French Cinema

A film about a fishing town and a couple who are evaluating their changing relationship. Varda juxtaposes the two tales to create a unique perspective on life.

The film is an exploration of power and sex. Maud is a strong-willed filmmaker who suffers a stroke. Bedridden but determined to pursue her latest film project, she sees Vilko, a con man who swindles celebrities, on a TV talk show. Interested in him for her new film, the two meet and Maud soon finds herself falling for Vilko's manipulative charm as their parasitic relationship hurtles out of control.

Through the story of four Afro-European friends living in a hype way in Paris, you will discover their everyday-life problems and have a better understanding of the deeper thoughts and identity issues of black women in Europe. Léonora Miano, awarded by the prestigious "Prix Goncourt des lycéens" in 2006 signs here a beautiful play mixing humor, drama and dance, even involving food flavors.

"Chinese" Transposition of the famous novel by Lewis Carroll, this performance mixing circus and dance will take you into Alice's journey in Wonderland. The Chinese performers offer fantastic perspectives on this story, fostering your own imagination.

Tom Ripley has been sent to Italy by the father of one Philippe Greenleaf with the objective of bringing Greenleaf back into the family fold in the United States. Ripley, an accomplished forger, takes his job half-seriously until he falls in love with the same woman Greenleaf is in love with, Marge.

"A heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss between two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true comaraderie - until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Louis Malle's own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice and tragic awakening."--Container.

Mele is a bar singer, her husband Chaka is out of work and the couple is on the verge of breaking up, In the courtyard of the house they share with other families, a trial court has been set up. African civil society spokesmen have taken proceedings against the World Bank and the IMF whom they blame for Africa's woes. Amidst the pleas and the testimonies, life goes on in the courtyard.

The porcelain perfection of Catherine Deneuve hides a cracked interior in the actress's most iconic role: Severine, a chilly Paris housewife by night, a bordello prostitute by day.

Tells the fable of the kindly beast and the self-sacrificing beauty whose love releases the prince in him. Contains such visual displays as tears that become real diamonds and walls that grow arms to light Beauty's path through the castle of the Beast.

The director, Nicolas Liautard revisits the tale of Snow White in a unique way through a dreamlike and visual spectacle: it is not a theater play because it is not spoken; it is not an opera but there is music. It is a contemporary adaptation combining four actors, puppets and live animals. This performance of great beauty got nominated at Molières 2010 in the category young audience.

After Pinocchio and Little Red Riding Hood, French renowned director Joël Pommerat appropriates, transforms and sublimes the famous tale of Cinderella. Here he breaks all stereotypes about fairies, princesses or witches. Before dying, her mother tries to talk to her, but she does not hear her words properly. The daughter invents a "promise" that her mother would have asked her to follow. This misunderstanding leads the young girl to great suffering. Her meeting with a prince, an orphan too, will make it possible to understand her mistake.

Marguerite Duras is one of the most widely read French novelists today. She had a celebrated love affair with Yann, her much younger muse and apprentice. The film also offers an insight into the heart and mind of one of the world's literary figures.

Years after being abandoned at an orphanage by her father, Gabrielle Chanel finds a job in a tailor shop where she meets, and soon begins an affair with French millionaire Etienne Balsan. Through Baron Balsan she is introduced into French society and given the opportunity to design her own style of hats. Though her career takes off, her personal life becomes more complicated when she falls in love with Balsan's former best friend Arthur Capel.

When her husband is found standing over the body of a murdered dance instructor, Brigitte Bardot goes undercover to find the real killer and is drawn into a shady Parisian underworld.

Cyrano is a brilliant but hideously ugly poet, trying to get his true love, Roxanne.

A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his French teacher. Faced with this gifted and unusual pupil, the teacher rediscovers his enthusiasm for his work, but the boy's intrusion will unleash a series of uncontrollable events.

Emma is like Flaubert's Emma Bovary. Behind her need for money and the debt in which she is diving, her desire to be part of the world is hiding. The man does not see the troubles she is going through: his love for her makes him completely blind. You will be moved by this very accurate play full of passion.k

Juliette is an 18 year-old orphan whose unbridled appetite for pleasure shakes up all of St. Tropez. Her sweet but naïve husband Michel endures beatings, insults and mambo in his attempts to tame her wild ways.

David Bobée stages a Shakespeare's classic again introducing dance, theatre, circus, music and video in Hamlet. He approaches this mythical play by plunging us into a very cinematic universe: a bright and cold morgue, covered with black tiles, which will be waterlogged. This Hamlet is firmly contemporary, physical and intense. Shot at the Maison des Arts in Créteil.

