Henri Blachey
A brilliant and determined female engineer is approached by a network of powerful women with an offer to help become the head of a CAC 40 firm. The conguest, which was at first thrilling, turns to complete war with the men who still dominate.
Abbé de Hambye
Julien and Marguerite de Ravalet, son and daughter of the Lord of Tourlaville, have loved each other tenderly since childhood. But as they grow up, their affection veers toward voracious passion.
Auguste Stohler
A televsion reporter tasked with making a feature about Jean Jacques Rousseau's upcoming 300th birthday uses a local Swiss boy with a remarkable knowledge about the philosopher as her angle for the feature. She then brings in a local professor and Rousseau expert to try to explain how this boy could possibly know so much about a philosopher who died over a hundred years before he was even born. What unfolds is a story about friendship, nature, and the unequal distribution of wealth.
Victor Hazak
A 35 ans, Sam est un casseur de coffres hors pair. Entre la garde de son petit garçon qu'il élève seul, son grand-père qui rêverait de le voir rejoindre l'entreprise familiale, sa petite amie qui se lasse de ses mensonges, il essaie désespérément de devenir un Mensch, un homme bien.
Werner Schroeter directed this dark and surreal tale of a man determined to save a lost lover from a grim fate at the hands of a violent mob. The city of Santa Maria is falling into chaos as an armed military faction is poised to take power in a coup d'etat. Ossorio used to call Santa Maria home, and he has returned in its darkest hour to find the woman he loves, hoping to rescue her from the violence that is lurks around the corner. As Ossorio searches for his love, he meets Victoria in a shabby hotel, who in turn introduces him to her father Barcala, who for the right price is willing to take Ossorio and another passenger away on his boat. While Ossorio is willing to pay Barcala what he wants, can he find the mysterious woman before the ship sets sail?
le maître écuyer
Three years after simultaneously parting with a philanderer husband and experiencing a dramatic fall during a horse jumping contest, Alexandra Balzan, a Parisian architect, regains an appetite for life and love after a chance encounter with an aging misanthrope of a master horseman and his horse
Principe di Gravina
Franco Elica is a film director casting a remake of a pious melodrama in Rome. He's melancholy, heading south for a break. On a beach, he meets a man who films weddings and is roped into helping film the wedding of the daughter of a severe and imperious prince. The wedding is one of convenience - the prince needs money, the groom is a mama's boy. Elica is attracted to the bride, Boda, and tries to convince her not to marry. No matter how outrageous his behavior, the prince keeps Elica on as the wedding director. As the wedding approaches, what's real blurs with Elica's imagination. Is he mad?
Akerman
In Paris, the international police force and the Russian mafia are chasing Anthony Zimmer, an intelligent man responsible for laundry of dirty money in France. Zimmer had extensive plastic surgery, and his new face and voice are completely unknown. The only means to reach Zimmer is through his beloved mistress Chiara, who is under surveillance of the police and the mobsters. While traveling by train to the country nearby Nice, the common man François Taillandier, who has the same body shape of Zimmer, is select by Chiara as if he were Zimmer and used as a bait to lure those that are pursuing her. When Taillandier is chased by the professional Russian killers, he runs the French police when the real situation begins to be disclosed to him. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Mendel
Paul
A mysterious woman, dressed in black and carrying a small suitcase, arrives in Nice and tries in vain to get a job in a luxury goods shop. She ends up in a plush hotel where a solitary middle-aged man, engages her to be his companion. They introduce themselves - she is Charlotte, he is Paul. Both are reluctant to talk about their past; both need someone to make their present predicament more tolerable. Unbeknownst to either of them, Charlotte is being followed by another man, who seems intent on revenge...
Self
Les Acteurs is the absurd story of Jean-Pierre Marielle desperately waiting for a cup of hot water, the story of a conspiracy against actors, the story of aging actors whose careers are slowly less active than they used to be, but a stunning tribute to French actors and their cinema.
