Catherine Quesemand

A documentary about the career of Swiss filmmaker Alain Tanner.

In the summer of 1986, Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub were working in the park of an old Sicilian mansion and in a clearing at the foot of Mount Etna shooting Der Tod des Empedokles. Assistant cameraman Jean-Paul Toraille toyed around, so to speak, with his first video camera, filming the daily work on the set. Now, 24 years later, he was joined by Jean-Marie Straub in editing the material into a film. Anyone who expected the shooting of Les Avatars de la mort d’Empédocle to be an austere affair, an exercise entirely devoid of humour or a Straubian tour de force is proven wrong: so much lightness, joy, concentration, spells of waiting for the sun to come out – and even proper slapstick in between – is hard to find.

A tribute to the work of the Swiss filmmaker Alain Tanner

A traveling salesman arrives in an unnamed Indian village. He tells of an incurable illness that a holy man blames on lust and six good-hearted men go to the city to seek a cure.

A comedy. The husband, the wife, the mistress and the housekeeper. A Fable. The ape, the lion and the little boy.

It is the story of a prohibited and perverted identification: how an eight-year-old boy, entrusted to the care of his mother since the separation of the parents, meets and looks at his father, all day long.

In Paris, where he wields his money scams, Alex has an unexpected encounter with two girls: Fred, who’s nothing to do with his world and who he falls for straight away, and Sylvia – sweet, but lonely, Sylvia. To test Alex, Fred devises a curious game of seduction. Like a character out of a Marivaux play, she toys with setting up delightful obstacles necessary to Love’s flourishing: Sylvia must seduce Alex, and Alex, must in turn, truly desire Sylvia. But Fred gets caught in her own trap. She falls head over heels in love with Alex. However, he no longer knows who to choose, all the more so now that Sylvia is falling in love with him, too. During an eventful night of confusion and intrigue, crazy laughter and tears, our threesome come to realize that what really draws them together is an emotional bond: true love.

An exhausted militant wants to take a break from the incessant frenzy surrounding him. His country’s dictatorship is on its last legs and chaos reigns. His wife Sylvie leaves their country for France. She writes about the new democracy struggling to be born back home. His daughter Joyce must hide out in the deserted childhood home in the solitude and infinity of the Black Beach. Several adversaries – the militia of a hazy regime in his native land and the Paris police – wage a strange game of chess in which he is the pawn. Threats abound and he’s haunted by his past, his fears, dead friends. He has three allies: his wife, his daughter, and an old girlfriend from his fighting days.

In 14th-century France, Aliénor breaks with the codes governing girls’ behavior and does as she wishes. The King of France grants her the hand of her childhood love, but her new husband deserts her immediately after the ceremony. Undeterred, she sets out after him, traveling to Siena to bring him back.

A small company valiantly struggles to survive under the respectful yet probing camera of Claire Simon in “At All Costs.” As the docu opens, founder and manager Jihad is off to see his banker. The lack of ready cash to pay his loyal employees, wholesale produce providers and a whole range of other creditors, including the tax-gobbling French government, is omnipresent. From a staff of 14, Jihad is down to three cooks, one delivery driver and a secretary in less than six months. The good-natured pluck of the remaining employees is at the heart of the film. Subterfuges for putting up a brave united front include scheduling food orders from a coin-operated pay phone when the office phone is cut off for nonpayment.

Edouard gives pieces of advice on a radio station, but when he tries to use them in real life with his friends, his skills are dubious.

After the war, in Bucharest, a young Romanian poet arrested for having written an article denouncing Stalinist crimes, will save his life by accepting to become a hostage of the regime.

Marie lives with Antoine, but while he is away she meets Paul, a filmmaker visiting from Canada. Paul is instantly smitten and wants her to marry him. She puts him off by saying that she and Antoine have decided to have a baby. When Antoine returns, he becomes vividly jealous of his girlfriend's chaste encounter, which provokes her into having an affair with Paul.

Frustrated with her life, a Parisian tells her philandering husband about her lover.

Marc, a troubled teenager, is bored in his native, depressing city of Sete. One day, a simple phone call makes him aware of the existence of Stephanie, a sister he has never met. Armed with a pistol his mother found, he goes out to find her. He steals money from a perfume shop, and is then stopped by a policeman who wants to search him. In the car, Marc threatens the policeman with his gun, demanding that he helps him find his sister...

Suzy, a beautiful woman, is coming back to Paris to attend the funeral of her lover, a married man. Cecile, his wife, is holding Suzy responsible for his suicide. By finding Suzy in Paris, Cecile is trying to seek the truth by playing a psychological game on her.

Two childhood friends who have not seen each other for a long time decide to meet again. They talk and look for what could have caused their estrangement: words pronounced in a certain way, an intonation etc. Very quickly, an argument begins and turns into a settlement of accounts.

Willy, a middle-aged divorcee, decides to take his 15 year-old son, Thomas, on holiday to Ibiza, staying at an isolated villa on the unspoilt part of the coast. Thomas insists on bringing his friend Juliette, a girl of his own age with whom he enjoys a close platonic relationship. When it comes to physical love, Juliette is wise beyond her years. She will only sleep with men older than herself and has no intention of committing herself to a long-term relationship.

Constance Dumas (Bulle Ogier) dirige un prestigioso curso de teatro, donde sólo se admiten mujeres. Cuatro de sus alumnas: Claude (Laurence Côte), Anna (Fejria Deliba), Joyce (Bernadette Giraud) y Lucia (Inês de Medeiros), forman una una especie de banda y viven juntas en una casa de los suburbios parisinos. Las cuatro chicas, una tras otra, se irán topando con Thomas (Régent), un misterioso desconocido que las alerta sobre el peligro que corre Cécile (Natalie Richard), una de sus amigas y compañera de clase. Cécile, mientras tanto, se muestra bastante inquieta y parece más fascinada por una enigmática historia de amor que por sus clases de teatro. (FILMAFFINITY)

A film about the rebellion that took place in the French department of Ariège from 1829 to 1832, and continued in a less intense fashion until 1872.

En este irreal paseo por las calles de París, Marie (Bulle Ogier), una mujer acusada de robar un banco que acaba de salir de la cárcel, se encuentra con Baptiste (Pascale Ogier), una joven paranoica que necesita compañía. Ambas deambularán juntas unos días...

New Yorker Ben Phillips and mysterious Léo Hoffmann are strangers who are summoned to Paris by a mutual acquaintance. Upon arrival, they meet and soon find themselves tangled in a complex mystery.

A short film that can act as a companion piece to Le Pont du Nord.

Roberte, 40, resistant during the war, Calvinist and anticlerical, is deputy to the chamber and inspector of Censorship. She married Octave, an old Catholic aesthete, professor of canon law, whom she saves from impeachment for collaboration during the war. He submits his wife to a perverse custom: the laws of hospitality or prostitution of the wife by the husband.