Sandrine Bonnaire
Fresh out of jail, Ulysse has only one idea in mind: making money. Confronted by his depressed mother, Gabrielle, the bills that never stop piling up and his desire to live his life to the full, he makes a plan. With his best friend, David, he travels from rave to rave, selling a mixture of water and Ketamine from their food truck. Together, they hit the road...
Jeanne works as an auxiliary in a maternity in Marseilles. Day and night, Jeanne and her colleagues fight to help mothers and their babies against the lack of staff and constant management pressure. Jeanne lives with her 18 year-old daughter, Zoé. When a tragedy occurs at the maternity and Zoé leaves to study in Paris, Jeanne’s secret past suddenly resurfaces and forces her to assert her life choices.
Christmas 1999, in a peaceful little village in the Ardennes. The life of a young boy named Antoine will soon be devastated by three tragic events : the death of a dog, the vanishing of a child, and a big ravaging storm.
Marianne Faithfull has seen it all. Success and celebrity at 17. Life with Mick Jagger through the turbulent late sixties. Scandal, drugs, addiction and hitting rock bottom before rebirth, awards and artistic recognition.
An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Agnès Varda’s last film sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls “cine-writing,” traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing.
An African high school teacher flees his war-torn country for France, where he falls in love with a Frenchwoman who offers a roof for him and his family.
Edith, a 45-year-old textile factory worker, sees her life turned upside down by the company’s downsizing measures. Estranged from her son and without any other ties, rather than go into unemployment, she decides to leave her life behind and follow her work at the factory which has been relocated in Morocco.
Mélanie, 16 years old, lives with her mother. She likes going to school, her friends, playing the cello, and she wants to change the world. But when she meets a boy on the Internet and falls in love with him, her world changes as she is gradually recruited by Daesh. Sonia is 17 years old, and she almost did something irrevocable to “guarantee” her family a place in paradise. These teenage girls might be called Anaïs, Manon or Leila, and one day they all might go some way down the recruitment process. But can they ever come back from it?
In the 1970s, the house of Plessis welcomes young pregnant minors. Even though these unborn children are the fruit of love or rape, in this institution, a single slogan: put these girls in the right way. But the day when the revolt rumbles, the mechanism fails... A story deliberately based on real events.
Madeleine, 92 years old, decides to set the date and conditions of her departure. By telling her daughter Diane and her son Pierre, she hopes to prepare them as gently as possible to her coming disappearance. But for her children, it’s a chock, and minds are set ablaze. Until the end, Madeleine will keep her dignity, wits, and passion for life as a course of conduct, so she can give them all, and in particular Diane, a touching “final lesson”.
A war photographer and absent father, who spends more time taking care of his camera than his four daughters, enjoys a happy life in the Alps with his new girlfriend. But his life is turned upside down the day that his best friend tries to reconcile him with his family by telling them a big lie.
When her husband is arrested, all Lucie's bearings seem to crumble. To rebuild her life and give it new meaning, she entrusts her kids to her mother and isolates herself on the coast near Bordeaux. But the kids decide to go look for her.
Bank manager Frank and writer Patrizia meet by coincidence again and again at the airport. They commute between Dusseldorf and Paris, but behind their travels are two fateful stories. Frank wants to complete the business of his life, Patrizia visits her lover, who is in a coma since a car accident. For both life comes out of joint and they each suffer heavy losses. What connects them is the search for hold, a listener, the need to be needed and the hope that there is a beginning in each end.
After ten years, Jacques comes back to France to handle his father’s succession. He had left France to live in the USA to escape a painful past he shared with Mado, his former wife, who in the meantime built a new life with Stéphane and their 7 year old son, Paul. Upon his return, Jacques and Mado meet again; he asks to meet her son Paul; Mado hesitates, then accepts but hides it from her husband. Soon, Paul and Jacques get close and they start to see each other secretly.
An animated feature-length documentary telling the story of the life of Crulic, a 33 year-old Romanian accused of having stolen a wallet from an important Polish judge. Crulic was brought to the Krakow Detention Center Custody prison. He decided to start a hunger strike from the day he was arrested, demanding a meeting with somebody from the Romanian Consulate.
