriend Sophie makes him leave the studio in a hurry. Ηe drives fast and quarrels with another driver. John is upset; he insults the other man and drives off. In the meantime, the producer of the show changes John’s editing. John’s assistant calls him at home but John tells him that they should talk later. John hears the sound of another car and looks out the window. We hear the sound of an accident. John shouts and runs out onto the road. Sophie has hit a pedestrian. She was on her way to tell John that they are expecting a child.
After a failed strike, workers start editing a newspaper.
Documentary about a man remembering his struggles while floating on a boat down a river.
A video film in which seven people who resisted Nazism talk, relate and recall their struggle in the Liège region.
In Belgium today, a young boy and an adolescent girl who have travelled alone from Africa pit their invicible friendship against the cruel conditions of their exile.
In a schoolyard, kids play tag at recess. Back in class, Pol sits beside Justine. When the teacher's back is turned he twirls her hair. After school the boys scoff some candy and share it with the girls... The class is at the swimming pool. One boy diverts the teacher's attention so the others can sneak a peek into the girls' change room. But the surprise is on Pol when he finds himself trapped inside with the girls, his swimsuit still outside!
The exits of a Berlin courtyard are blocked by the police due to an ambiguous event outside and a state of emergency occurs. Among the residents of the building, insecurities start to pump fear. Suspicion takes over panic, prejudices bring polarization and another question appears: Is the real danger coming from inside or outside?
