Gustavus Library Movie Guide: Francophone Cinema

"Covering the rich film production of Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, the Caribbean, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa, this book brings together films that might otherwise be divided by questions of race, gender, genre, period, or nation, in a valuable comparative study of a diverse corpus. Individual countries, film-makers, and films are treated separately in order to emphasize their specific identities or those which are represented in their films, and key films are examined within a well-developed historical context. Clearly written and accessible to the specialist and general reader alike, this informative book is a valuable reference source. " - from the publisher

"This thoroughly revised and expanded edition of a key textbook offers an innovative and accessible account of the richness and diversity of French film history and culture from the 1890s to the present day. The contributors, who include leading historians and film scholars, provide an indispensable introduction to key topics and debates in French film history. Each chronological section addresses seven key themes – people, business, technology, forms, representations, spectators and debates, providing an essential overview of the cinema industry, the people who worked in it, including technicians and actors as well as directors, and the culture of cinema going in France from the beginnings of cinema to the contemporary period." - from the publisher

"Chronicling one of the greatest and most popular national cinemas, Republic of Images traces the evolution of French filmmaking from 1895—the year of the debut of the Cinematographe in Paris—to the present day. Alan Williams offers a unique synthesis of history, biography, aesthetics and film theory. He brings to life all of the major directors, setting before us the cultures from which they emerged, and sheds new light on the landmark films they created. He distills what is historically and artistically unique in each of their careers and reveals what each artist has in common with the forebears and heirs of the craft. Within the larger story of French cinema, Williams examines the treasury of personal expression, social commentary, and aesthetic exploration that France has produced so consistently and exported so well. It is the tale of an industry rife with crises, and Williams offers a superb narrative of the economic, political, and social forces that have shaped its century-long history. He provides biographical sketches of filmmakers from the early pioneers of the silent era such as Louis Lumière and Alice Guy to modern directors such as Louis Malle, Claude Chabrol, and François Truffaut. Some of their careers, he shows, exemplify the significant contributions individuals made to the development of French fllmmaking; others yield illuminating evidence of the problems and opportunities of a whole generation of filmmakers. Throughout, he presents critical analyses of significant films, from The Assassination of the Duc de Guise (1908) to works by the post–nouvelle vague directors. Williams captures the formal and stylistic developments of film in France over nearly one hundred years. Free of cant and jargon, Republic of Images is the best general account available of the rich interplay of film, filmmaker, and society. It will delight both general reader and student, as well as the viewer en route to the video store." - from the publisher

"The three decades between 1930 and 1960 were one of the most creative periods in the history of cinema. During this era, films achieved a level of great sophistication, and in France this era produced some of the most famous films ever made - Jean Vigo's Zero de conduite. Rene Clair's A nous la liberte, Jean Renoir's Crime de M Lange, and Jean Cocteau's Orphee." "In The Classic French Cinema, 1930-1960, Colin Crisp investigates the critical period from the introduction of sound to the beginning of the New Wave. He details the extraordinary ingenuity of French filmmakers who worked under economic and technological constraints that affected both the production and the consumption of films." "In this comprehensive study, Crisp synthesizes a large body of work on the French cinema, most of it published only in French. At the same time, he radically re-writes aspects of the industrial history of the classic French cinema, shedding new light on its periodization and re-evaluating the extent of German influence on the French film industry's postwar organization. Crisp also reveals the New Wave filmmakers to be the natural heirs of the classic French cinema, rather than a break with the earlier tradition. Fully illustrated with over 50 black-and-white photos from these classic films, plus numerous charts, and figures." - from the publisher

"This book is an essential introduction to popular French film of the last 35 years. It charts recent developments in all genres of French cinema with analyses of over 120 movies, from Les Valseuses to Caché. Reflecting the diversity of French film production since the New Wave, this clear and perceptive study includes chapters on the heritage film, the thriller and the war movie, alongside the 'cinéma du look', representations of sexuality, comedies, the work of women film makers and le jeune cinéma. Each chapter introduces the public reception and critical debates surrounding a given genre, interwoven with detailed accounts of relevant films. Confirmed as a major contribution to both Film Studies and French Studies, this book is a fascinating volume for students and fans of French film alike." - from the publisher

"Francophone Belgian Cinema offers an original critical analysis of filmmaking in an oft-neglected 'national' and regional cinema. The book draws key distinctions between the local, national, small national, regional and transnational frameworks in both representational and industrial terms. Alongside the Dardenne brothers, this book considers four promising Francophone Belgian filmmakers who have received limited critical attention in academic publications on contemporary European cinema: Joachim Lafosse, Olivier Masset-Depasse, Lucas Belvaux and Bouli Lanners. Exploring these filmmakers' themes of post-industrialism, paternalism, the fractured nuclear family and spatial dynamics, as well as their work in the more commercial road movie and polar genres, Jamie Steele analyses their stylistic continuities and filiation. This is complemented by an analysis of how the industrial aspects of film production, distribution and exhibition contribute to the creation of both a regional and transnational cinema." - from the publisher

"Culturally and linguistically divided between the Dutch-speaking Flanders and the francophone Brussels and Wallonia, Belgium is a contested site. Nevertheless, its filmic output merits serious attention, as it boasts the highest number of film-makers per capita. 'Directory of World Cinema: Belgium' is the comprehensive guide it richly deserves. Featuring contributions from leading Belgian and international film scholars, the essays here examine the work and careers of the greatest names of Belgian cinema, from its pioneers to its modern age, while also investigating its intersections with Belgian art, history, literature and culture, as well as the legacies of social documentary, surrealism and magical realism. Belgium has for the last decade produced an average of forty feature films a year - an extraordinary accomplishment for a country of just ten million inhabitants - and has secured a place at the forefront of the international cinema scene." - from the publisher

"Filmmakers in sub-Saharan francophone Africa have been using cinema since independence in the 1960s to challenge existing Western stereotypes of the continent. In Africa Shoots Back, Melissa Thackway illustrates how directors working in a postcolonial context have produced these alternative depictions of African identity. She shows how memory and history have become central themes in African films and how local cultural forms have been integrated into the film medium. Interviews with eight African filmmakers enlarge Thackway’s account of the new cinematic codes and previously silenced voices given life in African film." - from the publisher

"Setting the stage for a critical encounter between Francophone African cinema and Continental European critical theory, this book offers a transnational and interdisciplinary analysis of 16 Francophone African films, including Bassek Ba Kobhio's The Great White Man of Lambarene, Cheick Oumar Sissoko's Guimba the Tyrant, and Amadou Seck's Saaraba. The author invites readers to study these films in the context of transnational conversations between African filmmakers and the conventional theorists whose works are more readily available in academia. The book examines black French filmmakers' treatments of a number of cross-cultural themes, including intercontinental encounters and reciprocity, ideology and subjective freedom, governance and moral responsibility, sexuality and social order, and globalization. Throughout the work, the presentation of literary theory is accessible by both beginning and advanced students of film and culture." - from the publisher

"Over the past four decades immigration to France from the Francophone countries of North Africa (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) has changed in character. For much of the twentieth century, migrants who crossed the Mediterranean to France were men seeking work, who frequently undertook manual labour, working long hours in difficult conditions. Recent decades have seen an increase in family reunification - the arrival of women and children from North Africa, either accompanying their husbands or joining them in France. Contemporary creative representations of migration are shaped by this shift in gender and generation from a solitary, mostly male experience to one that included women and children. Just as the shift made new demands of the 'host' society, it made new demands of authors and filmmakers as they seek to represent migration. This study reveals how text and film present new ways of thinking about migration, moving away from the configuration of the migrant as man and worker, to take into account women, children, and the ties between." - from the publisher

"Postnationalist African Cinemas convincingly interrogates the ways in which African narratives locate postcolonial identities and forms beyond essentially nationalist frameworks. It investigates how the emergence of new genres, discourses and representations, all unrelated to an overtly nationalist project, influences the formal choices made by contemporary directors. By foregrounding the narrative, generic, discursive, representational and aesthetic structures of films, this book shows how directors are beginning to regard film as a popular form of entertainment rather than political praxis." - from the publisher

"This volume attempts to join the disparate worlds of Egyptian, Maghrebian, South African, Francophone, and Anglophone African cinema--that is, five 'formations' of African cinema. These five areas are of particular significance--each in its own way. The history of South Africa, heavily marked by apartheid and its struggles, differs considerably from that of Egypt, which early on developed its own 'Hollywood on the Nile.' The history of French colonialism impacted the three countries of the Maghreb--Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco--differently than those in sub-Saharan Africa, where Senegal and Sembène had their own great effect on the Sahelian region. Anglophone Africa, particularly the films of Ghana and Nigeria, has dramatically altered the ways people have perceived African cinema for decades. History, geography, production, distribution, and exhibition are considered alongside film studies concerns about ideology and genre." - from the publisher

"For over half of our century, Jean Cotcteau was the master bricoleur--Jack-of-all-trades--in the arts of Western Europe. His trademark--hand-written name with a tailpiece star--became as famous as his name, and his collected works, as Auden said, would require 'not a bookshelf, but a warehouse.' Besides some fifty volumes of poems, plays, novels, memoirs, diaries, and criticism, he also made drawings, paintings, tapestries, pottery, movies, murals, stage sets, ballets, opera libretti, cabaret songs (music as well as words), and one season he designed a line of Christmas cards. He was a tireless performers, onstage and off: a dazzling talker (monologues a specialty): an opium addict; a scandalous lover (who wore a whole suit of hearts up his sleeve as well as on it); and always a winning but haunted child, whose obsessive need was to outrage and be loved by all the grownups. If Cocteau did not invent the phrase enfant terrible, he certainly gave it household currency. The future will decide his place in world literature, but meantime we have his personal legend, his emblematic private life as he himself recorded it."

"Unevenly respected, easily hated, almost always suspected of being inferior to his reputation, Jean Cocteau has often been thought of as a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. In this landmark biography, Claude Arnaud thoroughly contests this characterization, as he celebrates Cocteau's 'fragile genius--a combination almost unlivable in art' but in his case so fertile. Arnaud narrates the life of this legendary French novelist, poet, playwright, director, filmmaker, and designer who, as a young man, pretended to be a sort of god, but who died as a humble and exhausted craftsman. His moving and compassionate account examines the nature of Cocteau's chameleon-like genius, his romantic attachments, his controversial politics, and his intimate involvement with many of the century's leading artistic lights, including Picasso, Proust, Hemingway, Stravinsky, and Tennessee Williams. Already published to great critical acclaim in France, Arnaud's penetrating and deeply researched work reveals a uniquely gifted artist while offering a magnificent cultural history of the twentieth century." - from the publisher

"Jean Cocteau’s sublime adaptation of Mme. Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy-tale masterpiece—in which the pure love of a beautiful girl melts the heart of a feral but gentle beast—is a landmark of motion picture fantasy, with unforgettably romantic performances by Jean Marais and Josette Day. The spectacular visions of enchantment, desire, and death in Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) have become timeless icons of cinematic wonder." - from Criterion.com

"Jean Cocteau’s update of the Orpheus myth depicts a famous poet (Jean Marais), scorned by the Left Bank youth, and his love for both his wife, Eurydice (Marie Déa), and a mysterious princess (Maria Casarès). Seeking inspiration, the poet follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead, through Cocteau’s famous mirrored portal. Orpheus’s peerless visual poetry and dreamlike storytelling represent the legendary Cocteau at the height of his powers." - from Criterion.com

"Hailed by the New York Times on its Paris release as 'one of the great films in motion picture history,' Raymond Bernard's Wooden Crosses, France's answer to All Quiet on the Western Front, still stuns with its depiction of the travails of one French regiment during World War I. Using a masterful arsenal of film techniques, from haunting matte paintings to jarring documentary-like camerawork in the film's battle sequences, Bernard created a pacifist work of enormous empathy and chilling despair. No one who has ever seen this technical and emotional powerhouse has been able to forget it." - from Criterion.com

"Hailed by film critics around the world as the greatest screen adapation of Victor Hugo's mammoth nineteenth-century novel, Raymond Bernard's dazzling, nearly five-hour Les misérables is a breathtaking tour de force, unfolding with the depth and detail of its source. Featuring stunning art direction and cinematography and unforgettable performances by the exquisite Harry Baur (who died tragically during World War II), as Jean Valjean, and the legendary Charles Vanel, as Inspector Javert, Les misérables is one of the triumphs of French filmmaking." - from Criterion.com

