Lou Castel

"Marx can wait" was something Camillo Bellocchio said to his twin Marco the last time they met before the former died at a young age in the heated days of 1968. This documentary is dedicated to his memory.

Documentary about the life of Aldo Braibanti, an 'heretic' Italian intellectual, from early anti-fascist activism to his death, passing through the infamous 1968 mock trial which, under the flimsy accusation of “plagio”, actually aimed at his independence and homosexuality.

Antonio and Agostino grew up together in a small town in Sicily; they dreamt of living a different life, somewhere else. Now thirty-year-olds, they both live abroad but they lost touch years ago. When Antonio discovers that the house he grew up in, which had been empty for a long time, is about to be sold at auction, he decides to leave and reconnects with his childhood friend. But their lives have changed a lot. Old conflicts and new revelations bring them through Europe on a truck journey.

Dreams and reality collide as a young woman navigates a tumultuous relationship amid rising social tensions, protests and tragedies in Paris.

During a break on a rooftop, Teco, a young baker, notices the intriguing fall of a strange bird. He decides to venture to the next roof to have a closer look. This is only the beginning of a most unbelievable journey on the labyrinthine rooftops of Roma.

He’s lived for too long off his parents. It’s time for 40-year-old slacker Jacques to get by on his own. One-time gigolo and a borderline bum, he knows what he wants – to become rich and famous. He even has a business plan: tourism combined with cheap plastic surgery. Jacques moves in with his older sister, Monique, who manages an Emmaus village in the south west of France. And before long, the smooth-talking chancer has convinced a group of workers to pool their meagre funds and set out on a trip to a clinic in Bulgaria, where all their dreams of a brighter and more beautiful future will all come true. If only…

Kogo, a Japanese filmmaker, has come to spend a few days in Pantin with an old friend. He is avoiding work. An incorrect address, the Romainville weather tower, a symposium about failure in art, a woman in blue, and another in a fur hat will totally mess up his plans.

The ensemble film THE GENITAL WARRIORS takes a look at the common past of the three main characters as their memories meet and overlap. The 70-year-old Frank sits in a geronto-psychiatric ward and types a screenplay about his relationship with Lena and Barbara. These two embittered women come together with a magic wand and a shotgun to travel to the past and commit an act of revenge on him.

When I wake will I be someone else?

Portraits of women, stories from their past and their present as prostitutes working between Italy and France (and Brazil). Women who used to think they were lost, and men just as lost as them.

“Why did you kill her?” Lou asks Philippe again. The life-odyssey of Joana, a modern-day Moll Flanders, continues as she moves through different times and places, like the stations of a personal via crucis, with occasional leaps into the present. From Paris to Rome and on to São Paulo. The body has lost every value, except the economic one.

Paris, North Station, anything comes by, even trains. One would like to stay, but they have to hurry up... Like other thousands lives crossing, Ismael, Mathilde, Sacha and Joan are going to meet here...

Merle follows the invitation of her lover to spend the summer in the South of France. She is surprised to find only his children in the summer house. Did she expect more than she should have? An ambiguous summer full of silent desire.

Étienne is an old man who refuses to leave his home because he is convinced that the spirits of his wife and daughter still live there. Nevertheless, the apartment's owner will try to throw him away by any means.

Suzanne Simonin describes her life of suffering in letters. As a young woman she is sent to a convent against her will. Since her parents cannot afford the dowry required for a marriage befitting her rank they decide she must instead become a nun. Although a kind and understanding Mother Superior helps her to learn the convent’s daily routine, Suzanne’s desire for freedom remains unabated. When the Mother Superior dies, Suzanne finds herself faced with reprisals, humiliation and harassment at the hands of the new Abbess and the other Sisters. For many years, Suzanne is subjected to bigotry and religious fanaticism. (Berlinale.de)

A young woman wanders down an endless corridor, while other people knock at a door at night. A man takes a picture of Montmartre, two women hand him some money, while a patron manages from rue de Mhyra a network of Italian call girls. Adiba sings an ancient Moroccan song in a room full of children, while Vidya is performing her daily puja in Pune (India). Giuli sings to herself as she drives at night through Turin and runs to the station at day. Parallel stories where every character is caught “in a situation,” closed.