Self (archive footage)
The legendary photographer William Klein has designed this fascinating book on fashion photography, with a selection of images from throughout his career, including material from his films. Though Klein claims roots in areas as diverse as painting, street photography, the tabloids, and B movies, his fashion work has been known since the fifties and sixties and has been a constant in his career.
Marcus Dourmer
Zac is a well-respected French filmmaker who creates a major uproar when for no apparent reason he suddenly vanishes from his posh Parisian apartment leaving behind his lover Helene, a popular star. Marcus, his producer searches for eight months before locating Zac who has since become a homeless street bum in an expensive neighborhood. Marcus sends Zac to a posh hotel. He then sends Daisy, an ambitious secretary and aspiring screenwriter to learn what happened to the great director. It takes a lot of mutual verbal sparring and false turns (which are presented as creatively filmed vignettes that are done using a variety of techniques) from Zac before he finally tells her the truth. The two then decide to turn the story into a film. As they write, Daisy and Zac slowly fall in love. At the same time, Marcus has his hands full trying to avoid some tough Russian Mafiosos who want the money they invested back.
Nathan Le Cerf
This French tale, set in the 17th century, chronicles the marriage between an errant knight and a beautiful spinster. The tale begins in 1629, and the knight is Nathan Le Cerf who joins the regiments of Count Anchire after he loses his entire family to the plague. Nathan's first assignment is to kill the gambling rival of the count in a duel; Nathan obeys, but gets wounded in the process. Still he makes it back to his master and is expecting a generous reward. Instead, the count reviles the knight, invokes Louis XIII's ban on dueling, and orders Nathan beheaded. Nathan will have none of that. Despite his bleeding abdominal wound, he escapes into the countryside. Initially he finds shelter with his lifelong friend, a chalk maker; he then goes on to one of his patrons, an artist. Nathan is relegated to living in a humble hut in the wilds. Eventually he meets an impoverished noblewoman, Marhte de Lairac.
Aramis
It is 1654, in the South of France. When horsemen follow a runaway slave into the convent where he's taken sanctuary and kill both the fugitive and the Mother Superior, they little realise that one of the novices is the spirited daughter of retired musketeer D'Artagnan.
Daniel
The year is 1950 and an English couple, Louise and Michael, have arrived in French-occupied Indochina to cover a story on a French-owned rubber plantation. They are to be the guests of the enigmatic plantation overseer, Daniel, and his beautiful yet difficult daughter Viola, at their elegant, decaying villa amid a tropical jungle. Michael and Louise hope that some time spent working in an exotic location will help reignite the passion in their floundering marriage. Instead they become unwittingly involved in the personal, sexual and political tensions of their hosts. Daniel is desperate to hold onto a way of life no longer possible in a country struggling for independence, bringing him into conflict with not only his daughter but also with his adopted country.
Un homme emménage
"A man stands amid unpacked boxes in his new home, delivering an extended monologue on indecision and dislocation. This rarely seen, overlooked gem created by Akerman for television explores the quotidian crises and profound feelings of alienation that run through her work." - BAM
Antonin Artaud
May, 1946, in Paris young poet Jacques Prevel meets Antonin Artaud, the actor, artist, and writer just released from a mental asylum. Over ten months, we follow the mad Artaud from his cruel coaching of an actress in his "theatre of cruelty" to his semi-friendship with Prevel who buys him drugs and hangs on his every word. Meanwhile, Prevel divides his time between Jany, his blond, young, drug-hazed mistress, and Rolande, his dark-haired, long-suffering wife, who has a child during this time. Cruelty, neglect, poverty, egoism, madness, and the pursuit of art mix on the Left Bank.
Valentin adult / Narrator
The formerly great Swiss hotel which Valentin's family owned when he was a boy has been emptied and is about to be torn down. He revisits the magical site's empty halls and ballrooms.