In a small Corsican village, the life of Hélène, ordinary and single, She works as a maid in a hotel and is married happily with her Husband Ange and her fifteen year-old daughter. Her modest and monotonous life seems to be predetermined... One day while cleaning a hotel room, she meets a young, seductive, American couple which is playing a game of chess. First fascinated and then passionate about the game, Hélène learns with great tenacity she studies the rule of the game to perfection. She can count on Dr. Kröger, who is a mysterious inhabitant, to help her to achieve her goals. But this positive transition towards a liberty for Hélène does not go about without deeply changing her relationship with family, friends and inhabitants of the village.
Elsa, a woman with a long history of depression in the midst of a divorce from her husband of 12 years develops an obsession with a seven year old girl she sees at a birthday party when she comes to pick up her son Thomas. Determined to find out more about the girl, Elsa uses Thomas as a way into the girl's family by aiding to develop a friendship between Thomas and the girl's brother Jeremy so that in turn Elsa can then befriend the girl's mother Claire. She uses Thomas more and more in her pursuit of this obsession telling her employer and fellow employees that Thomas is seriously ill so that she can run off watch the girl (Lola) wherever she goes. Elsa even tells her parents lies that she is going out with a friend so they will baby-sit so Elsa can even go as far as hiding in the bushes outside of Lola's house and watching her at night.
A sensitive portrait of Sabine Bonnaire, the autistic sister of the french actress Sandrine Bonnaire.
Unable to forget her first love, Félicité, a simple and kind maid, devotes herself completely to her new master, Mathilde Aubain. As the passing of time doesn't heal her wounds, she gives love to all those who surround her: Mathilde's children, her nephew Victor. But fate seems to always deny her from any love in return. Still she tries to find someone who'll accept her unconditional love.
A thoroughly researched documentary on Chabrol, exploring the creative process and the great artistic process of the master of cinema.
Le Cou de la girafe (The Giraffe's Neck) is a 2004 French/Belgian film directed by Safy Nebbou.
Camille arrives in Ouessant, the island of her birth off the Brittany coast, to sell the family home. She spends a last night in the house during which she discovers a secret. In 1963 a man came to work with her father, who was the Jument lighthouse operator. He only stayed two months, but his presence proved to be a disturbing catalyst.
Because she picked the wrong door, Anna ends up confessing her marriage problems to a financial adviser named William Faber. Touched by her distress, somewhat excited as well, Faber does not have the courage to tell her that he is not a psychiatrist. From appointment to appointment, a strange ritual is created between them. William is moved and fascinated to hear the secrets no man ever heard.
The epic tale of an American reconnaissance pilot downed in occupied Belgium at the height of World War II. Hidden by resistance fighters, the pilot falls in love with the wife of the man who will save him. When their affair is exposed, an act of betrayal threatens their lives and the entire resistance movement, forcing the pilot to make a powerful choice that could change the course of the war.
18 years after the making of the film "Vagabond", director Agnès Varda created this documentary which includes interviews with the cast.
A woman tries to straighten out her life, even as her past as a con-woman comes back to haunt her.
Claire is a young woman who leads a somewhat formatted life. Pierre is an improviser, but not an actor. Brief encounter, brief romance, doomed or not, who can say? When things like that happen, you act on the spur of the moment.
A 55-minute film by director Xavier Giannoli that analyses 'À nos amours'. The film features former Cahiers du cinéma editorial director Jean-Michel Frodon, actors Jacques Fieschi and Sandrine Bonnaire, and other members of the cast
In a small Breton town, a 10-year-old girl is found murdered. René, her art teacher, a professional painter, is the last person to have seen her alive. The inspector in charge of the investigation immediately questions him. In this small provincial town where people all know each other and regularly meet at the Bar des Amis, René is increasingly unsettled by the other inhabitants' suspicions and by the inspector's investigation. Children stop coming to him for lessons. His wife, Viviane, a district nurse, protects him and supports him with her love. However, a self-centred media-star writer adds to René's confusion...
June 1946: Stalin invites Russian emigres to return to the motherland. It's a trap: when a ship-load from France arrives in Odessa, only a physician and his family are spared execution or prison. He and his French wife (her passport ripped up) are sent to Kiev. She wants to return to France immediately; he knows that they are captives and must watch every step.
