Benoît Régent

This French thriller begins with a flashback to a small village dance where a six-year-old girl is kidnapped and killed. Seventeen years later the murder remains unsolved. The girl's parents Caroline and Chris have gone on with separate lives Caroline remarried and had another daughter while Chris became an alcoholic. The two are thrown back together when each begin receiving strange messages that imply their daughter has returned from the dead for vengeance. They contact a police detective (the lover of Caroline's best friend) who finds the case intriguing and decides to reopen it. Unfortunately, as soon as he begins questioning the old suspects, people begin to die.

In this French drama, an urban professional gives up his fast-track life in favor of the quiet of country life. Benoit now lives as a toymaker who sells games at his chic Paris art gallery. The film opens with young Lila as she is being released from prison. Immediately, she sets out to see her sister in Brionne, a tiny Normandy town. As soon as he sees her, the rather quiet Benoit falls in love. Eventually, the emotionally scarred young woman falls in love with him too. Soon they move in together, and Lila gets to meet his ne'er-do-well friends. The couple are very happy for a while, but when Benoit's gallery goes belly-up, he begins acting strangely, leaving Lila feeling very unsure. Eventually she leaves him. Benoit then struggles to cope with his depression; after many drunken nights, a lost dog helps him find the peace he has been searching for.

This a beautiful May evening. The sun has just set behind the hill. Tonight the inhabitants of the Le Corbusier housing unit are going to experience a slight change of program. They are all sitting in front of their TV sets and in twelve minutes the face of the new President of the Republic will appear on the screens..

1794, During the French Revolution : Benjamin Constant meets Germaine de Staël and falls madly in love with her. He has the spirit of a young writer, weighed down by the hardships of life. Germaine, daughter of a wellknown figure, is one of the most brilliant woman of the century. Early on, Germaine lutes against Benjamin's love and only admits ot admiring his spirit. But, little by little, a violent and indispensable passion bonds them together. The two lovers continue to love one another and to struggle against this love for a period of twenty years. Season after season they meet and bask in each other's company. These intimate moments are at times ambivalent, but never lack in obstinance and passion.

Valentine, a student model in Geneva, struggles with a possessive boyfriend and a troubled family. When she runs over a dog, she discovers that its owner, a retired judge, is illegally wiretapping and eavesdropping on his neighbors' phone calls. Although Valentine is outraged, she develops a strange bond with the judge – and as the two become closer, she finds herself caught in the middle of events that could change her life.

Julie is haunted by her grief after living through a tragic auto wreck that claimed the life of her composer husband and young daughter. Her initial reaction is to withdraw from her relationships, lock herself in her apartment and suppress her pain. But avoiding human interactions on the bustling streets of Paris proves impossible, and she eventually meets up with Olivier, an old friend who harbors a secret love for her, and who could draw her back to reality.

The journey on the edge of an ocean of a poet, two terrorists, a film-maker, a reporter and two lovers, in search of a ship leaving for Nowhere. A ship like hope for all those who wait: the misguided, the misaligned, the displaced, the exiles that we are at certain times, that we are one day or another, a little earlier, a little later.

For those who were young, living under the delusions of love and soft drugs in Paris, May 1968 - even if the guitar is still playing, they can't hear it any longer.

Evocation of the life of the journalist Jean Galmot, adventurer, who established himself as a gold digger in Guyana in 1906. Madly in love with this country, he will die for having wanted to give dignity and freedom to the Guyanese people.

In the not-too-distant future Berlin is shocked by a series of spectacular suicides; a policeman's investigations lead him to a beautiful, enigmatic woman and the revelation of a sinister plot to manipulate the population through mass hypnosis.

In an imaginary dictature of a futuristic world, rebellion has broken out. The men in power scramble to the Bunker Palace Hotel, a bunker built long ago for just this kind of contingency. But a rebel spy sneaks in, and although her nature is very quickly suspected, she is left to observe the raving of the decadent power class, who keeps wondering what happened to their leader, who has failed to show up.

Anna, Joyce, Claude and Lucia are all students under the tutelage of Constance Dumas, a renowned film instructor. Lucia moves in with the other girls. Soon after, she is attacked on the street outside her home and saved by a mysterious strange.

Colin and Mailland are small-time crooks on the run who are surprised to find the seven-year-old runaway Savannah is along for the ride. The police and her parents fear she has been kidnapped, and a massive manhunt is launched with orders to shoot to kill the alleged perpetrators. The lovable little girl soon melts the hearts of the crooks, as the trio enjoy an unlikely but sentimental friendship.