Gilles
The tale of two lovers spending time in Rome when, suddenly, in a restaurant, the man believes he recognizes the voice of a woman he once loved... remembrances and dreams of past love ensue.
Self
Contre l'Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.
Victor
Serious, logical Martha (Barbara Sukowa) and dreamy, superstitious Anna (Stefania Sandrelli) have been best friends. That is, until Martha's lover Victor (Sami Frey) decides he'd rather be Anna's lover. Mortified, Martha flees to Africa, leaving the field clear for her ex-friend. When Anna comes down with cancer, she pleads with Victor to get her to come back and somehow put this rupture in their friendship behind them. Curiously, Martha does come back, and after some understandable tension and a few bitter words, they manage to reestablish their friendship, though it is now on a different basis.
John Marcher
himself
A two-part documentary made for French TV about Georges Perec, directed by his former partner Catherine Binet. It features a mixture of archival footage, scenes from Perec’s films and to-camera readings of excerpts from his work by various actors and friends of the author (Michael Lonsdale, Marina Vlady, Alain Cuny, Sami Frey, Edith Scob, Harry Mathews and others).
Salmon d'Anglas
The name of painter Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806) is synonymous for a kind of painting style which celebrates carefree romantic life, indoors and out. He was a painter during the final decades of the French monarchy. In this story, he and his brother Cyprien (Robin Renucci), who is an early pioneer in medical anatomy (he dissected corpses and made drawings of what he found in them), have fallen in love with the same woman, Marianne (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), a laundress. This attraction has not escaped the notice of Salmon d'Anglas (Sami Frey), a conniving nobleman, who has his heart set on getting revenge on Jean-Honore (Joachim de Almeida) for refusing his patronage and becoming the darling of the French court.
Manuel Vasquez
Bullfighting, music, medicine, change, and homoerotic possibilities mix in this study of friendship. Francisco is a bullfighter on his way up, so focused even sex doesn't hold his interest. After a minor road accident, he meets a doctor, Manuel, who attends a bullfight, leaving early, retching. His wife, who is also his partner in a string quartet, worries about him: Manuel has a history of breakdown. Manuel, for his part, hates bullfighting and the memories it brings of Franco's Spain. His harsh views undermine Francisco's focus. He accompanies the young fighter to Spain for an important corrida. Will Francisco succeed? And what becomes of this friendship?
Prieur des Cordeliers
The Inquisition is in full swing in 16th century Flanders. Wanted for his dissident writings, the alchemist doctor Zeno has been wandering Europe under an assumed name for twenty years. But he remains a non-conformist. He returns to his native Bruges, where he thinks he has been forgotten. In this silent labyrinth where the faces of the past resurface, he rediscovers his identity and thus signs his death warrant.
Paul
Extensive dialogue and the tight focus of a single apartment setting marks this romantic and politically symbolic drama about Malgorzata, a Polish photographer (Krystyna Janda) and her married French lover Paul (Sami Frey). The two rendezvous in West Berlin to spend some time together before Malgorzata has to go back to Warsaw and Paul returns to his wife and daughter.
Paul Nuytten
Federal agent Alexandra Barnes believes that Catherine Petersen is a serial killer who marries rich men and then murders them for their money. But since Catherine is seemingly a master of disguise and has multiple identities, Alexandra can't prove anything with conventional detective work. With no other option, she goes undercover, pursuing the same man as Catherine, and hoping that Catherine will slip up and reveal her true identity.
Antoine Lombard
She is Florence Vannier-Buchet. Married to Protestant banker Jean-Marc Buchet. Florence leads a major sporting goods company with happiness and firmness. He is Antoine Lombard, Professor, son of a teacher, he is Secretary of State at the Universities. He divides his time between his ministerial activity and his riding in the working class suburb of Chartres. An elected member of the "pink wave". They met during a stormy assembly of the CNPF. The action takes place in 1983. Florence is engaged in a daring industrial and financial operation, while Antoine is putting the finishing touches to a bill for the renovation of Higher Education. Everything separates them and yet they do not manage to live separated from each other ...