"Here is the autobiography of the little boy with golden curls in the paintings of his father, Pierre Auguste Renoir-the boy who became the director many consider the greatest in history. François Truffaut called him 'an infallible filmmaker . . . Renoir has succeeded in creating the most alive films in the history of cinema, films which still breathe forty years after they were made.' In this book, Jean Renoir (1894-1979) presents his world, from his father's Montemarte studio to his own travels in Paris, Hollywood, and India. Here are tantalizing secrets about his greatest films-The Rules of the Game, The Grand Illusion, The River, A Day in the Country, La Bête Humaine, Toni. But most of all, Renoir shows us himself: a man if dazzling simplicity, immense creativity, and profound humanity." - from the publisher

"Renoir on Renoir is a 1990 collection of essays by, and interviews of, the legendary filmmaker Jean Renoir, who created such classics as The Grand Illusion, The River and The Rules of the Game. Renoir's career in cinema, which straddled the transition from silent film to the talkies, has influenced a subsequent generation of filmmakers. Between 1954 and 1967, Renoir was interviewed by such eminent filmmakers and theorists as Jacques Rivette, Francois Truffaut and Jacques Becker. The interviews were originally recorded and published in the distinguished French film review Cahiers du Cinéma, and shown on French television. They are an engaging account of Renoir's deep commitment to his chosen profession. Providing additional information on his ideas and theories on screen writing and directing, Renoir's essays also include lively anecdotes of the genesis and evolution of each of his films. They reveal behind-the-scenes of some of the masterpieces of French cinema." - from the publisher

"Jean Renoir: A Life in Pictures is the first biography of this master of modern cinema--the director of Grand Illusion, Rules of the Game, The River, and other classics. Célia Bertin tells Renoir's story from his magical childhood to his first success in films, from his encounter with European fascism to his final years as the beloved "Frenchman from Beverly Hills." With the help of Renoir's family, Bertin interviewed everyone who knew the director in Paris, Provence, Bourgogne, and Los Angeles. Using first-hand accounts along with previously unpublished materials, she places this colorful, charming, and brilliant figure in the context of his time, his culture, and the history of cinema. Awarded the prize Therouanne by the Académie française in 1986, this acclaimed biography is now available in English." - from the publisher

"Offers appraisals of all of the French director's films and an account of his working methods, and details his personal life, from his idyllic childhood as the son of a master painter, to his marriages and his death in 1979. Includes b&w photos, previously unpublished letters, and a filmography." - from the publisher

"One of the very first prison escape movies, Grand Illusion is hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. Jean Renoir's antiwar masterpiece stars Jean Gabin and Pierre Fresnay as French soldiers held in a World War I German prison camp, and Erich von Stroheim as the unforgettable Captain von Rauffenstein." - from Criterion.com

"Considered one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners in which a weekend at a marquis’s country château lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haut-bourgeois acquaintances. The film has had a tumultuous history: it was subjected to cuts after the violent response of the audience at its 1939 premiere, and the original negative was destroyed during World War II; it wasn’t reconstructed until 1959. That version, which has stunned viewers for decades, is presented here." - from Criterion.com

"French filmmaker Robert Bresson created a new kind of cinema through refinement of the form's grammatical and expressive possibilities. In thirteen features over a forty-year career, he held to an uncompromising moral vision and aesthetic rigor. This book gives equal attention to the films, their literary sources, and psycho-biographical aspects of the work. Concentrating on the films' cinematographic, imagistic, narrative, and thematic structures, the author analyzes each film-including nearly 100 illustrations-elucidating Bresson's unique style as it evolved from the impassioned Les Anges du péche to such disconsolate meditations on the world as The Devil Probably and L'Argent. Attention is also given to psychosexual aspects of the films." -

"An inexperienced, sickly priest (Claude Laydu) shows up in the rural French community of Ambricourt, where he joins the community's clergy. But the locals don't take kindly to the priest, and his ascetic ways and unsociable demeanor make him an outcast. During Bible studies at the nearby girls school, he is continually mocked by his students. Then his attempt to intervene in a family feud backfires into a scandal. His failures, compounded with his declining health, begin to erode his faith."

"Marcel Carné symbolizes the period, approximately 1930-1945, when French cinema recaptured the creative vitality and prestige it had relinquished almost completely to the American film industry. The first critical biography of this director of classic films, including the epic historical romance Les Enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise), relates the saga of Carné’s meteoric rise in the 1930s and his decline from critical grace after the war. Between 1937 and 1945 Carné directed a number of works that are now part of France’s cultural patrimony, most notably Le Quai des Brumes (1938), LeJour se lève (1939), Les Visiteurs du soir (1942), and the best known, Les Enfants du paradis (1945). The artistic merit of these films is widely acknowledged; their significance, however, is not solely aesthetic. To know Carné and his films is to know how cinematic art responded to social and political events — to the period of French history that witnessed the Popular Front, the Front’s demise, the fall of France, and the Occupation. Edward Baron Turk discloses the incongruities between the director’s aesthetic of poetic realism and his professed leftist sympathies; he situates Carné’s questionable stance and activities during the Occupation within the broader context of an artist’s ethical responsibilities in times of war; and he examines the ramifications of Carné’s censure during the postwar purges for the director’s subsequent fortunes. Turk’s use of the psychoanalytic concepts of androgyny, masochism, fetishism, and primal scene allows us to understand more clearly how Carné thought and worked. Turk also addresses the representations and maskings of homosexuality in Carné’s films and the extent to which they have colored film history’s often ambivalent assessments of the director. The centerpiece of the book is an extended analysis of what is arguably the most famous and beloved of all French films, Les Enfants du paradis, scripted by the poet-screenwriter Jacques Prévert. The book draws on unpublished correspondence from, among others, Jean Cocteau, François Truffaut, and Simone Signoret, and on interviews by the author with Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Mme. Jacques Prévert, Pierre Prévert, Claude Renoir, Alexander Trauner, Truffaut, and Carné himself. This portrait of Carné thus becomes the portrait of an age, a great age in the history of French cinema, albeit a tragic age in the history of France." - from the publisher

"Down a foggy, desolate road to the port city of Le Havre travels Jean (Jean Gabin), an army deserter looking for another chance to make good on life. Fate, however, has a different plan for him, as acts of both revenge and kindness render him front-page news. Also starring the blue-eyed phenomenon Michèle Morgan in her first major role, and the menacing Michel Simon, Port of Shadows (Le Quai des brumes) starkly portrays an underworld of lonely souls wrestling with their own destinies. Based on the novel by Pierre Mac Orlan, the inimitable team of director Marcel Carné and writer Jacques Prévert deliver a quintessential example of poetic realism and a classic film from the golden age of French cinema." - from Criterion.com

"One of the great works of 1930s poetic realist cinema, Le jour se lève was Marcel Carné’s fourth collaboration with screenwriter and poet Jacques Prévert. In this compelling story of obsessive sexuality and murder, the working-class François (Jean Gabin) resorts to killing in order to free the woman he loves from the controlling influence of another man." - from Criterion.com

"A work of poetry and dark humor, Les visiteurs du soir is a lyrical medieval fantasy from the great French director Marcel Carné. Two strangers dressed as minstrels (Arletty and Alain Cuny) arrive at a castle in advance of court festivities—and are revealed to be emissaries of the devil, dispatched to spread heartbreak and suffering. Their plans, however, are thwarted by an unexpected intrusion: human love. Often interpreted as an allegory for the Nazi occupation of France, during which it was made, Les visiteurs du soir—wittily written by Jacques Prévert and Pierre Laroche, and elegantly designed by Alexandre Trauner and shot by Roger Hubert—is a moving tale of love conquering all." - from Criterion.com

"Poetic realism reached sublime heights with Children of Paradise, widely considered one of the greatest French films of all time. This nimble depiction of nineteenth-century Paris’s theatrical demimonde, filmed during World War II, follows a mysterious woman (Arletty) loved by four different men (all based on historical figures): an actor, a criminal, a count, and, most poignantly, a mime (Jean-Louis Barrault, in a longing-suffused performance for the ages). With sensitivity and dramatic élan, director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert resurrect a world teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers. And thanks to a major new restoration, this iconic classic looks and sounds richer and more detailed than ever." - from Criterion.com

"Star-crossed lovers Thérèse and Laurent think they've gotten away with murder after Thérèse's weakling husband "falls" from a speeding train. But when forced to contend with a blackmailer's demands and the mute accusations of Thérèse's mother-in-law, it's only a matter of time before the law, their passion or blind chance trip them up."

"A timeless evocation of childhood innocence corrupted, René Clément’s Forbidden Games tells the story of a young girl orphaned by war and the farm boy she joins in a fantastical world of macabre play. At once mythical and heartbreakingly real, this unique film features astonishing performances by its child stars and was honored with a special foreign language film Academy Award in 1952." - from Criterion.com

"One of France’s most respected directors of the postwar era, René Clément created such intense psychological dramas as Forbidden Games and Purple Noon. The equally gripping Gervaise, his vivid adaptation of Émile Zola’s 1877 masterpiece L’assommoir, is an uncompromising depiction of a laundress’s struggles with an alcoholic husband while running her own business. Gervaise was nominated for an Oscar and earned Maria Schell best actress honors at the Venice Film Festival. " - from Criterion.com

"A mysterious writer of poison-pen letters, known only as Le Corbeau (the Raven), plagues a French provincial town, exposing the collective suspicion and rancor seething beneath the community’s calm surface. Made during the Nazi occupation of France, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau was attacked by the right-wing Vichy regime, the left-wing Resistance press, and the Catholic Church, and was banned after the liberation. But some—including Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre—recognized the powerful subtext of Clouzot’s anti-informant, anti-Gestapo fable, and worked to rehabilitate his directorial reputation after the war. Le Corbeau brilliantly captures the paranoid pettiness and self-loathing that turn an occupied French town into a twentieth-century Salem." - from Criterion.com

"Blacklisted for his daring 'anti-French' masterpiece Le corbeau, Henri-Georges Clouzot returned to cinema four years later with the 1947 crime-fiction adaptation Quai des Orfèvres. Set within the vibrant dance halls and crime corridors of 1940s Paris, Quai des Orfèvres follows ambitious performer Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair), her covetous husband Maurice Martineau (Bernard Blier), and their devoted confidante Dora Monier (Simone Renant) as they attempt to cover one another's tracks when a sexually orgreish high-society acquaintance is murdered. Enter Inspector Antoine (Louis Jouvet), whose seasoned instincts lead him down a circuitous path in this classic whodunit murder mystery." - from Criterion.com

"In a squalid South American oil town, four desperate men sign on for a suicide mission to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin over a treacherous mountain route. As they ferry their explosive cargo to a faraway oil fire, each bump and jolt tests their courage, their friendship, and their nerves. The result is one of the greatest thrillers ever committed to celluloid, a white-knuckle ride from France’s legendary master of suspense, Henri-Georges Clouzot." - from Criterion.com

"Before Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Repulsion, there was Diabolique. This thriller from Henri‑Georges Clouzot, which shocked audiences in Europe and the U.S., is the story of two women—the fragile wife and the willful mistress of the sadistic headmaster of a boys' boarding school—who hatch a daring revenge plot. With its unprecedented narrative twists and terrifying images, Diabolique is a heart-grabbing benchmark in horror filmmaking, featuring outstanding performances by Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, and Paul Meurisse." - from Criterion.com

"Director Henri-Georges Clouzot peers into the imagination of Pablo Picasso's studio and emerges with a quiet documentary that captures the revolutionary painter's creative process. Through a combination of stop-motion and time-lapse photography, Picasso's Cubist work comes to life on screen. Paint strokes and splashes of color appear as if by magic, as empty canvases become platforms for a series of daring and original drawings and paintings that exist only within the confines of this film."