During the summer of the year 1610 one of the first telescopes made by Galileo ends up in the hands of Jean Kepler in Prague who at the time was the astronomer of Emperor Rudolp II. Kepler observes the night-sky as nobody has seen it before him. His observation platform becomes the meeting place of Prague's imperial court. In this entourage Kepler separates science from superstition, freedom from intolerance.

Berlin’s notorious Neukoelln district. The near future. A time in which the health system has collapsed. A man works in the shadows and without license as a doctor. He has no practice, no appointments system. He treats people in the courtyards and streets – everywhere he’s needed, stealing medicine from pharmacies. Nobody knows his name or that by day he’s the caretaker of a shabby tenement building. He pushes boundaries and suffers defeats that cost him the last of his strength. Forced to adopt the role of a shadow, an outlaw, he is confronted with the question as to whether he really is a doctor.

Strolling through France (Roanne, Nice and Carcassonne) with some excursions abroad (Munich, Montreal, New York).

A young director years old, lives with a girl. Active part of the Intellectual society, he represents perfectly the union between fear and determination, that changes deeply his way of understanding the world that surrounds him. His only aim is to leave a footstep of his presence on this world realizing a film.

Delphine is twenty years old. She is too young to have experienced the activism of the seventies, but for her it is not something that belongs to the past. She decides to find something that will allow her to act and which, she claims, is owed to her.

A psychologist discovers troubling links between Nazism and modern-day big business.

Irene moves to Paris to begin a new life with her husband Jason and their two daughters, but an act of betrayal and her desire for revenge soon sends her to the brink of madness.

Fiction-documentary about the short life of the photographer Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) who used to photograph herself, mostly naked in strange places, until she committed sucide. American photographer Francesca Woodman is best known for black-and-white pictures of herself and of female models, which still draws new fans. Many of her photographs show young women nude, blurred (due to movement and long exposure times), merging with their surroundings, or with their faces obscured. Years after her suicide at the age of 22, her photographic works became the subject of much attention, including many exhibitions and books.

In a future present, a rebellious Veronique finds herself working for an inventor who has dedicated himself to the cause of a positive darkness; he is working to counter the tide of a bright, diffuse, and technologically oriented time as represented in the film by man-made light. Veronique's brother Alix works for an agency that is attempting to thwart the process.

"What I like about the journey, is the surprise you find when your back. It is not me who said it, it is Stendhal. And it's a pity that I am not Stendhal because I was going to be served. A big surprise waited for me at the Cosmos Agency."

William’s great surprise, his cousin Clovis, whom he did not see again since around thirty years, arrives from New York to visit him. Reunion between both men creates one thousand memories: always so collusive, they become fast inseparable, living again, the space of moment, their young years… Only Elizabeth, wife of William, who has just lost her father, does not share their cheerfulness.

Alexandre, a thirty-year old tailor, has decided to improve his cultural level. That is the reason why he has decided to attend an evening school. The lessons are given in the classroom of an elementary class by a teacher named Etienne. The subject of the course is : "The solitude of Jean-Jacques Rousseau". Will Alexandre become another man after grappling with with Rousseau, Diderot and ... Etienne? - Guy Bellinger

In 1941, Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman living in occupied Amsterdam, starts a psychoanalysis with Julius Spiers, a disciple of Jung specializing in feminine hysteria.

Based on the legend of Tiresias, it tells of a transsexual who is kidnapped by a man and left to die in the woods. She is then saved by a family and receives the gift of telling the future.

Despite the stress and anguish associated with living in the city, as a place it remains a inexhaustible source of inspiration for those who take the time to walk around and observe.

Benoit turns 13 and develops an intense crush on his godmother, Marion. As they lie on beaches in the summer, she humors him by talking about the mysteries of women.

Cesare used to be a star, a long time ago. The venues have become smaller and the audiences more cruel. Cesare is on his way to his next performance with his keyboarder Joe but their way ends at a fork in the road.