In the days following the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France, a British platoon leader named Saul (Gabriel Byrne) and his corporal (Paul Wyett) reach an isolated farmhouse and encounter a beautiful French girl named Belle (Marianne Basler). Love blooms between Saul and Belle, but the grim realities of war catch up with them when a French Resistance trio claims that Belle is a Nazi collaborator. Judge Reinhold appears briefly as the token Yank.

Jeanne runs a busy inn with her husband Georges, her two children and two sisters. There is perfect harmony and the constant sound of laughter coming from the kitchen and office. One day, Pierre, the landlord, takes up a room without a word of explanation. Jeanne gradually begins to feel a strong attraction toward the new guest.

On a stormy night, off the coast of the Arcachon basin, a small sailboat named "Julie" disappears with a young girl of the same name on board. What really happened? The mystery is all the thicker because a month later, her husband met the same sad end. A year later, on the anniversary of Julie's disappearance, a commemorative meal is organized by the young woman's main relations. Many things from the past will then resurface.

The film relates the painful ending of a love story binding an over-30-year-old woman and a North African, and the beginning and end of a relationship she also has with an “established” journalist. The stories illustrate the absolute claim of a woman who can understand love only in terms of life and death, an attitude that generally makes love appear dramatic, but at least burning and flickering, like the flame that glows in her heart.

Inside the Blue Note nightclub one night in 1959 Paris, an aged, ailing jazzman coaxes an eloquent wail from his tenor sax. Outside, a young Parisian too broke to buy a glass of wine strains to hear those notes. Soon they will form a friendship that sparks a final burst of genius.

Jean-Louis and Anne have had their fling and separated. Now 20 years have passed. He is still dating various women. She is now a big-time director whose most recent film was a very expensive bomb. She comes up with the idea of making a romance based upon her fling with Jean-Louis. She contacts him to gain his permission. Jean-Louis is still in racing and goes away for a desert rally while she begins filming. She finds the mood of their romance difficult to recapture in her film.

Antoine is an accountant, uptight and withdrawn, married to Edith, who picks out his clothes and shoes. He's assigned to a fitness gymnasium for a month to straighten out their books. The owner, M. Roland, encourages Antoine to use the facilities, including the massages, so Antoine goes to Dominique, a muscular African. In these sessions, Antoine discovers that the pain is comforting, and Dominique finds the accountant ideal for his own sadism. When Dominique breaks Antoine's arm and then goes to the hospital to take Antoine away, Antoine confesses his fascination with and fear of death. With Dominique's help, the accountant breaks all earthly ties to confront his fear.

Paris Flic and computer-crack David Ackermann is a teacher at the academy advising the rookies in computer-crime. By coincidence Informations about personalities from the high-politics and police-authorities that are involved in organized crime fall into his hands. From than on he's been chased merciless, even having his ex-wife kidnapped to blackmail him. With the help from his new girlfriend he lashes back.

Fred, a raffish safe blower, takes refuge in the Paris Metro after being chased by the henchmen of a shady businessman from whom he has just stolen some documents. While hiding out in the back rooms and conduits of the Metro, Fred encounters a subterranean society of eccentric characters and petty criminals.

After graduating from high school where she was a boarder, Reine Ducasse decides to settle down with her rich father Louis in his luxurious apartment. She has just begun her studies in history and has a good friend, Frédéric, a medical student who wouldn't mind being more than just that. Around her, strange fellows attract her attention. Who is Philippe, allegedly Louis's stockbroker? And what about Marguerite who presents herself as her father's former secretary? Even more puzzling is the video cassette she finds in her father's place, showing young motorbikers distributing bundles of banknotes. Some time later, Charles, one of the bikers appearing on the video, rings the doorbell: he is wounded.

Edouard is patriarch of a large family: his second wife, Jeanne, has just had a baby and finally had enough of his philandering. As the marriage between them unravels, Edouard's daughters experience their own emotional shock waves. Dina, in a relationship with playwright Paul, wants more from her daily life, while Sidone is married to a fellow musician but is terrified of performing in public. Fast-forward seven years: Edouard is gravely ill, and the family shares their issues, hopes and fears.

World Chess Champion Akiva Liebskind (Michel Piccoli) faces his former pupil Pavius Fromm (Alexandre Arbatt), who defected to the West from the Soviet Union five years earlier, for the World Chess Championship in Geneva, Switzerland. The tension and strategies between the players draw parallels to the political conflicts and ideologies between East and West during the Cold War.

Two policemen, Franck and Rupert, intervene in a Parisian heliport where drugs are exchanged for a large sum of money. They decide to keep the loot and find themselves fighting with the mafia.

Cannes Film Festival 1979