"Jacques Tati is viewed as one of the most innovative filmmakers in the history of cinema. At the same time, he also achieved global box-office success and a devoted following. In drawing on and subverting the conventions of film comedy, Tati not only satirized aspects of modern life, he attempted to develop in his viewers a playful, participatory attitude toward the modern world in order to overcome what he saw as a passivity characteristic of modernity. Malcolm Turvey argues that Tati captured both an elite and a popular audience by combining a modernist aesthetic with slapstick, sight gags, and other popular traditions of comedian-centered comedy that had developed in the silent era. In discussing films such as Play Time, Mon Oncle, and Mr. Hulot's Holiday, Turvey describes Tati's distinct comedic sensibility as one that was 'democratic' in allowing the viewer to choose what to look at in a particular scene. In addition to considering Tati's distinct comedic style, Turvey also considers the director's satirical view of the bourgeoisie and his love/hate relationship with modernity. Amply illustrated with images from the Tati's films, Play Time provides an illuminating and in-depth understanding of the richness of Tati's work." - from the publisher

"Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati’s endearing clown, takes a holiday at a seaside resort, where his presence provokes one catastrophe after another. Tati’s masterpiece of gentle slapstick is a series of effortlessly well-choreographed sight gags involving dogs, boats, and firecrackers; it was the first entry in the Hulot series and the film that launched its maker to international stardom." - from Criterion.com

"Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis with PlayTime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the lovably old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a baffling modern world, this time Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, PlayTime is a lasting record of a modern era tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion." - from Criterion.com

"The backstabbing criminals in the shadowy underworld of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le doulos have only one guiding principle: “Lie or die.” A stone-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Faugel (Serge Reggiani), just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisting, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust? Shot and edited with Melville’s trademark cool and featuring masterfully stylized dialogue and performances, Le doulos (slang for 'informant') is one of the filmmaker’s most gripping crime dramas." - from Criterion.com

"With his customary restraint and ruthless attention to detail, director Jean-Pierre Melville follows the parallel tracks of French underworld criminal Gu (the inimitable Lino Ventura), escaped from prison and roped into one last robbery, and the suave inspector, Blot (Paul Meurisse), relentlessly seeking him. The implosive Le deuxième souffle captures the pathos, loneliness, and excitement of a life in the shadows with methodical suspense and harrowing authenticity, and contains one of the most thrilling heist sequences Melville ever shot." - from Criterion.com

"In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, Le samouraï is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture—with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology." - from Criterion.com

"Alain Delon plays a master thief, fresh out of prison, who crosses paths with a notorious escapee (Gian Maria Volontè) and an alcoholic ex-cop (Yves Montand). The unlikely trio plot a heist, against impossible odds, until a relentless inspector and their own pasts seal their fates. With its honorable antiheroes, coolly atmospheric cinematography, and breathtaking set pieces, Le cercle rouge is the quintessential film by Jean-Pierre Melville—the master of ambiguous, introspective crime cinema." - from Criterion.com

"In the 1950s, a group of critics writing for 'Cahiers du Cinéma' launched one of the most successful and influential trends in the history of film criticism: auteur theory. Though these days it is frequently usually viewed as limited and a bit old-fashioned, a closer inspection of the hundreds of little-read articles by these critics reveals that the movement rested upon a much more layered and intriguing aesthetics of cinema. This book is a first step toward a serious reassessment of the mostly unspoken theoretical and aesthetic premises underlying auteur theory, built around a reconstruction of Eric Rohmer's early but decisive leadership of the group, whereby he laid down the foundations for the eventual emergence of their full-fledged auteurism." - from the publisher

"How should one live, how should one love? These are the fundamental questions that the characters of Eric Rohmer come up against. How they get out of it is the ironic, humorous response that his comedies decline. And Pascal Bonitzer illuminates in this book the relevance of the discourse that slips between these questions and these answers." - from the publisher

"Delicate and jazzy, The Bakery Girl of Monceau, the first entry in the Six Moral Tales series, evinces stirrings of what would become the Eric Rohmer style: unfussy naturalistic shooting, ironic first-person voice-over, and an “unknowable” woman. A law student (played by producer and future director Barbet Schroeder) with a roving eye and a large appetite stuffs himself with sugary pastries daily in order to gain the affection of a pretty brunette who works in a quaint Paris bakery. But is he truly interested, or is she just a sweet diversion?" - from Criterion.com

"Bertrand bides his time in a casually hostile and envious friendship with Guillaume. But when Guillaume seems to be making a play for the spirited, independent Suzanne, Bertrand watches disapprovingly. With its ragged black-and-white 16 mm photography and strong sense of 1960s Paris, Suzanne’s Career, the second of Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, is a wonderfully evocative portrait of youthful naivete and the complicated bonds of friendship and romance." - from Criterion.com

"A bombastic, womanizing art dealer and his painter friend go to a seventeenth-century villa on the Riviera for a relaxing summer getaway. But their idyll is disturbed by the presence of the bohemian Haydée, accused of being a “collector” of men. Eric Rohmer’s first color film, La collectionneuse pushes Six Moral Tales into new, darker realms while showcasing the clever, delectably ironic battle-of-the-sexes repartee (in a script written by Rohmer and the three main actors) and effortlessly luscious Nestor Almendros photography that would define the remainder of the series." - from Criterion.com

"In My Night at Maud’s, the brilliantly accomplished centerpiece of the Six Moral Tales series, Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis, one of the great conflicted figures of 1960s cinema. A Catholic engineer in his early thirties, he lives by a strict moral code and immerses himself in mathematics and the philosophy of Blaise Pascal. After spotting the delicate Françoise at Mass, he vows to make her his wife, although when he spends an unplanned night at the apartment of the bold divorcée Maud, his rigid standards are challenged." - from Criterion.com

"'Why would I tie myself to one woman?' asks Jerôme in Claire’s Knee, though he plans to marry a diplomat’s daughter by summer’s end. He spends his July at a lakeside boardinghouse, nursing crushes on the sixteen-year-old Laura and, more tantalizingly, her long-legged, blonde, older half sister, Claire. Baring her knee on a ladder under a blooming cherry tree, Claire unwittingly incites a moral crisis for Jerôme while creating an image that is both the iconic emblem of Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales and one of French cinema’s most enduring moments." - from Criterion.com

"Though happily married to the adoring Hélène and expecting a second child with her, the thoroughly bourgeois executive Frédéric cannot banish from his mind the attractive Paris women he sees every day. His flirtations and fantasies remain harmless until the appearance at his office of Chloé, an audacious, unencumbered old flame played by the mesmerizing Zouzou. Love in the Afternoon, the luminous final chapter in Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, is a tender, sobering, and wholly adult affair that leads to perhaps the most overwhelmingly emotional moment in the entire series." - from Criterion.com

"Already an established filmmaker by the 1976 release of THE MARQUISE OF O, an adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's classic short story, the film stands as Eric Rohmer's 'dazzling testament to the civilizing effects of several different arts, witty, joyous and so beautiful to look at' (The New York Times). Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival that year, Rohmer's film is set in 1799 during the Russian invasion of Italy. A young widow, The Marquise (Edith Clever) lives with her parents; her father is the commander of a citadel embroiled in battle. With the fort overrun by Russians, the Marquise is abducted by a group of rowdy soldiers and nearly taken advantage of when the Russian commander Count F (Bruno Ganz) appears as if from nowhere to rescue her. Later, the Marquise realizes she is pregnant, though she cannot decipher how the circumstance came to be. The Marquise's scandalized parents banish her to their country estate, where she pens a letter to the newspaper announcing that she will marry the father, whomever he may be, should he only present himself. Rohmer masterfully adapts von Kleist’s multi-layered story, creating 'the aura of a neoclassical dream, a fading vision of the virtue of gentility' (The Chicago Reader)." - from Film Movement

"Delphine (Marie Rivière) is a beautiful young Parisian who is still smarting from a recent break-up. When a friend nixes their travel plans shortly before the trip, Delphine is left to decide how to spend her holiday. Soon she is dealing with various uncomfortable situations, including a beach getaway where she is the only single person. After attempting a trip to the overcrowded Alps, Delphine entertains more vacation options, but will the restless soul ever find what she's looking for?"

"Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, filmmaker Alain Resnais documented the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek in Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard), one of the first cinematic reflections on the Holocaust. Juxtaposing the stillness of the abandoned camps’ empty buildings with haunting wartime footage, Resnais investigates humanity’s capacity for violence, and presents the devastating suggestion that such horrors could occur again." - from Criterion.com

"A cornerstone of the French New Wave, the first feature from Alain Resnais is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima, their consuming mutual fascination impelling them to exorcise their own scarred memories of love and suffering. With an innovative flashback structure and an Academy Award–nominated screenplay by novelist Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour is a moody masterwork that delicately weaves past and present, personal pain and public anguish." - from Criterion.com

"Not just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad) has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. Written by radical master of the New Novel Alain Robbe-Grillet, this surreal fever dream, or nightmare, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-filled château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story." - from Criterion.com

"Alain Resnais’s Muriel, or The Time of Return, the director’s follow-up to Last Year at Marienbad, is as radical a reflection on the nature of time and memory as its predecessor. The always luminous Delphine Seyrig stars as an antique shop owner and widow in Boulogne-sur-Mer, whose past comes back to haunt her when a former lover reenters her life. Meanwhile, her stepson is tormented by his own ghosts, related to his service in France’s recently ended war in Algeria. Featuring a multilayered script by Jean Cayrol and inventively edited to evoke its middle-class characters’ political and personal realities, the fragmented, emotionally powerful Muriel reminds viewers that the past is always present." - from Criterion.com

"Communist Diego Mora (Yves Montand) has spent a lifetime as a revolutionary, but he's in the twilight of his career. Refusing to retire, Mora attempts to serve as a strike leader in Madrid, only to have the rising generation of revolutionaries question his relevance. Eventually, only Diego's devoted lover, fellow party member Marianne (Ingrid Thulin), is on his side, as rebellion becomes synonymous with terrorism and the old forms of protest fall out of favor."

"MY AMERICAN UNCLE (a.k.a. MON ONCLE D’AMERIQUE) is unique in cinema—one of the oddest movies ever to emerge from the hand of director Alain Resnais, and also perhaps his most popular, steeped in elements of popular culture, social critique, and behavioral psychology, yet accessible enough to have achieved mass popularity, not only in France (where it won six Cesar Awards—their equivalent of the Oscar) but also in America. A trio of people (Gérard Depardieu, Nicole Garcia, Roger Pierre) are presented as “case histories” by a lecturer—and we see them not only in their work environments, but also in terms of the cinematic role models (Jean Gabin, Jean Marais, Danielle Darrieux) that have helped shape their self-images." - from Criterion.com

"Alain Resnais pays tribute to three influential French filmmakers Georges Melies, Marcel L Herbier and Eric Rohmer with this lighthearted film about happiness and the power of the imagination. The film is divided into three strands or parallel stories.The first part is set around the first decade of twentieth century in the Ardennes, where Count Forbeck (Raimondi) unveils his architect's designs for a utopian city of happiness. In a modern day parallel, a group of teachers and professors now inhabiting Forbek's baroque castle, seek a new form of education and enlightenment through the use of the imagination and under the guidance of another guru, Guanini (Gussman). The third segment depicts a Wagnerian fantasy landscape of kings and dragons, the imaginations of the children of some of the professors at the school."

"From Alain Resnais, the award-winning French director of such cinematic masterpieces as Night and Fog and Hiroshima, Mon Amour, comes Love Unto Death, his moving follow-up to the highly successful Life Is a Bed of Roses. Made during Resnais s mid-career renaissance in the 1980 s, Love Unto Death is a tightly constructed meditation on the nature of love and death. Pierre Arditi and Sabine Azema (both of Life is a Bed of Roses) star as Simon and Elizabeth, an affectionate couple happily in love until Simon has a sudden and seemingly fatal seizure. After miraculously surviving, Simon becomes obsessed with the possibility of his own death. The couple tell their close friends Jerome and Judith (Andre Dussollier and Fanny Ardant), clerics who have their own interesting opinions on the subject... In Love Unto Death, Resnais dresses his lead actors in symbolic colors, uses striking musical interludes (by Hans Werner Henze), and adopts strong formal devices to explore both philosophical and cinematic themes. The result is an underrated gem by one of international cinema s most talented and acclaimed directors."

"Tells the story of two lifelong friends and violinists, Marcel and Pierre. While Marcel has gone on to stardom, Pierre has settled into a contented family life unaware that his wife is having an affair with Marcel. Plagued by guilt, Pierre's wife eventually takes deadly measures to end the affair."

"Cleveland cartoonist Joey Wellman accepts an invitation to show his work at an exclusive Parisian gallery. He suffers the pains of travel to a foreign country in hopes of reconciling with his estranged daughter Elsie, who is trying her best to rid herself of her American provinciality and become French by emulating the great intellectual Christian Gauthier."

"Gilberte is happily married to Georges, a wealthy businessman who is unaware of his wife's previous marriage. Only Gilberte's unmarried sister, Arlette knows the truth. Then one day, Georges comes home and announces he's about to strike a deal with a fabulously wealthy American named Eric Thompson, who's on his way to Paris, and just happens to be Gilberte's ex-husband. Further complicating matters are family friend Huguette, who has a crush on Charley, who has been pursuing Gilberte ... resulting in a series of misunderstandings and farcical situations."