Tobman
Lola, a young lawyer, is raising her little boy Bolivar, and sustains his family. Diagnosed with cancer, she decides to fight against this disease as it has always done in life with strength, determination, and above all with humor. In his fight, it is supported by Ferdinand, his fiery lover and naive who is a journalist. In the hospital, treated by Prof. Tobman, deeply human doctor, she met a group of women, all living with the same bad but each following a different social environment. This group will become his new "family".
Emmanuel
Every Saturday, to the great despair of his wife, Emmanuel finds his daughter Elise, fruit of a first union. A demanding and excessive father in his passions, he went to lay a loving trap for Elise.
Khalil
An American Actress with a penchant for lying is forceably recruited by Mosad, the Israeli intelligence agency to trap a Palestinian bomber, by pretending to be the girlfriend of his dead brother.
Julien Duchemin
Barbara (Jane Birkin) marries Julien (Sami Frey) a charming and sexy man. Barbara's old flame Paul (Gérard Jugnot) is highly suspicious of Julien. It seems Julien's previous two wives died under dubious circumstances and he collected a wad of insurance money as a result. Paul cannot ignore his misgivings, and so he follows Barbara and Julien to Morocco on their honeymoon, intent on preventing any harm to the woman he still loves.
Ralph Forbes
A P.I. is obsessed with a cute woman, who seduces and kills rich men around W. Europe.
Arnaud de Maule
Young aristocrat Arnaud de Maule hires female private detective Claude Alphand to investigate a strange cult, the Church of the Final Revival, that tried to recruit his girlfriend Chloé, who then disappeared, and it now stalks him.
Babeuf (segment "Babeuf")
François Karwitch
François, a Jewish lad, works for an insurance company and is engaged to a Jewish girl. His world is very ordered and secure and perhaps feels a bit claustrophobic. When he observes that a murderer has been declared psychologically incompetent and is to be placed in a mental institution, probably for the rest of his life, François feels the murder's plight very keenly. As time goes by, the murderer's situation is more and more unbearable to him, and he breaks off his engagement. Afterward, he has a liaison with a girl he has not known before, an act that somehow frees him. Now he wants to free the murderer somehow.
Fernand Bulard
A threesome becomes a foursome in this sensitive drama. The tale begins with the relationship between a recently divorced man and woman (from different marriages) and the bisexual they get involved with. At first all three are happy in their new arrangement, but then the divorced fellow suddenly leaves and those remaining in the relationship become quite tense. Fortunately the fellow returns with another, more conventional fellow. Eventually the three persuade him to join them.
Julien Vogel
A psychiatrist takes complete responsibility when his son is found floating in a swimming pool, stabbed to death. All the evidence points to a young orphan boy as the real murderer. Why is the psychiatrist claiming the murder as his own?
Axel Thorpe
In Genève, bookseller and publisher Axel Thorpe catches willful, rich 16-year old Sibylle Ashby shoplifting. She brags about her writing, so he challenges her to produce a book. She writes an erotic novel that Thorpe publishes anonymously, and it becomes a best seller. She also tries to capture the love of this 40-year old publisher. When he drops her for her older sister, should she seek revenge or recapture? In subplots, she gets along badly with her sister and her father, and she encourages her mother's affair with dad's sister. Axel has problems too besides the determined Sibylle: he must come to terms with the drowning death of his mother years ago.
Michel
Karl, a young killer is to kill Kate, an adventurous lady living in a mansion by a lake. He approaches her but fails to kill her. Instead, he falls in love and becomes her lover ...
Cinematography
During the filming of "Jeanne Dielman" Sami Frey recorded what was happening on the set. A film about a film in the making.
Director
During the filming of "Jeanne Dielman" Sami Frey recorded what was happening on the set. A film about a film in the making.