Sylvie, a scientist aged 30, has to dig deeper and deeper into her own background.
Three women live together in an old rectory on the seashore. Alda lends her body to a string of carnal relationships but never commits her feelings. Olga, the elder sister, has opted for a reclusive life as the soul of the household. Her daughter, Sigga, is a young adolescent. The house harbors a finely balanced marriage between desire and memory—until Olga’s destiny tips the scales.
Thomas Murray and Amanda have just moved to Paris. He works for a bank owned by Amanda's father Arthur Trevane. Amanda decides that she does not like Paris, so she goes back to London. But trouble begins on a drive through the countryside, where he meets a free spirit whose charms pressure his long-distance marriage.
In Russia, in 1907, a rich lenient husband of a loose unfaithful woman is brutally murdered. She and her two lovers are suspects, but what about the stranger she met just before the murder? With no friends left, she and the stranger bond.
Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made. Also a line of movie stars comes to visit him giving him back the pleasure of life - but amongst them there are also some young students only striving after his money for the realization of their film projects. The two stories - Monsieur Cinema's and the young people's life - are told in parallel until they come together in the end when the old man plays a role in the film made by the students.
Sophie, a quiet and shy maid working for the upper-class family Lelievre, hides her illiteracy under the cloak of a perfect household and obedience. She finds a friend in the energetic and uncompromising postmaster Jeanne, who encourages her to stand up against her bourgeois employers.
A part of Joan of Arc's life. At the beginning, Jeanne (Joan) has already left Domremy, she is trying to convince a captain to escort her to the Dauphin. It ends during Jeanne's first battle, at Orleans. Meanwhile, Jeanne is depicted more as a warrior than a saint (all cliches are avoided), with only her faith for strength.
The second film covers Joan's trial and the end of her life.
This ambitious overview of the history of Prague provides a wealth of information about the city, both visual and verbal, but suffers from a one-note presentation. One note dominates the narration, that of continuity between past and present, and also the camerawork -- contrived to be as artful and art filled as the narration. Modern and ancient architecture and other cultural attributes of Prague, including scenes from the stage play Amadeus serve as a backdrop to the lecture on the nature of Prague history -- a non-stop "continuity of consciousness."
In a city in South America an outbreak of bubonic plague occurs. While people try to flee and the military close the city, an idealistic doctor decides to stay and help the sick. In the ever-changing circumstances, he puts up a brave fight, being helped by others but also involving them without being able to control the situation.
Suzanne has had an affair which so traumatized her that she is out of the running, romantically. Perhaps that is why she is roommates with her gay best friend, Marc. However, just because one isn't going out on dates doesn't mean never seeing or being seen by anyone, and, one day while swimming in a public pool, Suzanne is caught by surprise by a lovely young man. Her new acquaintance, Lucien, begins to spend time with her and Marc. Romance blooms among the threesome: Marc falls in love with Lucien, but he is unlucky in that: Lucien and Suzanne have become lovers.
An European researcher is abducted by some ill-educated rebels in a North African country. Their reasons are unclear...
Professor Ludovico Bruschi is an elderly Communist whose desire is that of living in an orderly and socially just State. But disorder is just about to break into his life, first of all in the shape of his granddaughter Papere and then in that of Papere's mother Stella, his son's companion. The relationship between Oliviero, Bruschi's son, and Stella has come to an end perhaps because of the extreme youth of the two lovers. Now Professor Bruschi is obliged to come to terms with the gloomy, ignorant, offended Stella whose head is full of false and destructive ideals and who disturbs his way of living out daily life. The professor loses his patience and Stella leaves. He looks for her and finds her in hospital with a broken leg. The two of them begin to grow close and then, without realizing it, they come to love each other immensely. Stella's leg gets better and she goes off to look for new relationships...
A French man spies on a lovely younger woman across the way. When he's spotted by the woman shortly after being questioned by the police about a local murder, the man's simple life becomes more complicated.