"The astounding success of Roger Vadim’s And God Created Woman revolutionized the foreign film market and turned Brigitte Bardot into an international star. Bardot stars as Juliette, an 18-year-old orphan whose unbridled appetite for pleasure shakes up all of St. Tropez; her sweet but naïve husband Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant) endures beatings, insults, and mambo in his attempts to tame her wild ways." - from Criterion.com

"The imperious Jeanne Moreau stars in this modernized adaptation of the classic French novel of seduction and deceit, Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Moreau and Gérard Philipe play the amoral Juliette and Valmont, a wife and husband in 1960s Paris who tell each other everything about their endless affairs; they respect nothing but each other's manipulative skill. But when Valmont genuinely falls in love with a virtuous woman (Annette Vadim, the director's wife at the time), Juliette tastes the bitterness of jealousy for the first time. Her revenge destroys not only their lives, but the lives of several innocents as well. Director Roger Vadim is unsubtle, but not without style. Like his other films (And God Created Woman, Barbarella), Liaisons features discreet nudity and aloof displays of passion, but the brilliantly orchestrated plot gives Liaisons real momentum, helped by a fantastic score from jazz giant Thelonious Monk." -Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

"Pierre Etaix’s first feature introduces the droll humor and oddball charm of its unique writer-director-star. As a tribute to Buster Keaton, Etaix fashioned this lovable story of a privileged yet sheltered young man (played by Etaix himself, in a nearly silent performance) who, under pressure from his parents, sets out to find a young woman to marry—though he has a hard time tearing his mind away from the famous singer whose face decorates the walls of his bedroom." - from Criterion.com

"This elaborately conceived and brilliantly mounted comedy is Pierre Etaix’s most beloved movie, as well as his personal favorite. Beginning as a clever homage to silent film, complete with intertitles, Yoyo blossoms into a poignant family saga (in which Etaix plays both a father and his grown son) and a celebration of the circus Etaix adored. Chock-full of nimble sight gags and ingenious sound effects, Yoyo is very sweet, a little bit melancholy, and wholly imaginative." - from Criterion.com

"In this endlessly diverting compendium of four short films, Pierre Etaix regards the 1960s from his askew but astute perspective. Each part is as technically impressive as it is riotous: a man attempts to read a novel about vampires beside his sleeping wife but cannot seem to separate reality from fiction; a simple afternoon at the movies becomes a consumer-culture assault; a jarringly noisy urban landscape keeps a city’s population on edge; and a day in the country means something different to a picnicking city couple, a hunter, and a farmer." - from Criterion.com

"Despite having a loving and patient wife at home, a good-natured suit-and-tie man, played by writer-director Pierre Etaix, finds himself hopelessly attracted to his gorgeous new secretary in this gently satirical tale of temptation. From this simple, standard premise, Etaix weaves a constantly surprising web of complexly conceived jokes. Le grand amour is a cutting, nearly Buñuelian takedown of the bourgeoisie that somehow doesn’t have a mean bone in its body."

"Pierre Etaix’s most radical film, and perhaps unsurprisingly the one that effectively ended his career in cinema, Land of Milk and Honey is a fascinating investigative documentary about post–May ’68 French society. In it, Etaix trains his discerning eye on idle summer vacationers, but the film has bigger fish to fry, asking pertinent questions about the sexualization of culture, class and gender inequality, media and advertising, and even architecture." - from Criterion.com

Agnès Varda, a pioneer of the French New Wave, has been making radical films for over half a century. Many of these are considered by scholars, filmmakers, and audiences alike, as audacious, seminal, and unforgettable. This volume considers her production as a whole, revisiting overlooked films like Mur, Murs/Documenteur (1980-81), and connecting her cinema to recent installation work. This study demonstrates how Varda has resisted norms of representation and diktats of production. It also shows how she has elaborated a personal repertoire of images, characters, and settings, which all provide insight on their cultural and political contexts. The book thus offers new readings of this director's multifaceted rêveries, arguing that her work should be seen as an aesthetically influential and ethically-driven production where cinema is both a political and collaborative practice, and a synesthetic art form." - from the publisher

"The first introduction in English devoted wholly to Varda and aimed at a general and student audience. Places Varda's major films in the context of her whole oeuvre and follows the development of important themes across her work." - from the publisher

"The great Agnès Varda's film career began with this graceful, penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple (played by Silvia Monfort and Philippe Noiret) and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the locals, Varda's discursive, gorgeously filmed debut was radical enough to later be considered one of the progenitors of the coming French New Wave." - from Criterion.com

"Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) 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 (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina." - from Criterion.com

"Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse (Claire Drouot), young husband and father François (Jean-Claude Drouot) finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnès Varda's most provocative films, Le bonheur examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world." - from Criterion.com

"Sandrine Bonnaire won the Best Actress César for her portrayal of the defiant young drifter Mona, found frozen to death in a ditch at the beginning of Vagabond. Agnès Varda pieces together Mona’s story through flashbacks told by those who encountered her (played by a largely nonprofessional cast), producing a splintered portrait of an enigmatic woman. With its sparse, poetic imagery, Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi) is a stunner, and won Varda the top prize at the Venice Film Festival." - from Criterion.com

"A celebration of cinema’s centennial, One Hundred and One Nights finds Agnès Varda at her most playful. It is also perhaps her unlikeliest project: a star-studded comic fantasy with an extravagant sense of style and an adoring but slightly off-kilter perspective on the magic of filmmaking. French New Wave icon Michel Piccoli is a mysterious aging impresario named Simon Cinéma who has hired a young film student, Camille (Julie Gayet), to simply sit with him at his mansion and talk about movies. Skeptical yet increasingly enchanted, Camille bears witness to cinema itself coming to life, allowing Varda to wittily integrate a mind-boggling parade of appearances by screen legends (Catherine Deneuve, Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anouk Aimée, Robert De Niro, and many others), and attest to the vigorous health of the movies at the close of the twentieth century." - from Criterion.com

"Agnès Varda’s extraordinary late-career renaissance began with this wonderfully idiosyncratic, self-reflexive documentary in which the French cinema icon explores the world of modern-day gleaners: those living on the margins who survive by foraging for what society throws away. Embracing the intimacy and freedom of digital filmmaking, Varda posits herself as a kind of gleaner of images and ideas, one whose generous, expansive vision makes room for ruminations on everything from aging to the birth of cinema to the beauty of heart-shaped potatoes. By turns playful, philosophical, and subtly political, The Gleaners and I is a warmly human reflection on the contradictions of our consumerist world from an artist who, like her subjects, finds unexpected richness where few think to look." - from Criterion.com

"This is a clear and comprehensive analysis of the films of Claude Chabrol. It is also the first book length study of Chabrol to be published in English since 1970. It brings back into focus a giant of French cinema, one of the most prolific directors of the modern era and a man recently described by the French film press as 'possibly the greatest living French film-maker'. Claude Chabrol has made more than fifty films in a career spanning forty years. This illuminating account traces the development of his film style from the experimental period of the Nouvelle Vague to the mature thrillers of the 1970s and the critically-acclaimed work of the 1990s. Detailed analyses of the major films are supported by an exploration of Chabrol's concern with genre (particularly the thriller and the melodrama) and an awareness of his work's theoretical and political resonance. Individual chapters cover the Nouvelle Vague, the Hélène cycle, representations of the family, the theme of voyeurism, the portrayal of women and the summation of Chabrol's style in his 1995 hit La Cérémonie (Judgment in Stone). A major contribution to French film studies, this dynamic and lucid book is a must for both students and fans of modern French cinema." - from the publisher

"The directorial debut of Claude Chabrol, this drama centers on Francois Baillou (Jean-Claude Brialy), who has returned to his small hometown after years away. When Francois reconnects with Serge (Gérard Blain), a close friend from his youth, he discovers that his old buddy is married to the lovely Yvonne (Michèle Méritz), but is depressed and frequently drunk. Concerned about Serge, Francois tries to discover what's at the root of his worrisome behavior." "It has been cited as the first product of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave, film movement." - from Wikipedia

"Helene (Stephane Andran) is a good mother with a checkered past. She divorces her husband after he attacks her and her son over breakfast. Her former in-laws attempt to gain custody of the son by hiring a seedy penniless operative (Jean-Pierre Cassel) to destroy her reputation."

"With her loutish husband, Paul (François Cluzet), away at a labor camp during World War II, Marie Latour (Isabelle Huppert) struggles to support her two children. After helping a neighbor with an abortion, Marie realizes she can improve her family's finances by assisting other women who are trying to terminate unwelcome pregnancies. Paul returns home to find he has no place in his wife's new life -- so out of jealousy, after the war ends he reports her wartime activities to the authorities."

"Emma Rouault (Isabelle Huppert), a beautiful young woman who craves romance and luxury, marries warmhearted but unfashionable doctor Charles Bovary (Jean-François Balmer). After attending a lavish party, Emma becomes fed up with her dull marriage and decides to take part in secret trysts with her dashing neighbor, Rodolphe Boulanger (Christophe Malavoy). But she's too naive to see through Rodolphe's lies and too frivolous with her money, and soon finds herself both in debt and heartbroken." Based on the novel by Gustave Flaubert.

"Catherine hires the illiterate Sophie to work as her maid at her remote home in the French countryside. But Sophie soon falls under the influence of the mysterious Jeanne and suddenly the stage is set for murder, violence and betrayal."

"One of the most important, controversial, and prolific filmmakers in film history, and a founder of French New Wave cinema, Jean-Luc Godard has maintained an unbroken string of films in various genres and mediums from the late 1950s onward. Godard has established a reputation as a rebel who can work within and outside the system, producing films that are creative, breathtakingly beautiful, and yet commercial enough to earn back their production costs. In this book, Wheeler Winston Dixon offers an overview of all of Godard's work as a filmmaker, including his work for television and his ethnographic work in Africa. Free from the jargon and value judgments that have marred much of what has been written about Godard, this is the only book that covers the entirety of Godard's career, from his early film criticism for Cahiers du Cinema to his most recent video/film work. Illustrated with forty-six rare stills and researched in detail, it is the Godard book for the 1990s." - from the publisher

"Jean-Luc Godard, like many of his European contemporaries, came to filmmaking through film criticism. This collection of essays and interviews, ranging from his early efforts for La Gazette du Cinéma to his later writings for Cahiers du Cinéma, reflects his dazzling intelligence, biting wit, maddening judgments, and complete unpredictability. In writing about Hitchcock, Welles, Bergman, Truffaut, Bresson, and Renoir, Godard is also writing about himself-his own experiments, obsessions, discoveries. This book offers evidence that he may be even more original as a thinker about film than as a director. Covering the period of 1950-1967, the years of Breathless, A Woman Is a Woman, My Life to Live, Alphaville, La Chinoise, and Weekend, this book of writings is an important document and a fascinating study of a vital stage in Godard's career. With commentary by Tom Milne and Richard Roud, and an extensive new foreword by Annette Michelson that reassesses Godard in light of his later films, here is an outrageous self-portrait by a director who, even now, continues to amaze and bedevil, and to chart new directions for cinema and for critical thought about its history." - from the publisher

"This book provides an account of Godard's politic activities of the 60's until 80's and analyses how his politics affect his cinema with the addition of Laura Mulvey's in depth account of the feminist aspect of Godard's cinema." - from the publisher

"This book brings together two major filmmakers-French New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard and German avant-gardist Harun Farocki-to explore the fundamental tension between theoretical abstraction and the capacities of film itself, a medium where everything seen onscreen is necessarily concrete. Volker Pantenburg shows how these two filmmakers explored the potential of combined shots and montage to create 'film as theory'." - from the publisher

"There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspired him as a writer for Cahiers du cinéma. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, Breathless helped launch the French New Wave and ensured that cinema would never be the same." - from Criterion.com

"Jean-Luc Godard’s subversive foray into commercial filmmaking is a star-studded Cinemascope epic. Contempt (Le Mépris) stars Michel Piccoli as a screenwriter torn between the demands of a proud European director (played by legendary director Fritz Lang), a crude and arrogant American producer (Jack Palance), and his disillusioned wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot), as he attempts to doctor the script for a new film version of The Odyssey. The Criterion Collection is proud to present this brilliant study of marital breakdown, artistic compromise, and the cinematic process in a new special edition." - from Criterion.com

"Four years after Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard reimagined the gangster film even more radically with Band of Outsiders (Bande à part). In it, two restless young men (Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) enlist the object of both of their fancies (Anna Karina) to help them commit a robbery—in her own home. This audacious and wildly entertaining French New Wave gem is at once sentimental and insouciant, effervescently romantic and melancholy, and it features some of Godard’s most memorable set pieces, including the headlong race through the Louvre and the unshakably cool Madison dance sequence." - from Criterion.com

"A cockeyed fusion of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry, Godard’s irreverent journey to the mysterious Alphaville remains one of the least conventional films of all time. Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy Caution, on a mission to kill the inventor of fascist computer Alpha 60." - from Criterion.com

"Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeois world behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: the tenth feature in six years by genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard is a stylish mash-up of anticonsumerist satire, au courant politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, “the last romantic couple.” With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated, Pierrot le fou is one of the high points of the French New Wave, and was Godard’s last frolic before he moved ever further into radical cinema." - from Criterion.com

"Goodbye to Language (French: Adieu au Langage) is a 2014 French-Swiss 3D experimental narrative essay film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It stars Héloïse Godet, Kamel Abdeli, Richard Chevallier, Zoé Bruneau, Jessica Erickson and Christian Grégori and was shot by cinematographer Fabrice Aragno. It is Godard's 42nd feature film and 121st film or video project. In the French-speaking parts of Switzerland where it was shot, the word "adieu" can mean both goodbye and hello. The film depicts a couple having an affair. The woman's husband discovers the affair and the lover is killed. Two pairs of actors portray the couple and their actions repeat and mirror one another. Godard's own dog Roxy Miéville has a prominent role in the film and won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Like many of Godard's films, it includes numerous quotes and references to previous artistic, philosophical and scientific works, most prominently those of Jacques Ellul, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Mary Shelley." - from Wikipedia

"One of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time, Francois Truffaut was an intensely private individual who cultivated the public image of a man completely consumed by his craft. But his personal story—from which he drew extensively to create the characters and plots of his films—is itself an extraordinary human drama. Now, with captivating immediacy, Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana give us the definitive story of this beloved artist. They begin with the unwanted, mischievous child who learned to love movies and books as an escape from sadness and confusion: as a boy, Francois came to identify with screen characters and to worship actresses. Following his early adult years as a journalist, during which he gained fame as France's most iconoclastic film critic, the obsessive prodigy began to make films of his own, and before he was thirty, notched the two masterpieces The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim. As Truffaut's dazzling body of work evolves, in the shadow of the politics of his day, including the student uprisings of 1968, we watch him learning the lessons of his masters Fellini and Hitchcock. And we witness the progress of his often tempestuous personal relationships, including his violent falling-out with Jean-Luc Godard (who owed Truffaut the idea for Breathless) and his rapturous love affairs with the many glamorous actresses he directed, among them Jacqueline Bisset and Jeanne Moreau. With Fanny Ardant, Truffaut had a child only thirteen months before dying of a brain tumor at the age of fifty-two. Here is a life of astonishing emotional range, from the anguish of severe depression to the exaltation of Oscar victory. Based on unprecedented access to Truffaut's papers, including notes toward an unwritten autobiography, de Baecque and Toubiana's richly detailed work is an incomparably authoritative revelation of a singular genius." - from the publisher

"For François Truffaut, the lost secret of cinematic art is in the ability to generate emotion and reveal repressed fantasies through cinematic representation. Available in English for the first time, Anne Gillain's François Truffaut: The Lost Secret is considered by many to be the best book on the interpretation of Truffaut's films. Taking a psycho-biographical approach, Gillain shows how Truffaut's creative impulse was anchored in his personal experience of a traumatic childhood that left him lonely and emotionally deprived. In a series of brilliant, nuanced readings of each of his films, she demonstrates how involuntary memories arising from Truffaut's childhood not only furnish a succession of motifs that are repeated from film to film, but also govern every aspect of his mise en scène and cinematic technique." - from the publisher

"With this book, I try answering in a clear language two complex riddles: How is experience imprinted into films? What draws audiences to theaters? François Truffaut, like Fellini, Bergman or Scorsese, worked with an autobiographical material and Totally Truffaut follows the coded inscription of major life events in his films from his illegitimate birth to his passionate but doomed relationship with Catherine Deneuve. I focus first on the process that embeds experience into fictions, and more specifically into visual forms and patterns. I also try to define the mode of perception film language triggers in the spectator. When entering a movie theater, we expect perceptual pleasure. Truffaut's creative work is devoted to distilling this drug to audiences, an ambition central to the evolution of his style. These two issues are closely connected and Totally Truffaut follows, film after film, their crisscrossing paths. It also highlights the essential role several great actresses-Jeanne Moreau, Françoise Dorléac, Jacqueline Bisset, Isabelle Adjani, Fanny Ardant or Catherine Deneuve- played in the creation of the films." - from the publisher

"The 34 essays of this collection by leading international scholars reassess Truffaut's impact on cinema as they locate the unique quality of his thematic obsessions and his remarkable narrative techniques. Almost 30 years after his death, we are presented with strikingly original perspectives on his background, influences, and importance. Bridges a gap in film scholarship with a series of 34 original essays by leading film scholars that assess the lasting impact of Truffaut's work." - from the publisher

"Francois Truffaut was the foremost director of French New Wave cinema, and this voluminous, well-annotated book offers a lifelong record of his correspondence. It provides a self-portrait in words of Truffaut 's generous, lively personality as well as his valued opinions on film theory and criticism. Within this collection are letters to Alfred Hitchcock, Louis Malle, Jean-Luc Godard, and many up-and-coming screen-writers Truffaut was eager to nurture. What emerges is an insightful account of both the film industry and one of its most influential, articulate directors." - from the publisher

"François Truffaut’s first feature is also his most personal. Told from the point of view of Truffaut’s cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) sensitively re-creates the trials of Truffaut’s own childhood, unsentimentally portraying aloof parents, oppressive teachers, and petty crime. The film marked Truffaut’s passage from leading critic to trailblazing auteur of the French New Wave." - from Criterion.com

"François Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this, his most playful film. Part thriller, part comedy, part tragedy, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags, guns, clowns, and thugs, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague." -from Criterion.com

"Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, Jules and Jim charts, over twenty-five years, the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession. The legendary François Truffaut directs, and Jeanne Moreau stars as the alluring and willful Catherine, whose enigmatic smile and passionate nature lure Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) into one of cinema’s most captivating romantic triangles. An exuberant and poignant meditation on freedom, loyalty, and the fortitude of love, Jules and Jim was a worldwide smash in 1962 and remains every bit as audacious and entrancing today." - from Criterion.com

"Ray Bradbury's best-selling science fiction masterpiece about a future without books takes on a chillingly realistic dimension in this film classic directed by one of the most important screen innovators of all time, the late Francois Truffaut. Julie Christie stars in the challenging dual role of Oskar Werner's pleasure-seeking conformist wife, Linda, and his rebellious, book-collecting mistress, Clarisse. Montag (Oskar Werner), a regimented fireman in charge of burning the forbidden volumes, meets a revolutionary school teacher who dares to read. Suddenly he finds himself a hunted fugitive, forced to choose not only between two women, but between personal safety and intellectual freedom. Truffaut's first English language production is an eerie fable where mankind becomes the ultimate evil." - from Amazon.com

"Adèle Hugo (Isabelle Adjani), daughter of renowned French writer Victor Hugo, falls in love with British soldier Albert Pinson (Bruce Robinson) while living in exile off the coast of England. Though he spurns her affections, she follows him to Nova Scotia and takes on the alias of Adèle Lewly. Albert continues to reject her, but she remains obsessive in her quest to win him over. When Albert is stationed in the West Indies, Adèle once again trails him, furthering her downward spiral."

"Filmed in the small French city of Thiers, François Truffaut's episodic comedy-drama concerns one of the director's favorite subjects: childhood. A class clown stalls the teacher long enough to avoid answering a question, a toddler ends up on a high window ledge, a little girl announces to the neighborhood that her parents are punishing her, and the new boy in school hides his poor, abusive home life in these intertwining stories illustrating the joys and sorrows of growing up."

"Arguably a pioneer of the French New Wave (with Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, 1957) Louis Malle went on to enjoy an acclaimed yet provocative and versatile transatlantic career. This collection of original essays proposes to reassess his richly eclectic and boldly subversive oeuvre and redress the surprising critical neglect it has suffered over the years. It does so through a combination of transversal and monographic analyses that use a variety of critical lenses and theoretical tools in order to examine Malle’s documentaries as well as his fiction features (and, more importantly, the constant shuttling and uniquely persistent cross-pollination between those two cinematic approaches), illuminate the profound, lasting dialogue his films entertained with literature and theater, bring to the fore their sustained, albeit often oblique autobiographical thrust along with their scathing sociopolitical critique, and scrutinize the alternating use of stars and non-professional actors. In addition, the volume features an exclusive interview with the acclaimed playwright John Guare (a close friend and collaborator of Louis Malle’s who scripted Atlantic City) and is bookended by a foreword by Volker Schlöndorff and an afterword by Wes Anderson, two renowned filmmakers who articulate their admiration for, and the seminal influence of, their predecessor." - from the publisher

"n the latest addition to the noted Directors on Directors series--which includes volumes on Scorsese, Shrader, and Cronenberg--Louis Malle talks to film critic Philip French about his life and career, his controversial films dealing with child prostitution and incest, his move to the U.S., his work with Jeanne Moreau, Burt Lancaster, Jeremy Irons, and others, and more. 60 illustrations." - from the publisher

"For his feature debut, twenty-four-year-old Louis Malle brought together a mesmerizing performance by Jeanne Moreau, evocative cinematography by Henri Decaë, and a now legendary jazz score by Miles Davis. Taking place over the course of one restless Paris night, Malle’s richly atmospheric crime thriller stars Moreau and Maurice Ronet as lovers whose plan to murder her husband (his boss) goes awry, setting off a chain of events that seals their fate. A career touchstone for its director and female star, Elevator to the Gallows was an astonishing beginning to Malle’s eclectic body of work, and it established Moreau as one of the most captivating actors ever to grace the screen." - from Criterion.com

"Louis Malle unveiled the natural beauty of Jeanne Moreau in his breakthrough, Elevator to the Gallows. With his follow-up, the scandalous smash The Lovers (Les amants), he made her a star once and for all. A deeply felt and luxuriously filmed fairy tale for grown-ups, perched on the edge between classical and New Wave cinemas, The Lovers presents Moreau as a restless bourgeois wife whose eye wanders from both her husband and her lover to an attractive passing stranger (Jean-Marc Bory). Thanks to its frank sexuality, The Lovers caused quite a stir, being censored and attacked for obscenity around the world. If today its shock has worn off, its glistening sensuality and seductive storytelling haven't aged a day." - from Criterion.com

"In his short documentary Vive le Tour, Louis Malle presents his energetic evocation of the Tour de France. This, Humain, trop humain, and Place de la République, Louis Malle’s three French-set documentaries, reveal, in an eclectic array of ways, the director’s eternal fascination with, and respect for, the everyday lives of everyday people." - from Criterion.com

"Louis Malle called his gorgeous and groundbreaking Phantom India the most personal film of his career. And this extraordinary journey to India, originally shown as a miniseries on European television, is infused with his sense of discovery, as well as occasional outrage, intrigue, and joy." - from Criterion.com

"When he was cutting Phantom India, Louis Malle found that the footage shot in Calcutta was so diverse, intense, and unforgettable that it deserved its own film. The result, released theatrically, is at times shocking—a chaotic portrait of a city engulfed in social and political turmoil, edging ever closer to oblivion." - from Criterion.com

"Louis Malle presents his meditative investigation of the inner workings of a French automotive plant. This, Vive le Tour, and Place de la République, Malle’s three French-set documentaries, reveal, in an eclectic array of ways, the director’s eternal fascination with, and respect for, the everyday lives of everyday people." - from Criterion.com

"Louis Malle presents his entertaining snapshot of the comings and goings on one street corner in Paris. This, Vive le Tour, and Humain, trop humain, Malle’s three French-set documentaries, reveal, in an eclectic array of ways, the director’s eternal fascination with, and respect for, the everyday lives of everyday people." - from Criterion.com

"One of the first French films to address the issue of collaboration during the German occupation, Louis Malle’s brave and controversial Lacombe, Lucien traces a young peasant’s journey from potential Resistance member to Gestapo recruit. At once the story of a nation and one troubled boy, the film is a disquieting portrait of lost innocence and guilt." - from Criterion.com

"In 1979, Louis Malle traveled into the heart of Minnesota to capture the everyday lives of the men and women in a prosperous farming community. Six years later, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, he returned to find drastic economic decline. Free of stereotypes about America’s “heartland,” God’s Country, commissioned for American public television, is a stunning work of emotional and political clarity." - from Criterion.com

"In 1986, Louis Malle, himself a transplant to the United States, set out to investigate the ever-widening range of immigrant experience in America. Interviewing a variety of newcomers (from teachers to astronauts to doctors) in middle- and working-class communities from coast to coast, Malle paints a generous, humane portrait of their individual struggles in an increasingly polyglot nation."

"Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening." - from Criterion.com

"Cyrano, a master swordsman and poet, feels he cannot woo his beloved Roxane due to an unfortunate physical flaw: his grotesquely large nose. Resigning himself to helping another suitor, the dashing yet tongue-tied Christian, Cyrano uses his mastery of words to win Roxane for him. But when Roxane finds that she has fallen for Christian's mind - and not for his beauty - which of her two suitors will finally possess her heart?"

"In 1832, Italian patriot Angelo Pardi (Olivier Martinez) flees to France to escape Austrian invaders. His intention is to raise money and rally support for the Italian resistance, but Austrian spies trail him closely. After taking shelter in the house of noblewoman Pauline de Theus (Juliette Binoche), he learns she must travel to Italy to reunite with her husband. While avoiding the military, his pursuers and a cholera outbreak, Angelo and Pauline begin journeying back to his homeland."

"Roman Polanski’s first feature is a brilliant psychological thriller that many critics still consider among his greatest work. The story is simple, yet the implications of its characters’ emotions and actions are profound. When a young hitchhiker joins a couple on a weekend yacht trip, psychological warfare breaks out as the two men compete for the woman’s attention. A storm forces the small crew below deck, and tension builds to a violent climax. With stinging dialogue and a mercilessly probing camera, Polanski creates a disturbing study of fear, humiliation, sexuality, and aggression. This remarkable directorial debut won Polanski worldwide acclaim, a place on the cover of Time, and his first Oscar nomination." - from Criterion.com

"Roman Polanski imbues his unflinchingly violent adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy of ruthless ambition and murder in medieval Scotland with grit and dramatic intensity. Jon Finch and Francesca Annis give performances charged with fury and sex appeal as a decorated warrior rising through the ranks and his driven wife, scheming together to take the throne by any means. Coadapted by Polanski and the great theater critic and dramaturge Kenneth Tynan, and shot against a series of stunning, stark British Isle landscapes, this version of Macbeth is among the most atmospheric and authentic of all Shakespeare films." - from Criterion.com

"When Los Angeles private eye J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by Evelyn Mulwray to investigate her husband's activities, he believes it's a routine infidelity case. Jake's investigation soon becomes anything but routine when he meets the real Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) and realizes he was hired by an imposter. Mr. Mulwray's sudden death sets Gittes on a tangled trail of corruption, deceit and sinister family secrets as Evelyn's father (John Huston) becomes a suspect in the case."

"This multiple-Oscar-winning film by Roman Polanski is an exquisite, richly layered adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. A strong-willed peasant girl (Nastassja Kinski, in a gorgeous breakthrough) is sent by her father to the estate of some local aristocrats to capitalize on a rumor that their families are from the same line. This fateful visit commences an epic narrative of sex, class, betrayal, and revenge, which Polanski unfolds with deliberation and finesse. With its earthy visual textures, achieved by two world-class cinematographers—Geoffrey Unsworth (Cabaret) and Ghislain Cloquet (Au hasard Balthazar)—Tess is a work of great pastoral beauty as well as vivid storytelling." - from Criterion.com

"In this adaptation of the autobiography 'The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945,' Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a Polish Jewish radio station pianist, sees Warsaw change gradually as World War II begins. Szpilman is forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, but is later separated from his family during Operation Reinhard. From this time until the concentration camp prisoners are released, Szpilman hides in various locations among the ruins of Warsaw."

"In this acclaimed French drama, the enterprising Ugolin Soubeyran (Daniel Auteuil) returns to his native countryside after the serving in the military. Intent on growing expensive flowers, he conspires with his uncle, Cesar (Yves Montand), to gain access to a hidden spring on a neighboring property. When their initial attempt to buy the land fails, they must contend with Jean de Florette (Gérard Depardieu), who arrives with his family to work the coveted plot and turn it into a profitable farm."

"Manon (Emmanuelle Béart), a beautiful shepherdess in Provence, France, has lost her father and seen her family's livelihood ruined through the greediness of her neighbors: Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) and his grandfather, Cesar (Yves Montand). Now grown and living in isolation from the village, she plots revenge against the men for their misdeeds. Her plot is complicated by Ugolin, who has fallen in love with her -- but Manon's retribution will not be deterred."

"It's mid 19th century, north of France. The story of a coal miner's town. They are exploited by the mine's owner. One day the decide to go on strike, and then the authorities repress them." "Germinal is a 1993 French epic film based on the 1885 novel by Émile Zola. It was directed by Claude Berri, and stars Gérard Depardieu, Miou-Miou and Renaud. At the time it was the most expensive movie ever produced in France." - from Wikipedia

"During the French Resistance, Lucie, a courageous wife, struggles to save her husband, Raymond Samuel, from a firing squad. He was arrested after blowing up a train during the war. Lucie is also a freedom fighter who goes by the moniker of Aubrac. She helps free Raymond by directly threatening a prosecutor. After his release, Raymond is given a new identity and sent to continue the fight in the North. Unfortunately, he is again arrested. This time he is given the death penalty. While he awaits his sentence in jail, Lucie tries to trick the Gestapo into giving other Resistance members the chance to save Raymond."

"From director CLAUDE LELOUCH (And Now...Ladies and Gentlemen) comes this 1966 classic, a tender, visually exciting film of revitalizing love: a race-car driver (JEAN-LOUIS TRINIGNANT) and a movie script girl (ANOUK AIMEE) share a romance filled with humor and truth, intertwined with the demands of career and parenthood. Winner of Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay." - from Amazon.com

"In this inventive interpretation of Victor Hugo's oft-adapted tale, Henri Fortin (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a man caught up in the turmoil of World War II. Charged with caring for a young Jewish girl named Elisa Ziman (Alessandra Martines), Henri later joins the French Resistance. As the story progresses, his life seems to parallel that of Hugo's hero, Jean Valjean, particularly when a police officer and former Nazi collaborator (Philippe Khorsand) sets his sights on Henri."

"One of those rare masters who can alter our prejudices between the beginning and the end of a film, Bertrand Tavernier changes the world, one viewer at a time. He rejects traditional form and replaces it with emotions, via the use of rhythm, tone, the everyday, and especially historical periods in transition. Martin Scorsese has called Bertrand Tavernier France's leading director. The New Republic referred to him as "one of the best directors alive." Despite his skill and some critical acclaim, Tavernier is often misunderstood. He receives little of the fanfare in the United States that European critics give avant-garde directors. His profound originality has received little attention for at least two reasons: his films are deceptively realistic, and he does not proclaim a specific doctrine. Still, his films inevitably carry his stamp. This work explores that uniqueness. The first work on Tavernier written in English, this book examines ten feature films that characterize Tavernier as an auteur. This book is essential reading for all of those interested in French film, independent filmmakers, students or teachers of film history, and, of course, fans of Tavernier." - from the publisher

"During the hysteria of the Dreyfus Affair, a mad former soldier terrorizes the French countryside, murdering young boy and girl shepherds. An upright, ambitious judge realizes after a series of remarkable confrontations that the killer is insane but hypocritically finds him lucid so he can be executed for political advantage."

"’Round Midnight is a love letter from director Bertrand Tavernier to the heyday of bebop and the Black American musicians who found refuge in the smoky underground jazz clubs of 1950s Paris. In a sui generis, Oscar-nominated fusion of performer and character, legendary saxophonist Dexter Gordon plays Dale Turner, a brilliant New York jazz veteran whose music aches with beauty but whose personal life is ravaged by addiction. Searching for a fresh start in Paris, Turner strikes up an unlikely friendship with a struggling single father and ardent jazz fan (François Cluzet) who finds his life transformed as he attempts to help the self-destructive musician. Herbie Hancock’s evocative, Oscar-winning score sets the mood for this definitive jazz film, a bittersweet opus that glows with lived-in, soulful authenticity." - from Criterion.com

"When a kindergarten teacher (Philippe Torreton) living in a rural town in France finds that the coal mines -- the main source of income -- have been closed down, his community changes, becoming increasingly poverty-stricken and decrepit. One day a woman abandons her children, and he decides to take the kids into his home. From there he begins to take a stand against the deterioration of his village."

"During the French Wars of Religion, heiress Marie (Mélanie Thierry) finds that her father, the Marquis de Mézières (Philippe Magnan), has arranged for her to marry the Prince of Montpensier (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), a war hero with favorable political connections. Marie, however, is in love with Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), a soldier who is less socially revered than the prince. But Marie's protestations are for nought, and conflict ensues on the battlefield and in the bedroom."

"Industrious accountant David Martinaud (Gérard Depardieu) claims to be visiting his parents every weekend, but it's merely a cover for the labor-intensive refurbishing of his country cottage. The reason for David's secrecy is that his childhood crush, Lise (Dominique Laffin), lives nearby, and, although she's married, he still believes they'll get together. His devotion to the idea borders on mania, and, when Lise's husband is accidentally killed, he quickly spirals out of control."

"Charlotte Castang (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is a working-class 13-year-old girl, who lives in a drab, run-down neighbourhood, and is ready to become an adult. Her mother died giving birth to her, and she lives with her crass brother, and her father whose attention is elsewhere. Her only friend is Lulu, a sick 10-year-old she regards as a pest. Charlotte is antisocial, bored and dreams of a better life. Her life improves when she meets Clara Bauman, a pianist prodigy whom she admires. Charlotte wants to be friends with Clara, whom she sees as a potential route to prosperity, while the sophisticated Clara jokingly suggests that Charlotte should become her manager." - from Wikipedia

"In the aftermath of World War II, 16-year-old Janine Castang (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is sent to live with her aunt and uncle in the country. Unhappy with her new living arrangements, Janine begins acting out by compulsively stealing. After more than one encounter with the police, the troubled girl runs away to the city. There, she finds work as a maid and begins an affair with an older, married man (Didier Bezace), but still can't escape her kleptomania."

"When French teen Francois (Mathieu Amalric) learns a confusing family secret from his aunt (Julie Depardieu), he sets out to discover his true history. Francois struggles to understand his identity in light of the realization that, in the face of German occupation of Paris, his father, Maxime (Patrick Bruel), made the difficult decision to erase his Jewish heritage and transform the family into the Grimberts -- faux-Catholics who would have a better chance of surviving the Holocaust."

"Upon his wife's death, viola da gamba player Monsieur de Sainte Colombe (Jean-Pierre Marielle) is overwhelmed with grief and retreats from the outside world. The musician moves with his two daughters (Anne Brochet, Carole Richert) into a small house in his garden, where he attempts to create a haven. However, word of his musical talent reaches aspiring musician Marin Marais (Guillaume Depardieu, Gérard Depardieu), who intrudes on Colombe's seclusion with the hope of finding a mentor."

"Fear and Trembling (original title: Stupeur et Tremblements) is a 2003 French film based on the novel of the same name by Amélie Nothomb. Amélie, a young Belgian woman (Sylvie Testud), having spent her childhood in Japan, decides to return to live there and try to integrate into Japanese society. She is determined to be a "real Japanese" before her one year contract runs out, though it is precisely this determination that is incompatible with Japanese humility. Though she is hired for a choice position as a translator at an import/export firm, her inability to understand Japanese cultural and business norms and allocation to work for which she is not suited result in increasingly humiliating demotions.

Though Amelie secretly adores her immediate supervisor, Ms Mori (Kaori Tsuji), the latter takes sadistic pleasure in belittling Amelie. Mori finally manages to break Amelie's will by making her the bathroom attendant, and is delighted when Amelie tells her that she will not renew her contract. Amelie realizes that she is finally a real Japanese when she enters the company president's office 'with fear and trembling,' which was possible only because her determination had been broken by Mori's systematic humiliation." - from Wikipedia

"Black and white in color: A French colony in Africa's Ivory Coast discovers months after the fact that World War I has begun. Spurred on by a capricious patriotism, they figure they'll do their part by attacking the German colony up the river. After all, they have six rifles, and one of them is an automatic. So off to war they march -- or rather, their servants do, carrying the white folk on palanquins. They soon stop for a lovely picnic. When machine gun fire is heard in the distance, they run back to the safety of the colony. All goes well until a young geographer becomes the key strategist for the French, working with the local tribal chief and turning the old colonial social hierarchy on its head.The sky above, the mud below: Long before PBS, National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel made documentaries ubiquitous, films like this seminal if straightforward work were only available via local art house theaters. One of the earliest looks into native life on Papua New Guinea, this documentary follows a group of Europeans on a seven-month trek to bisect the island. During the perilous expedition (450 miles, as a crow flies) through jungle and across high altitudes, the group encounters tribes of headhunters and cannibals, observing and filming their rituals and ceremonies."