El Macho
The winner of the Miss World Virginity contest marries, escapes from her masochistic husband and ends up involved in a world of debauchery.
Octave
Mathieu is collected from the hospital by his wife, and dropped of at an apartment. His wife returns home to their son. The next time she sees him, he confesses that he is in love with another woman. This woman, who is identical to his wife, visits him. After making love, she leaves. She then returns. Mathieu shoots her - or does he shoot a mirror?
Le guide
On a Mediterranean cruise, a young man hired as a tour guide is intrigued by the beauty of a female interpreter hiding behind her sunglasses. He makes advances to her by venturing into a series of strange stories.
David
Rosalie, a beautiful young woman gets involved with successful businessman Cesar. One day, Rosalie's former flame David appears and attempts to win her back. Cesar reacts with a jealous intensity never before seen by Rosalie, and because of that, she returns to David. She remains conflicted regarding her choice of partner, but eventually, one of the men does something which resolves the situation.
In 1880's Italy, young Paulina must join a monastery to escape a doomed relationship with a married count. However, neither she, nor the count can just move on and all elements for a tragedy are there.
David
David learns that his mother has cancer and only two months to live. He decides not to let her know.
Marquis de Géran
Nicolas Philibert goes to America after killing a French aristocrat. On his return he tries to divorce his wife, Charlotte, but when he sees others trying to woo her his own interest is rekindled.
Un juif
The whole film takes place in a single room where representatives of the two political forces and their enemy "the Jew" are gathered. A female character establishes the dialogue between these individuals and comments on the ideology of each; Until the final scene where everyone seems to rally to a common idea.
Philippe Lussac
Christ
Mr. Freedom, a bellowing good-ol'-boy superhero decked out in copious football padding, jets to France to cut off a Commie invasion from Switzerland. A destructive, arrogant patriot in tight pants, Freedom joins forces with Marie Madeleine to combat lefty freethinkers, as well as the insidious evildoers Moujik Man and inflatable Red China Man, culminating in a star-spangled showdown.
Chick
Chick fell in love with Alise because of a shared passion for writer Jean-Sol Partre who gradually devoured their relationship. Soon after, Colin, the main character, also falls in love with a young girl, Chloe, but after their marriage she soon suffers from a strange illness: a water lily grows in her lungs.
Des Grieux
Manon is an amoral, free spirit who uses sex to surround herself in relatively luxurious surroundings.
Le prince Igor
In this excoriating satire of the fashion industry, Polly Maggoo is a 20-year-old Brooklyn-born fashion model in Paris, on the runway at the big shows where magazine editor Ms. Maxwell is the reigning opinion maker. The ridiculous passes for sublime. Polly becomes the subject of an episode of a vapid TV news documentary series called "Qui êtes-vous?" and is pursued by the filmmaker and by the prince of Borodine, a small country in the Soviet bloc.
Francesco Montelepré
A Bullet Through the Heart (French: Une balle au cœur, Greek: Μια σφαίρα στην καρδιά) is a 1966 Franco-Greek film directed by Jean-Daniel Pollet. Francesco, a young Sicilian aristocrat, scars an aging gangster who has set out to take away his property. The gangster vows to obtain vengeance, and Francesco is forced to flee across Greece with his girl friend, pursued by his antagonist's vicious henchmen.
Zoukim Batchiary Bey
Soon after her latest husband death, the King himself (Louis XIV) meets with our heroine and begs her to help convince the Persian Ambassador to agree to a treaty. However, what they didn't realize was that the handsome Persian was in fact a sexual sadist. So, it is up to the King's half- brother, some Hungarian prince, to save Angélique from the evil troll's clutches.
Bruno
Florence, early 1960s. Bruno aspires to be hired at a prestigious factory, but his Communist ideals — instilled by Millo, a father figure and family friend in love with Bruno's widowed mother Ivana — are an obstacle. His relationship with Lori, a beautiful and tormented young woman who has just returned from Milan, reshapes his convictions. Freely adapted from a minor novel by Vasco Pratolini.