Martial (Daniel Auteuil) is discharged from a mental insitution where he spent a few years due to a serious nervous breakdown. During his hospitalization, he ceases to speak with everyone, including his wife Régine (Thérèse Liotard), whom he had encouraged to find a new partner soon after entering the clinic. Upon his return he finds his mother (Danielle Darrieux), a busy business woman who owns a supermarket chain. She's convinced that his son, whom by now hardly talks to anyone after his experience, will be able to find himself again if tasked with some responbibilities. Soon enough, he's sent to Limoges on a business trip to check on one of their stores in the hope to reinvigorate its failing business. Once he arrives, Martial is faced with responsibilities he had never imagined, including dealing with the store's personnel.
Satan tempts Father Dossignan, who is trying to save the soul of a young girl who killed one of her lovers.
The lines between love, sex, and politics become hopelessly blurred in this French drama. Jeanne finds herself torn between the two men a French and a North African in a romantic and sexual dilemma that mirrors France's political turmoil regarding the nation's growing Arab population.
Pierre is the artistic director of a theater, and when his daughter Manon lets him know that she is coming to see him after a year's absence, Pierre decides to prepare for the meeting. He goes to the theater with his girlfriend Ariane and has the actresses in his troupe act out different aspects of his daughter's character. Unfortunately, this is not adequate preparation, for when Manon does show up, nothing goes quite as he imagined...
A little town in the north of France, 1941. Blanche has three children. She worries about her husband Victor, who often goes out at night. Actually, Victor belongs to the Resistance. Soon, Blanche will be a resistant too. In the network, there is also Germinal, the hairdresser. His daughter Marie knows everything and asks to be part of it... Chronicle of the occupation and of the resistance through the eyes of the women.
Mona Bergeron is dead, her frozen body found in a ditch in the French countryside. From this, the film flashes back to the weeks leading up to her death. Through these flashbacks, Mona gradually declines as she travels from place to place, taking odd jobs and staying with whomever will offer her a place to sleep. Mona is fiercely independent, craving freedom over comfort, but it is this desire to be free that will eventually lead to her demise.
Mangin, a police inspector in Paris, leans hard on informants to get evidence on three Tunisian brothers who traffic in drugs. He arrests one, Simon, and his girl-friend Noria. Simon's brothers go to their lawyer. He springs Noria, who promptly steals 2 million francs that belong to the Tunisians. They suspect her of the theft; her life as well as the lawyer's is in danger. Meanwhile, Noria is playing with both the lawyer and Mangin's affections. Mangin is mercurial anyway: intimidating and bloodying suspects, falling for a police commission trainee before flipping for Noria, wearing his emotions on his sleeve. Can he save the lawyer and Noria, and can he convince her to love?
One of the more forgettable action films, especially for the talented Sandrine Bonnaire who plays Marilyn the anti-heroine, this cops-and-evil-couple story has very little to offer the viewer, other than a murderous, amoral duo hunted down by a pair of policemen with their powers of deduction running on empty. Richard Laurent Mallet is the teenish loser who steals weapons and later teams up with Marilyn, a femme fatale with a suicidal bent. The two must outsmart the cops, not a great challenge in this script, in order to continue pillaging, robbing, and killing.
A portrait of youth in bloom; a tale of one family's dissolution; a reflection upon the danger and the mystery in living. Sandrine Bonnaire plays Suzanne, a free spirit and the vessel for an almost Brontëan choler. She's 16, and men exist — diverse lovers, an overbearing brother, and the father portrayed by director Maurice Pialat himself in an unforgettable turn that displays the full magnitude of the cinema giant's tenderness, force-of-will, and presence of being.
A group of friends are planning how to spend their summer vacation. One plans to go to the Seychelles with his American girlfriend. At the airport she dumps him for another guy. He has no money so he steals a backpack and goes camping. Somehow he meets a pretty girl and convinces her to share his tent. But a famous singer sees the girl and wants her too. He convinces the luckless guy to act like a fool and the girl leaves him and goes with the singer to the French Rivera.
A young French teenage girl after moving to a new city falls in love with a boy and is thinking of having sex with him because her girlfriends have already done it.
Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.
An adaptation of Annie Ernaux's eponymous novel, looking back on her experience with abortion when it was still illegal in France in the 1960s.
