Claudine Dumoulin

Poor Bastards is a sketch film, written by twelve authors. Mirror or projection, poor bastards have fun with everyday facts and do not tell a story, but stories. Through these short and bitter stories, are revealed all the cracks of the human race, which, in a movement of globalization and neoliberalism more and more assertive, can lead the ordinary man to be a monster of cowardice, cruelty, indifference or hypocrisy. Poor bastards from an odd angle, transcribe reality provocatively or not, always with the same ambition: to react.

The story of the rivalry between Boeing and Airbus is no doubt one of the greatest human and technological adventures of the 20th century. A modern-day western, with the protagonists trying out every underhand trick and bluff possible to achieve their aims. But it is also a story of power and influence, driven by geopolitical ambitions and struggles, where deals and contracts define a country.

By meeting his former comrades in combat, the film follows the journey of Yves Mathieu, anti-colonialist in Black Africa then lawyer for the FLN. When Algeria became independent, he drafted the Decrees of March on vacant property and self-management, promulgated in 1963 by Ahmed Ben Bella. Yves Mathieu's life is punctuated by his commitments in an Algeria that was then called "The Lighthouse of the Third World". The director, who is his daughter, returns to the conditions of his death in 1966.

A brother and sister pair of orphans live together in a suburban high-rise block. Each of them forges their own path. The brother spends most of his time helping his neighbors, while his sister is passionate about the theater. One of them lives closed off the from world in his public housing building, the other escapes from it by playing imaginary characters. But then one day, the brother refuses that his sister continue her theater studies. They then lock themselves in a painful fraternal battle, from which neither of them will emerge unscathed.

After the death of his musician wife, Franck, a septuagenarian hellenist, feels lost. His friend Max, a womanizer, and his daughter Sabine successively welcome him to their home, but it is his meeting with Suzanne that will give him a taste for life. She is not of his world, nor of his age, but she will be his last love.

Sexy, gritty and as provocative as a lap dance, The Bathers takes an insider's look at the lives of six women working as dancers at a seedy Parisian peep show. Governed by their overprotective boss, the girls' routine of glittery neon lights and lecherous customers is soon disrupted when an enigmatic stranger enters the scene. Now, drugs, sex and bickering all take a back seat as the girls unite to save this man haunted by a mysterious past and unforgiving demons. A fascinating glimpse into a world of back alleys and primal instincts, The Bathers transports us to a netherworld where the show always goes on.