Franz
Cinephile slackers Franz and Arthur spend their days mimicking the antiheroes of Hollywood noirs and Westerns while pursuing the lovely Odile. The misfit trio upends convention at every turn, be it through choreographed dances in cafés or frolicsome romps through the Louvre. Eventually, their romantic view of outlaws pushes them to plan their own heist, but their inexperience may send them out in a blaze of glory -- which could be just what they want.
Tibère
Tibere (Sami Frey) is a small-time hood who tries to get one of three airline hostesses to help him in his gold-smuggling operation in this light comedy. One woman is a snob, the second is adventurous, and Melanie (Mylene Demongeot) is sentimental about love. When Melanie and Tibere fall for each other, he is inspired to give up his life of crime for the woman he loves.
Juan
Lucia is a mature woman who maintains a relationship with the young John. When he is found murdered in a bullring with a nail stuck in his chest, Lucia is the prime suspect, it is believed that the motive for the crime was jealousy because it felt for her daughter Marta, which had also been seduced by John.
Jean Azevedo
Thérèse is living in a provincial town, unhappily married to Bernard, a dull, pompous man whose only interest is preserving his family name and property. They live in an isolated country mansion surrounded by servants. Early in her marriage her only comforts are her fondness for Bernard's pine-tree forest, which was her primary reason for marrying him, and her love for her sister-in-law and Bernard's half-sister, Anne. The movie recounts in flashback the circumstances that led to her being charged with poisoning her husband.
Le Croque-mort / Actor in Silent Film
Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.
Carlo
Salvatori pays a visit to his old ma who is bedridden in a gloomy old people’s home. He promises her that pretty soon he’ll be rich and they’ll live together in their house. The young man is hired as a catering assistant in a desirable mansion, but the owner of the place is dying. The wife and the daughter are trying to regain the old man’s love and affection while the son is busy gathering his friends for a feast.
A woman leaves her lover to return to her husband who cheats on her, something that his pride can not admit.
François - l'amant (segment "L'orgueuil")
Seven directors each dramatize one of the seven deadly sins in a short film. In "Anger," a domestic argument over a fly in the Sunday soup escalates into nuclear war. In "Sloth," a movie star would rather pay someone to tie his shoe than bend over to do it himself, and he can't be bothered to accept a starlet's sexual favors. In "Gluttony," a peasant family on its way to the funeral of a relative who died from indigestion stops regularly to eat and drink en route, arriving in time to eat some more. In "Greed," a high-class prostitute refunds the price of a cadet's lottery ticket. In "Pride," an unfaithful wife finds reason to reform. And so on through lust and envy.
Elio
Le croque-mort
A subtitle warns, "beware of dark sunglasses." Anna and her lover, whose looks in bowler and bow tie are reminiscent of a young Buster Keaton, kiss chastely on a bridge overlooking the Seine. He dons sunglasses and waves as she runs down a stairway to the river's edge, then watches in horror as she's knocked flat and loaded into the back of a hearse. In vain, he gives chase. Disconsolate, he buys a large funeral wreath and a handkerchief from sympathetic vendors. He removes the glasses to wipe his eyes and realizes they are the cause of all his woe. He replays the farewell without the glasses.
Gilbert Tellier
As Dominique Marceau is being tried for the murder of Gilbert Tellier, accounts by different witnesses paint a picture of the kind of relationship the two used to share.
Victor dit Vicky
A young and hapless Antwerp thief, working for a gang led by leather-clad Philippe Clay, quarrels with his boss and kills him during a fight. Enlisting his sister's help, he tries to get rid of the body in the harbour, - attracting the attention of a night watchman who seeks to profit from the situation
In a port area of France, clashes between a gang of young delinquents and a tribe of gypsies.
Director