The central role of Louise is portrayed by Elodie Bouchez, who won a 1998 Cannes "Best Actress" award for The Dreamlife of Angels. When Louise has an encounter with homeless Remi (Roschdy Zem), they have a magnetic attraction, but she is already attached to illiterate shoplifter and pickpocket punk Yaya (Gerald Thomassin). Although allied with Yaya in petty crimes, Louise lives with her widowed father (Lou Castel), a devoted writer of fiction. After a Metro bum (Bruce Myers) tells her of his desire to see his young son, she plucks the kid, Gaby (Antoine de Merle), right out of school, making him the newest rookie recruited into their subway gang. Shoplifting in a department store, the young toughs escape the store's security guards by hiding in the ballet rehearsal rooms of the nearby opera. But does Louise really belong with the subway toughs, or is she just pretending? When she's arrested, Louise is forced to reexamine her lifestyle.

We follow how four ordinary little girls learn about life, love and all that sort of things.

Amours décolorées is a cinematographic poem to the glory of Mariola San Martin, model, stylist, dancer and Spanish photographer.

Based on a true story this emotionally wrenching character study focuses upon a desperate young wife who feigns an entire pregnancy in hopes of convincing her dissatisfied husband to remain with her. Magali's problem comes from the fact that she is so bland and unassuming as to be nearly invisible. Her passivity and inability to form her own opinions grates on her husband Alain, a go-getter radio journalist, and he plans to take a year long assignment in Canada to get away from her. While preparing to leave, his boss, who has been inadvertently led to believe that Magli is pregnant, shows up and tells Alain. The husband's first response is to demand an abortion, but on second thought he decides he would like to become a father after all. Magli, fearing that he will leave, then devises her elaborate ruse.

Inès, Stella, Marion and Emilie are four young women who become friends and never leave each other. They band together during their teenage years. This film discusses their first meeting and what happens afterward.

Hong Kong action diva Maggie Cheung (playing herself) comes to France when a past-his-prime director casts her in a remake of the silent classic Les Vampires. Clad in a rubber catsuit and unable to speak a word of French, Cheung finds herself adrift in the insanity of the film industry…

Four intertwining stories of bizarre occurrences in Paris featuring a man who was stolen away by fairies, a professor who becomes a tramp, the lovers who inherit a chateau – and the last tale that connects all that has gone before.

The mid-life crisis of a middle-aged, depressive college professor/author provides the center of this French character study. Abel Vichac has really let himself go. Though a successful writer, and supposedly working on a book about 'regret,' he is barely functioning. He can't sleep at night. During the day he is easily distracted, irresponsible and moody. He also ignores his patient live-in lover Aliette who has stuck by him for 10 years. As he mopes through another day, he gets into several awkward occasions. One of his students, Florence tells him off in a café. A young woman, Catherine hears this and afterward introduces herself as a fan. Later he decides to find her address and visit her apartment. There Abel meets Catherine's roommate Aurore and the former's jealous boyfriend Bruno for a tense scene. He is returning home when Abel encounters his brother's former lover Olga and this creates more awkwardness.

The unhappy love lives of Paul and Marcus, two artists and friends who are neither particularly young or successful anymore.

A former inspector of the SIAE, focusing everything on his cunning and stubbornness, tries to grab (even in fraudulent ways) all the televisions or private radios that come to hand; all to please a mysterious woman named Gilda.

The daughter of a known filmaker finds herself in her father's family home, with the whole family.

A man walks with his child on the grass of a hill. He reaches an old country house, where years before he had spent his childhood during World War II. The deserted and desolate rooms make him travel back in memory to the time when the war was ending. Episodes of family life pass before his eyes: father, mother, grandmother and six children, of which he, Silvano, the youngest, was made mute by the shock of a bomb exploding...

In this thriller, American novelist David Raybourne (Andrew McCarthy) accidentally becomes entangled in the Red Brigade's terrorist plan to kidnap Italian Premier Aldo Moro during a research trip to Rome. As the terrorists attempt to kill David, he and his photojournalist friend (Sharon Stone) must struggle to stay alive.

The head of a gang of criminals in Arizona tries to kidnap a girl, but is hindered in his intentions by a handsome mining engineer and a federal sheriff.