"In the prehistoric world, a Cro-Magnon tribe depends on an ever-burning source of fire, which eventually extinguishes. Lacking the knowledge to start a new fire, the tribe sends three warriors (Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nameer El-Kadi) on a quest for more. With the tribe's future at stake, the warriors make their way across a treacherous landscape full of hostile tribes and monstrous beasts. On their journey, they encounter Ika (Rae Dawn Chong), a woman who has the knowledge they seek."

"Brad Pitt stars as the arrogant Heinrich, a famed Austrian mountain climber who leaves behind his wife and infant son to head a Himalayan expedition in 1939, only to fall into the hands of the Allied forces as a prisoner of war. He and a fellow escapee, Peter Aufschnaiter (David Thewlis), make their way to the Forbidden City of Tibet, where Peter finds a wife and Heinrich befriends the Western culture-obsessed teenage Dalai Lama (Jaamyang Jamtsho Wangchuk), the spiritual leader of his Buddhist nation. As Heinrich waits out the war, his friendship with the Dalai Lama begins to transform him from naughty to humble." - from Blu-Ray.com

"Wolf Totem (Chinese: 狼图腾, French: Le dernier loup, "The Last Wolf") is a 2015 drama film based on the 2004 Chinese semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Jiang Rong. Directed by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, the Chinese-French co-production features a Chinese student who is sent to Inner Mongolia to teach shepherds and instead learns about the wolf population, which is under threat by a government apparatchik. " - from Wikipedia

"36 Fillette (known as Virgin or Junior Size 36 in English) is a 1988 French erotic drama film directed by Catherine Breillat, based on her 1987 novel of the same name. The film stars Delphine Zentout, Étienne Chicot and Oliver Parniere, with Jean-Pierre Léaud, Berta Domínguez D. and Jean-François Stévenin. It follows a sexually curious and rebellious 14-year-old (played by then-16-year-old Zentout) who has an emotionally charged and dually manipulative relationship with an aging playboy. Breillat is known for films focusing on sexuality, intimacy, gender conflict and sibling rivalry. Breillat has been the subject of controversy for her explicit depictions of sexuality. Zentout had many topless, nude and explicit scenes in the film." - from Wikipedia

"Twelve-year-old Anaïs is fat. Her sister, fifteen-year-old Elena, is a beauty. While the girls are on vacation with their parents, Anaïs tags along as Elena explores the dreary seaside town. Elena meets Fernando, an Italian law student; he seduces her with promises of love, and the ever-watchful Anaïs bears witness to the corruption of her sister’s innocence. Fat Girl is not only a portrayal of female adolescent sexuality and the complicated bond between siblings but also a shocking assertion by the always controversial Catherine Breillat that violent oppression exists at the core of male-female relations." - from Criterion.com

"Diane Kurys has established herself as a distinctive presence in contemporary French film-making through a series of delightfully unsentimental films which reconstruct the lives of girls and women in post-war France. Carrie Tarr traces Kurys' trajectory from actress to author-director-producer in a career that already spans two decades, and situates her work within debates on women's film-making and female authorship." "This first full-length study of Kurys' work includes detailed readings of each of Kurys' films to date, from the evocation of growing up in the 1960s in Diabolo menthe (Peppermint Soda) to the dilemmas facing the woman artist of today in A la folie (Six Days, Six Nights). Its conclusion draws together Kurys' thematic preoccupations and visual style in order to identify her 'authorial signature', and illuminates the extent to which her films have been able to create a space for female subjectivity within the constraints of contemporary French culture." - from the publisher

"Lena (Isabelle Huppert) is a Jewish refugee from Belgium living in occupied France in 1942. The only way she can avoid being deported to a concentration camp is to marry Michel, a discharged military officer but they cannot find happiness. Meanwhile extroverted artist Madeleine (Miou-Miou) mourns her dead husband and remarries after France's liberation but she to is unhappy with her life. After a chance meeting, the two women develop an emotional relationship that borders on romance."

"In 1950s France, teenage Frederique (Julie Bataille) and her younger sister, Sophie (Candice Lefranc), are enjoying their summer vacation at a seaside villa, cared for by their nanny. Their mother, Lena (Nathalie Baye), drops by with Jean-Claude (Vincent Lindon), a young painter. When the girls' father, Michel (Richard Berry), shows up and can barely hide his anger, Frederique realizes that her mother is having an affair, and her parents' marriage may be disintegrating under the summer sun."

"Spanning a year in the life of Lola (Isabelle Huppert), a novelist famous for turning her life into fiction, we follow her loves and the loves of her loves. It is the story of how the 70's generation is dealing with the 90's and the contradiction, often comic, between what we expect of romance and need from love."

"Claire Denis drew on her own childhood experiences growing up in colonial French Africa for her multilayered, languorously absorbing feature debut, which explores many of the themes that would recur throughout her work. Returning to the town where she grew up in Cameroon after many years living in France, a white woman (Mireille Perrier) reflects on her relationship with Protée (Isaach De Bankolé), a Black servant with whom she formed a friendship while not fully grasping the racial divides that governed their worlds." - from Criterion.com

"In 1980s Paris, a series of murders captures public attention. Meanwhile, the gorgeous Daiga (Yekaterina Golubeva) moves from Lithuania to Paris, immigrant musician Theo (Alex Descas) struggles to raise his young son, and Theo's brother, a gay transvestite named Camille (Richard Courcet), sings and dances in a cabaret for a living. All three grapple with isolation and the problems of modern living, but one of them could be so desperately alienated that they have a hand in the serial murders."

"Boni (Grégoire Colin) spends his days making pizza and salivating over the local baker's gorgeous wife (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi). But everything changes when he gets an unexpected visit from his teenage sister, Nenette (Alice Houri). Known for making trouble, the girl has run away from her boarding school. She wants to stay with Boni, and he eventually agrees. As the estranged pair reconnect, Boni gets some news that puts his life in perspective: his little sister is pregnant."

"Men in the French Foreign Legion, escaping some personal or legal entanglement, can leave their lives behind and take on a new identity. In an outpost in Djibouti, the men of the Legion yield to the rigid discipline and unvarying routine of life within it. When new recruit Sentain saves the life of a fellow soldier, brooding taskmaster Sgt. Galoup sets out to destroy him. The film observes how power functions among men, and considers the consequences of remaining a stranger, even as the Legionnaires must always remain strangers."

"It's Friday night in Paris. Laure has just finished packing her apartment, she is moving in tomorrow with her boyfriend. She leaves to go to dinner with friends and gets stuck in the middle of a mass transit strike which has thrown the city into chaos. As Laure takes in the sights and sounds of the city, a stranger approaches the car. She opens the door to the man, who in a single night, will change her life forever."

"Louis lives an isolated existence on the French-Swiss border. When an ailing heart leads him to visit Geneva to pay for a replacement on the black market, he travels to his former home where he searches for his lost son."

"Lionel is a middle-aged widower who makes his living driving a train and shares an apartment with his twenty-something daughter Josephine. Lionel and Josephine have a warm and caring relationship. Lionel's on-and-off girlfriend Gabrielle and their footloose friend Noe live in the same building. Together the four have fallen into a casual family relationship. But when Josephine and Noe become more than friends, Lionel is on edge."

"This acclaimed French satire focuses on Albert Dehousse (Mathieu Kassovitz), a restless young man living in a small village, who longs to be a World War II hero but is denied military service because his mother is a war widow. When Albert finds out that his late father wasn't as upstanding as he'd thought, and that his mother has been a Nazi collaborator, he leaves his home and family and heads to Paris to join the French Resistance, passing himself off as a hero despite his sheltered life."

"Carla works in a real estate office and has a hearing problem. Carla makes the acquaintance of Paul, a small-time criminal who has just been released from prison on parole. Before long, it becomes obvious that Paul is having an influence on Carla's normally stable nature. Carla and Paul's actions go from malicious to seriously criminal when Paul hatches a scheme to rob a nightclub owner to whom he owes money -- a scheme that involves Carla's keen skill as a lip reader."

"Tom Seyr (Romain Duris), a violent thug with a heart, grows weary of cracking heads for his smarmy, mediocre gangster father, Robert (Niels Arestrup), and longs for a chance at something else. A fortuitous encounter prompts Tom to renew his classical piano playing, like his mother before him, and he begins to study with piano teacher Miao Lin (Linh Dan Pham). But when he starts a passionate affair with Aline (Aure Atika), the wife of one of his cronies, his new happiness may be short-lived."

"With this Palme d’Or–winning drama, which deftly combines seemingly disparate genres, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard cemented his status as a titan of contemporary world cinema. In an arresting performance, the nonprofessional actor Antonythasan Jesuthasan (himself a former child soldier) stars as a Tamil fighter who, along with a woman and a child posing as his wife and daughter, flees war-torn Sri Lanka only to land in a Paris suburb blighted by drugs. As the makeshift family embarks on a new life, DHEEPAN settles into an intimate social-realist mode before tightening into a dynamic turf-war thriller, as well as an unsettling study of the psychological aftereffects of combat. Searing and sensitive, Audiard’s film is a unique depiction of the refugee experience as a continuous crisis of identity." - from Criterion.com

"In the last years of World War II, a group of North African soldiers, largely Muslims, enlist to free France--a country they consider their motherland, even though they've never set foot in it--from the Nazis. The story is told through four characters: Abdelkader, a corporal who hopes to be promoted to sergeant; Messaoud, an ace marksman who fall in love with a beautiful Frenchwoman; Yassir, a Berber peasant who needs the money to marry off his younger brother; and Saïd, who leaves as his own father did in WWI, because he feels it's his duty. They give their all, despite getting little respect or recognition, and suffering the privations of those habitually discriminated against. These 'native' soldiers selflessly fought for a France they had never seen, and the film records their past heroics to give dignity to the generations of today and the future."

"Director Rachid Bouchareb (Days of Glory) brings another Oscar®-nominated film, Outside The Law, a thrilling post-World War II story of three brothers who become separated after losing their family home in Algeria. Messaoud joins the French army fighting in Indochina; Abdelkader becomes a leader of the Algerian independence movement in France and Saïd moves to Paris to make his fortune in the shady clubs and boxing halls of Pigalle. Gradually, their interconnecting destinies reunite them in the French capital, where freedom is a battle to be fought and won." - from Amazon.com

"In Algeria, Zouina (Fejria Deliba) bids a tearful goodbye to her mother as she embarks on a voyage to France to be reunited with her husband. In a provincial town, she attempts to rear her three children under the withering glare of her mother-in-law, Aicha (Rabia Mokeddem), who insists on a strict Muslim upbringing. Zouina does her best to assimilate, but is stuck between her traditionalist relatives and her xenophobic neighbors. She lives for Sundays, when she has a few hours of freedom."

"First came the fathers, alone, necessarily alone and in good health, recruited in the depths of the Maghreb countryside on behalf of the big names in French industry. Then, believing it would limit the outflow of foreign currency, the governments of France brought in women and young children. The hideous 'transit cities' had to be built. With the coming economic crisis, the political leaders tried to send back this manpower which had become superfluous to the countries of origin. Too late. After the fathers and mothers, a new generation was born on French soil. The Beurs are now one of the essential components of French society. By restoring to memory the North African immigration, Yamina Benguigui gives back their dignity to the thousands of families torn between two cultures, still too often marginalized after having been quite simply ignored for decades. In a series of portraits as moving as they are unexpected, she retraces the itinerary of three generations whose destiny, for better and often for worse, marries that of France." - from Amazon.com

"Adrien (François Cluzet), a writer who has had only marginal commercial success, discovers that he is dying and tells his friend Gabriel (Mathieu Amalric), with whom he has had a tumultuous relationship. Gabriel tries to attend to his friend while making sense of his complicated romantic life, torn between dependable Jenny (Jeanne Balibar) and volatile Anne (Virginie Ledoyen). Meanwhile, other friends of Adrien struggle to assess their lives and careers in the wake of his revelation."

"A sweeping epic spanning three decades and a world war. The film follows the life and loves of Jean Barnery, a provincial gentleman and reluctant heir to his family's porcelain empire."

"At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. Back then she played the role of an alluring young girl but now she is being asked to step into the older role. With her assistant Maria, she prepares to play opposite a young Hollywood starlet and finds herself on the other side of the mirror, face to face with an unsettling reflection of herself."

"Besson's film making career and processes are presented by one of the most respected names in French film studies. Hayward investigates violence, the absence of family and the demise of the community in Besson's works." - from the publisher

"French director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) broke the commercial taboo against female-driven action movies with this seminal, seductively slick film about a violent street punk (Anne Parillaud) trained to become a smooth, stylish assassin." - from Amazon.com

"Mystic, maiden, martyr - whatever you choose to call her, it is difficult to dispute that Joan of Arc led a remarkably accomplished life for a peasant girl who never went to school ... and never saw her 20th birthday. It all began in 1429, when a teenage girl from a remote village in France stood before the world and announced she would defeat the world's greatest army and liberate her country."