Michel, who wrote poetry, and Harry, a rich spoiled brat, were school chums. Now twenty years later, Michel, who is married with three young girls, meets up with Harry on the way to Michel's summer home. Harry "forces" his way into their lives and nothing will be the same again. Trying to make Michel's life "easier", Harry embarks on a path that will become self-destructive.

Zouina is a woman who is torn from her home in Algeria. With her 3 children and her mother-in-law, she rejoins her husband in a foreign, unaccommodating land.

This video minutely details three days in the life of a housewife/prostitute. When her daily routine is disrupted, her reaction is extreme.

A story told as a recollection of childhood memories, set in mid-70's Argentina during the military dictatorship that consumed the country. 10-year old Harry and his brother must adjust to a new life when without warning his parents move the family from a middle-class life in Buenos Aires to live in an abandoned house hidden in the countryside.

Three months before her final examinations, the ambitious teachership student Valentine concentrates herself completely on her studies. When jazz musician Edouard wooes her, she agrees on a date - planning for one night of pleasure. But when she comes to know him better, she realizes that he isn't as shallow as she thought and lust turns to love. But between her examination preparations and a tour with a jazz band there is no time left to be spent together.

When Fernando and Marie decide to dedicate themselves full time to various political causes, their nine-year-old daughter, Anna, must learn to face the world on her own.

Don Salluste profite de ses fonctions de ministre des Finances du roi d'Espagne pour raqueter le peuple. Mais la Reine qui le déteste réussit à le chasser de la cour. Ivre de vengeance, il décide de la compromettre. Son neveu Don César ayant refusé de se mêler du complot, c'est finalement le valet de Don Salluste, Blaze, transi d'amour pour la souveraine, qui tiendra le rôle du Prince charmant. Malheureusement à force de quiproquos, il ne parvient qu'à s'attirer les faveurs de la peu avenante Dona Juana.

La jetée: An unnamed man experiments with time travel, in hopes of finding a solutions to the problems of his post-apocalyptic home era. Narrated almost entirely using black-and-white still photographs.
Sans soleil: Actress Alexandra Stewart reads and comments on the letters she receives from (fictional) Sandor Krasna, a world-traveling freelance cameraman. Explores the immense diversity of the human species and its differing societies.

When a man shaves off his mustache, a trademark he's had for years, no one around him notices, instead insisting he's never even had one. Is he going insane, or is this some kind of strange conspiracy?

Ludivine Sagnier stars as Lili, the love and muse of an idealistic young filmmaker in this modern adaptation of Chekov's classic play The Seagull. The story revolves around Mado, a movie-star past her prime who owns an elegant chateau in the serene French countryside. Mado's lover Brice is a successful director who continues to cast Mado in his films. Her son Julien, an aspiring filmmaker, despises his "sell-out" mother, but at the same time yearns for her approval. Lili, Julien's girlfriend (and lead actress), is intent on escaping the lowly life of a poor country girl and dreams of stardom.

An absorbing drama about a Belgian teenager who is gradually coming to understand the implications of his father making a living off of abusing illegal alien workers.

When it comes to matters of infidelity, everyone is considered an equal, whether it's a soldier, a maid, or an aristocrat in 1900's Vienna.

Pierre and his snobbish friends have a standing date for dinner. Every week they compete to see who can bring the biggest idiot to the party.

Le Menteur is a comedy which entails lies and love. This piece was staged in 2008 by Laurent Pelly at the Théâtre National de Toulouse, where he is co-director with Agathe Mélinand, who makes a new translation.

This play is an adaptation of The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the most translated book in the French language (more than 250 languages) and one of the best-selling books ever published. In this staging by Maroccan Stella Serfaty, the blond litte boy is a Black man because for her, this tale is a social criticism of our civilization, in which people are sheeps. This theater play for adults, with video, music and a sand artist plunges us into a world, where the time to draw a picture is as important as the drawing itself.

An aging man hides behind a mask to meet ladies, a madame takes her girls to a communion, and a painter falls for his model in these stories of life, love, pleasure, and death.

Unemployed music teacher Clement Mathieu becomes the supervisor at a boarding school for the rehabilitation of minors. Dismayed by the repressive administration, he works to positively transform the students' lives through music.

When her teenage son runs away and her husband refuses to hunt for him, a frantic mother calls on two old lovers to help. This odd couple makes an hilarious search on the Riviera, bickering and competing as they defeat gangsters and motorcycle toughs to rescue the boy.

Through this musical and poetic performance, you have a chance to discover a small part of the work of the famous but too often forgotten activist Frantz Fanon. Even though he was French, he took part in the Algerian liberation movement (FLN) during the Algerian war against France taking position for the independence of the country at a very early stage and died as an Algerian. His books exploring especially the psychiatric consequences of colonization are still very accurate.