In a futuristic society, an old man tells the legend of a strange medal to two children. In flashback, we learn that after a nuclear catastrophe, two teenagers were living in an artificial paradise, maintained by electronic means, and once decide to leave that shelter and escape using that same medal - a mini video-disc - in search of outer-space freedom.

A father and his son who lived seperated for some time meet each other one day and try to talk their problems over and understand their diametrical differences.

Mr. Rorret is the owner of a cinema called "The Peeping Tom" which shows a constant stream of horror films. Rorret dates women from the audience and then kills them, taking sadistic pleasure from their expressions of terror. This film is apparently a well-filmed homage to "Peeping Tom", with nods to "Psycho" and "Strangers on a Train".

Creasy, a traumatized ex-CIA agent, gets a job as a bodyguard for Samantha, the twelve-year-old daughter of a wealthy Italian family living in a swanky villa on the shores of Lake Como.

A British girl falls for a French man while on vacation.

A diverse group of guests gather in a small hotel in Paris to contemplate the state of their lives in this pretentious drama. Joseph Goldman (Fernando Rey) is a washed-up Hollywood actor making a living in the dinner-theater circuit. Accompanied by his wife Sarah (Carole Regnier), Goldman meets Frederique (Berangere Bonvoisin), who is hiding from her former lover. French financier Arthur (Fabrice Luchini) hopes to get into the film industry and bends the ear of a British director (Michael Medwin). The talkative film has little action, and none of the characters evoke much interest or resolve their dilemma.

A German woman and a former French prisoner of war live in 1950s Germany. Instead of playing a role in rebuilding her country, the heroine remains preoccupied with her personal affairs.

Couple is a cinematic series of portrait films, which show two persons, who free to do what they wish, in a fixed camera shot of 3:20 minutes.

Jim is a small child who lives in an inn run by his parents. The arrival of a strange captain to the Island they live will trouble his existence and tip him into an universe of adventures.

A young film director is turning a movie with his friend Christa. In the film-within-the-film there are two couples, one real, one imagined , and the film - told through five dreams - is as much the story of a film on-production, as the birth of a child.

A young Swiss woman on vacation in Italy, has a relationship with an Italian writer and is struggling with decisions on what to do with her life

Maria has suffered from depression since the death of her child, and goes to live in a lonely house by the sea.

Story concerns two friends, Freya and Irmtraut and their relationships with the same man, Traugott, who finds it impossible to choose between the two women.

A rich Italian's shocking suicide means different things to his twin brother, mother and pregnant lover.

Reel 13 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

Having murdered her husband and daughter, Carol invents a new identity to start a new life. Unfortunately, her tendency to express their unhappiness or disapproval by murdering her victims could jeopardize her romance with mathematician and philosopher Ignacio from Spain.

Renato, a depressed man with a troubled past, thinks his luck has finally changed when he meets the wonderful Monica. Unfortunately, Monica currently occupies a home she believes is haunted by the malicious spirit of her dead grandfather. This psychological horror / drama was a flop in theaters and, to date, has only been issued a single time on a home viewing format (a VHS release in Italy).

A demented nun sliding through morphine addiction into madness, while presiding over a regime of lesbianism, torture and death. Sister Gertrude is the head nurse/nun in a general hospital, whose increasingly psychotic behavior endangers the staff and patients around her.

Amanda, a beautiful American girl is soon to be married to Andrea Orsomandi, a wealthy nobleman who lives in an extravagant Gothic mansion. However there exists something dark, sinister and supernatural within the walls of the mansion. It seems that Andrea has been driven to madness and is a victim of the evil contained within the house. It soon transpires that he is involved in black magic, perverse rituals and serial killings with the aid of his sadistic henchman and gardener Giovanni. Killing prostitutes in order to exorcise this Evil. Now the demonic forces set out to possess Amanda,take her soul and turn her into another victim of the mansion.

This film was presented to the Cannes Film Festival in the parallel section in 1978. It is unreleased.