Tati portrays an eccentric character, Hulot, whose presence at a very proper French seaside resort provokes one outrageous catastrophe after another.

Gruff, sentimental César owns a waterfront bar in the old port of Marseille, where his son, Marius, wipes down tables and dreams of a life at sea. The prosperous, middle-aged sailmaker Panisse, wanting to wed Marius's sweetheart, Fanny, sets up a generation-spanning romantic triangle, the story of which unfolds in a series of fateful twists in the films, which first earned Pagnol his place in cinema history. Includes making and restoration of the films, documentaries, interviews, and more.

An elderly Turkish Muslim grocer befriends a lonely teenage Jewish boy in a working class section of Paris.

The story of a Montreal middle school class shaken by the death of their well-liked teacher, and the 55-year-old Algerian immigrant who offers his services as a substitute teacher and aids the process of collective healing.

Filmmaker Frank Beauvais uses film clips to illustrate his essay on being isolated in unfamiliar, rural Alsace after breaking up with his partner.

A young woman feels constrained by her role as caregiver for her ill mother, an ex-prostitute.

In a family house, a party is about to be thrown as a stranger rings the door's bell and says he wants to set fire to the house. As the daughter invites him to come in, it's the beginning of a play between tragedy and comedy, full of humor, violence and poetry.

In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family. Their long dream is realized when the hated Shah is defeated in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, Marji grows up to witness first hand how the new Iran has become a repressive tyranny on its own. With Marji dangerously refusing to remain silent at this injustice, her parents send her abroad to Vienna to study. This change proves an equally difficult trial for Marji and finds herself in a different culture loaded with abrasive characters and profound disappointments that deeply trouble her. Even when she returns home, Marji finds that both she and her homeland have changed too much and the young woman and her loving family must decide where she truly belongs

The touching portrait of eight-year-old Sasha, who questions her gender and in doing so, evokes the sometimes disturbing reactions of a society that is still invested in a biological boy-girl way of thinking.

"A housebound trophy housewife steps in to manage the umbrella factory run by her tyrannical husband after the workers go on strike. To everyone's surprise, Suzanne proves herself a competent and assertive woman of action."--Container.

The teenage life and adventures of young José, who lives in a shanty-town on Martinique in the mid-1930s, comprises the body of this film. José lives with his grandmother and is well aware of the French colonial presence. He gets into mischief, learns valuable lessons on living from an old former slave, drinks too much one time, and even sets fire to one of the run-down shanties. Regardless of his pranks, José never neglects his education.

The one joy in the lives of a mother and daughter comes from the regular letters sent to them from Paris from the family's adored son, Otar. When the daughter finds out that Otar has died suddenly, she tries to conceal the truth from her mother, changing the course of their lives forever.

Follows the relationship between a teenage ski prodigy and her predatory instructor. In a breakthrough role, Noée Abita plays 15-year-old Lyz, a high school student in the French Alps who has been accepted to an elite ski club known for producing some of the country's top professional athletes. Taking a chance on his new recruit, ex-champion turned coach Fred decides to mold Lyz into his shining star despite her lack of experience. Under his influence, she will have to endure more than the physical and emotional pressure of the training. Will Lyz's determination help her escape Fred's exploitative grip?

Based on the final volume of Proust's Remembrance of things past, the narrator is haunted by the memories of the people he cared about and those who shaped his life.

"Victor Valance, long lost father comes home to his daughters and his mother in order to weasel some money out of them to front a gambling casino. Unable to tell them the real reason he wants the money, he just tells them the money is for country house for them. His oldest daughter, Pauline is suspicious of his father's intentions. She finds out the truth and she sets out to sabotage his project. Her attitude changes when she finds out that her father is in danger and the gangsters are planning to take over her father's casino. The mob adversaries cause the father and daughter to team up in self-defense, leading a chase through the mountains."

Le Menteur is a comedy which entails lies and love. This piece was staged in 2008 by Laurent Pelly at the Théâtre National de Toulouse, where he is co-director with Agathe Mélinand, who makes a new translation.

A 17-year-old Kurdish refugee, Bilal, has struggled his way through Europe in an attempt to reunite with his girlfriend, who has emigrated to England. When he is stopped in France, he decides to swim the English Channel to complete his journey. While training at a local swimming pool he meets Simon, a middle-aged swim instructor, who agrees to help Bilal, in order to regain the affection of his wife.

Angelique, a young student, is in love with a married doctor. She tries to convince him to leave his pregnant wife. Is the love affair the one-sided obsession of a desperate woman clinging to a hopeless dream, and turning it into a nightmare when she realizes it may not come true?