Voted for in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll

With Fred Williamson as director and star of Mr. Mean, is there any question as to the identity of the title character? Williamson plays a former Cosa Nostra henchman who seeks greener pastures. Hiring himself out as a hit man, he immediately lands a job. His mission: wipe out his old boss. Filmed in Italy, Mr. Mean certainly fulfills audience expectations

Three terrorists—a rebel girl from an upper-class family, a teacher who despises capitalism, and an ex-con with a taste for violence—come together to kill the Minister of the Interior and destabilise the government.

A young man who seems lost, Nicolas, has an appointment with her sister Juliette. They are bound by a heavy childhood secret: their mother committed suicide when their father had instructed Nicolas to keep it. Since the father chased him and forbade Juliette to see him.

ヴィム・ヴェンダース、31歳の時に撮った長編第7作。白血病で死の不安に生きているハンブルグの額縁職人ヨナタン。彼を殺人にはめ込み、完全犯罪を進めながら危険な友情にはまりこんでいくトム・リプレー。死んだ筈の画家の贋作を書いているポガッシュ。物語は、サスペンスに富む発端の画の競売シーンから、この3人の絡んだストーリーを小気味よいテンポで進めていく。

José Maria is a seventeen year old boy; his father is a successful restaurant owner in a town some distance from Barcelona, in Spain. The boy is intelligent and sensitive, but his mannerisms and habits, and lack of masculine drive, lead him to get bullied at school. The school principal decides that José is the disruptive influence, and asks for him to be removed from the school. The father berates the boy, and his mother, for his failure to be a red-blooded young man, and sends him away for a while to live with a friend in the country. Father visits the boy, and takes him to a strip club in Barcelona, run by a lady friend of his, intending that this will "cure" him of his sexual reserve. However one of the acts is a pre-operative transsexual, and there is a full frontal exposure at the end. Father has arranged that after the show...

Rome, 70s. Rocco and Antonia, high school students, meet during a political rally. The two young people share age, political ideas, dissatisfaction with their parents. Moreover, by attending, they realize they have fallen in love. It is the discovery of sex and passion. After some time, however, their relationship goes into crisis.

細菌を浴びた過激派がヨーロッパ大陸縦断列車へ逃れた。車内には伝染病が広まり、機密の漏洩を恐れた軍は秘密裏に列車をポーランドへ運び隔離しようとするが、その路線には老朽化したカサンドラ大鉄橋が横たわっていた……。

Michael is the younger son of a middle-class family, a strong-willed and free-thinking fellow, who is off in some distant country fighting for a revolutionary cause.

Anthony M. Wilson is an English gentleman. He has a string of restaurants in London plus a beautiful house decorated with all the trendy art he can get.

Faccia di spia tries to tell the story of the CIA and other government intelligence agencies with lots of re-creations and dramatizations and points out some of the more brutal aspects of the intelligence community from around the world. Wars are started, all facets of everyday life are controlled, innocent people are tortured needlessly and subjected to extreme violence.

A young filmmaker becomes involved with a gangster in Berlin. Based on the Ulf Miehe novel Ich hab' noch einen Toten in Berlin.

An American gangster of Swedish origins returns to his homeland to set up shop as a morality crusader, much in the manner of the later phenomenon of televangelists. While indulging in behind-the-scene shenanigans including rape and murder, the gangster (played by American Clu Gulagher) preaches to large audiences, using mass hypnotism and show-biz razzmatazz to get his message across. The film also features a brief performance by Per Oscarsson, following his highly publicized "retirement" from screen acting.

Nada, named after a gang of Spanish anarchists, is a small, confused band of French terrorists. They kidnap the American ambassador after one of his regular visits to an exclusive brothel. The gang starts to quarrel amongst themselves as to the diplomat's fate, while the police purge suspects in their attempts to destroy the Nada faction. As the violence escalates on both sides, the States and the terrorists are forced to use one another's methods in an increasingly desperate and relentless conflict.

In 17th-century Salem, Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet A because she is an adulteress, with a child out of wedlock. For seven years, she has refused to name the father. A vigorous older stranger arrives, recognized by Hester but unknown to others as her missing husband. He poses as Chillingworth, a doctor, watching Hester and searching out the identity of her lover. His eye soon rests on Dimmesdale, a young overwrought pastor. Enmity grows between the two men; Chillingworth applies psychological pressure, and the pastor begins to crack. A ship stops in Salem, and Hester sees it as a providential refuge for her daughter, herself, and her lover. But will Dimmesdale flee with her?

Carlo, a young photographer, is making love with his girlfriend at the beach when he witnesses a murder being feebly staged to look like a car accident. Carlo takes incriminating shots of the murderers (the victim turns out to be the local public prosecutor) and attempts to sell them to various interested parties, including a gangster and a newspaper owner. One of the murderers' accomplices, a lowlife criminal, is gunned down by a black-gloved assassin, while another is stabbed to death...

In 1958 Angelo, a rich and spoiled boy, enters a religious school, where students are tired of its vice-rector, and the strict rules and old-fashioned teaching methods of priests. Soon, Angelo exerts strong leadership among his peers and incites turmoil among them, helped by intellectual Franco and shy Camma. They expel the prefect from the school, organize a Grand Guignol show, and disappear the corpse of an old professor.

Tensions between members of a film crew build while they wait for the arrival of the director and star to arrive on location.

The film centers on young revolutionary student Gilberto who is being sought by the police. To avoid arrest, he boards a train and travels home. The house now seems somehow haunted, as doors slam shut and shadows are seen running throughout the corridors. But Gilberto soon discovers that it's his own troubled conscience that is torn in two. He hesitates as one part tells him to accept the attraction that his father's 'world' exerts on him whilst the other orders him to destroy everything to pursue his own ideals.

A gang of cattle thieves rescue a criminal from the gallows, and later rob a stagecoach loaded with gold. When they get the loot, he is betrayed and left dying in the middle of the desert. In the escape they reach a mysterious ghost town, where they perceive there is something strange about ...

A young commissioner investigates the murder of a Sicilian criminal with the help of a social worker.

Following the death of her wealthy husband, American widow Kathryn West migrates to Italy and takes up a reclusive existence in a luxurious villa. After quickly succumbing to the charms of a local man, she lets him move into the villa and the two are later joined by his sister, which soon leads to complications.

A humble scientist from Padua proves that the Earth revolves and that it is not the center of the universe.

Fabrizio finds refuge from thugs in a convent, and passion in the arms of Lucrezia Borgia.

An enterprising reporter takes along four willing adventurers to interview and photograph a young Sardinian criminal in hiding. Under intermittent gunfire, they make their way to the mountain hideout of the bandit. After a leisurely conversation and photo session, the encampment comes under fire from a group of armed citizens acting as police. Bullets fly and violence overtakes the criminal's two henchman, as the thrill-seeking group and the wanted criminal find themselves under attack.

Young Alvise's body is paralyzed, or at least he thinks so. He is infatuated by his beautiful aunt Lea. What starts as innocent therapy and care soon develops into strange erotic and psychological battle between them.

A Mexican community is slaughtered by Confederate troops; the lone survivor, a boy, is taken in by a preacher. Years later, the boy is now a soft-spoken, devout young man with perfect shooting skills (despite being a pacifist). On his journey to help his half-sister out of a complicated situation, he crosses paths with the men who killed his family, unbeknownst to him.

メキシコ革命を舞台に社会派的な要素を組み込んだ、マカロニウエスタンの金字塔。

Cavani made her first full-length feature film in 1966 with Francis of Assisi (Francesco d'Assisi). Made for television and aired in two parts, it was deeply influenced by the style of Rossellini and the atmosphere typical of the films of Pasolini. Made in a period of political unrest, it was to become a kind of manifesto of dissenting Catholicism. Starring Lou Castel, it portrays Francis of Assisi as a slightly depressed protestor and an avid, albeit mad, supporter of armed brotherhood. The ideal defender of the 1968 student movement. The film was a great success, but also triggered many negative reactions. It was called "heretical, blasphemous and offensive for the faith of the Italian people". It was the first of many polemical reactions to Cavani's work.

Ale, a deeply disturbed young man subject to seizures, benignly decides to murder members of his dysfunctional family for altruistic reasons.

As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.