"Augustin, a 32-year old insurance clerk dreams of becoming a great dramatic actor but is a one-man comedy show. Omnibus presents the story of a man whose daily commute by train suddenly becomes a one way trip to insanity."

"Marvin is different. He is a quiet, sensitive and artistic fifteen-year-old with an unwitting attraction to other boys. This makes him victim to forceful bullying, both at school and within the confines of his impoverished home, making his situation unbearable. With the support of his teacher, Marvin discovers his thirst for theatre, and its transformative power of becoming someone else. Refusing to be victimised, Marvin moves to Paris to reinvent himself. As a theatre student, he swiftly befriends the right people including legendary actress Isabelle Huppert (playing herself), and with her help, begins to exorcise the ghosts of his childhood. Winner of the Queer Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, Reinventing Marvin is a powerful, uplifting story of a young man's quest, against all odds, to be himself." - from Amazon.com

"Mathias, a medical intern, finds himself drawn into a world of international intrigue after discovering a shrunken human head in his luggage. This discovery soon consumes his life as he becomes obsessed with uncovering its origins. As the pieces of the puzzle begin falling into place, Mathias becomes a target for the French Secret Service who will do anything to protect their secrets."

"Paul (Mathieu Amalric) is stalled in both his academic career and his romantic life. He can't bring himself to complete his dissertation, and has decided that his long-term relationship with Esther (Emmanuelle Devos) is at a dead end. More his style is Sylvia (Marianne Denicourt), who, unfortunately, happens to be engaged to his best friend. When Paul finally breaks it off with Esther, it lets loose the sexual floodgates, which lead to romantic complications beyond his wildest dreams!"

"After having sex with his girlfriend Lucie in a bathroom, Arthur discovers that a ceiling panel is a time portal to Paris in the future, although it appears more like a sun-baked desert city by that point."

"Xavier is a strait-laced French college senior who moves to Barcelona as part of a student exchange program, much to the dismay of his beautiful girlfriend. But sharing cramped quarters with students from all over Europe quickly leads to multi-cultural chaos as Xavier gets an eye-opening lesson on how to live, love, laugh-- and party!"

"A sequel to L'Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Inn) . Here is Xavier again. Five years later, he has realized his dream of becoming a writer, although he writes mostly cheap romance novels. His personal life is not so rosy. Caught between his fantaisies and the realities of being part of a couple, he is having a hard time. In the end, however, he might find true love."

"A moving, joyful and intimate portrait of Aurélie Dupont, prima ballerina at the Paris National Opera, and guest-star on the world's greatest stages. Returning to his roots as a documentary filmmaker, world-renowned director Cédric Klapisch takes in her grace, observes her daily life, and records Aurélie's self-discipline and performances. Through four of the most famous and beautiful ballets - The Lady of the Camellias, Swan Lake, Raymonda and The Park choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj - Klapisch creates the portrait of a girl as beautiful as starlight, as fresh as a rose and as strong as a bull."

"Includes the director's music videos for the bands the White Stripes, Kylie Minogue, the Chemical Brothers, Björk, Beck, Foo Fighters, Daft Punk, Cibo Matto, the Rolling Stones, Massive Attack, I Am, Jean Francois Coen, and Oui Oui, as well as 'Stories and things' and the film 'I've been 12 forever.'"

"After a painful breakup, Clementine (Kate Winslet) undergoes a procedure to erase memories of her former boyfriend Joel (Jim Carrey) from her mind. When Joel discovers that Clementine is going to extremes to forget their relationship, he undergoes the same procedure and slowly begins to forget the woman that he loved. Directed by former music video director Michel Gondry, the visually arresting film explores the intricacy of relationships and the pain of loss."

"The lives and loves of several completely opposite men and women artfully intersect in what becomes a delightfully funny web of romantic entanglements! While negotiating differences in wealth, status, style, and taste, this vivid collection of characters mix and match in outrageously volatile combinations! Internationally acclaimed for its sexy comic sophistication. Expect the unexpected from this uncommonly entertaining motion picture!"

"Celebrity status has unexpected consequences for everyone who lives in its shadow, as the family, friends and hangers-on of a famous writer discover. Lolita's father is a writer whose fame has made him so self-centered he has no clue the effect his egotistical behavior has on everyone around him. Now that she has grown up, Lolita becomes even more determined to make him notice her-- especially since she's discovered a talent of her own and would like his approval. There are people she thinks will help her, but she always winds up competing against them for her father's attention. And when she meets a guy who likes her for herself, Lolita finds she may actually be more like her father than she would ever have imagined."

"In the wake of her mother's death, feminist author Agathe (Agnès Jaoui) returns to the rural town of her birth to reconnect with her estranged sister, Florence (Pascale Arbillot). While there, Karim (Jamel Debbouze) -- a would-be filmmaker and son of the family maid -- requests permission to profile Agathe for a documentary about inspiring women. Agathe agrees, but soon finds herself at the lens-end of a camera manned by Karim's mentor, the misogynistic Michel (Jean-Pierre Bacri)."

"Lola (Julie Maudech) is a beautiful and exotic young Parisian woman. When she discovers she is pregnant, Lola determines that the father is either Jamal (Hubert Koundé), a wealthy Muslim from Africa, or Felix (Mathieu Kassovitz), a slightly awkward Jewish messenger. Soon the two very different men are competing to win the love of Lola. Eventually, Jamal and Felix realize that they must put their rivalry on the back burner in order to help Lola through the challenges of her pregnancy."

"Mathieu Kassovitz took the film world by storm with La haine, a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui)—a Jew, an African, and an Arab—give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis."

"Céline Sciamma is the most visible and important feminist, and lesbian, director in contemporary international filmmaking. Her fourth feature, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2019, and intervened directly in debates about the female gaze, sexuality, and specifically how to look at and make a portrait of young women. In her approach to female, non-binary and queer identities, she has focused on the need for agency, binding this imperative into her aesthetic choices and modes of filmmaking. This is the first book-length study of Sciamma's films, focusing on the relationship of her work to the visual arts, and exploring the relevance of feminist theory to her unique perspective." - from the publisher

"Laure is 10 years old and a tomboy. On arrival in a new neighborhood, she lets Lisa and her crowd believe that she is a boy. Summer becomes a big playground and Laure pretends to be "Mikael", a boy like the others, different enough to get the attention of Lisa, who falls in love with him. Laure takes advantage of her new identity as if the end of the summer would never reveal her unsettling secret."

"Fed up with her abusive family situation, lack of school prospects and the 'boys' law' in the neighborhood, Marieme, a teenage girl in Paris, starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her style, drops out of school and starts stealing to be accepted into the group. When her home situation becomes unbearable, Marieme seeks solace in an older man who promises her money and protection. Realizing this sort of lifestyle will never result in the freedom and independence she truly desires, she finally decides to take matters into her own hands."

"In Jean Vigo’s hands, an unassuming tale of conjugal love becomes an achingly romantic reverie of desire and hope. Jean (Jean Dasté), a barge captain, marries Juliette (Dita Parlo), an innocent country girl, and the two climb aboard Jean’s boat, the L’Atalante—otherwise populated by an earthy first mate (Michel Simon) and a multitude of mangy cats—and embark on their new life together. Both a surprisingly erotic idyll and a clear-eyed meditation on love, L’Atalante, Vigo’s only feature-length work, is a film like no other." - from Criterion.com

"The notorious Pépé le moko (Jean Gabin, in a truly iconic performance) is a wanted man: women long for him, rivals hope to destroy him, and the law is breathing down his neck at every turn. On the lam in the labyrinthine Casbah of Algiers, Pépé is safe from the clutches of the police--until a Parisian playgirl compels him to risk his life and leave its confines once and for all. One of the most influential films of the 20th century and a landmark of French poetic realism, Julien Duvivier's Pépé le moko is presented here in its full-length version." - from Criterion.com

"Shortly after middle-aged baker Aimable (Raimu) settles down in a new village in Provence, his young and beautiful wife, Aurelie (Ginette Leclerc), runs away with an attractive young shepherd. The combination of his wife's desertion and the townspeople's initial mockery of his predicament causes the baker to close his shop in despair. Faced with the dire possibility of life without Aimable's breads, the townspeople attempt to persuade his unfaithful wife to come back."

"Two classic family films on one disc: The Red Balloon: Newly restored and available for the first time on DVD, Albert Lamorisse's exquisite the Red Balloon remains one of the most beloved children's films of all time. In this deceptively simple, nearly wordless tale, a young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of it's own, on the streets of Paris. The two become inseparable, yet the world's harsh realities finally interfere. With it's glorious palette and allegorical purity, the Academy Award winning the Red Balloon has enchanted movie lovers, young and old, for generations. Also, White Mane: In the south of France, in a near-desert region called La Camargue, lives White Mane, a magnificent stallion and the leader of a herd of wild horses too proud to let themselves be broken in by humans. Only Folco, a young fisherman, manages to tame him. A strong friendship grows between the boy and the horse, as the two go looking for the freedom that the world of men won't allow them. Long unavailable in the U.S., this extraordinarily shot wonder from Albert Lamorisse, the director of the Red Balloon, is a work of technical sophistication and immense natural beauty." - from Criterion.com

"Nana is a French-Italian film by Christian-Jaque starring Martine Carol and Charles Boyer. An adaptation of the 1880 novel Nana by Émile Zola, it tells the story of two French aristocrats who are fatally ruined by their obsession for Nana, a mediocre actress and prostitute. Using the ancient theme of a worthless woman beguiling powerful men, the film portrays the moral corruption of the nominally Catholic court and nobility under the Second Empire." - from Wikipedia.com

"In a Paris prison cell, five inmates use every ounce of their tenacity and ingenuity in an elaborate attempt to tunnel to freedom. Based on the novel by José Giovanni, Jacques Becker’s Le trou (The Hole) balances lyrical humanism with a tense, unshakable air of imminent danger." - from Criterion.com

"This ice-cool crime caper bridges two generations of French cinema by bringing together longtime national screen icon Jean Gabin with hotshot rising star Alain Delon. Gabin is the career ex-con determined to pull off one last heist before he retires. Delon is the petty thief he enlists to help him rob a Cannes casino. They’ve got a seemingly perfect plan, until . . . Veteran director Henri Verneuil lends his craftsman’s touch to this jazz-inflected noir that rivals the thrillers of Jean-Pierre Melville for expertly deployed tension." - from Criterion.com

"The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (French: Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) is a 1964 musical romantic drama film written and directed by Jacques Demy, with music and lyrics by Michel Legrand. Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo star as two young lovers in the French city of Cherbourg, separated by circumstance. The film's dialogue is entirely sung as recitative, including casual conversation, and is sung-through, or through-composed, like some operas and stage musicals." "Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve), a beautiful young Frenchwoman who works at a small-town boutique selling umbrellas, falls for dashing mechanic Guy (Nino Castelnuovo). Their brief romance is interrupted when Guy is drafted to serve in the Algerian War. Though pregnant by Guy, Geneviève marries an older businessman, Roland (Marc Michel), and begins to move on with her life. Throughout the musical film, all the characters' dialogue is conveyed through song." - from Wikipedia

"Based on the Greek legend of Theseus, who returned from war with the Minoans to become king of Athens, and took Phèdre, daughter of the vanquished King Minos, to be his wife. Phèdre falls in love with Theseus' son Hippolyte, who does not return her love. In anger she prays to Neptune to destroy him, but when Hippolyte is in fact killed after fighting a sea monster, Phèdre kills herself in remorse." Adapted from the play by Jean Racine.

"From its first release at an underground theater in Paris, this account of France's occupation under Nazi regime has been acclaimed as one of the most moving and influential films ever made. Director Marcel Ophüls interviewed the residents of Clermont-Ferrand who remembered the occupation, as well as government officials, writers, farmers, artists, and German veterans. Here, in their own words, is the story of how ordinary citizens and leaders alike behaved under military siege. Originally refused by French TV, the film garnered international success and acclaim - including an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary - while shattering the myth of an undivided and universally resistant France under the Vichy government. A triumph of on-the-ground filmmaking, THE SORROW AND THE PITY remains gripping, appalling, and exhilarating for its transparent view upon humanity."

"Sequel to Le grand blond avec une chaussure noire, a comedy of mistaken identity in which a professional violinist's life is changed when he is mistaken for a secret agent. In this sequel, the musician travels to Rio de Janeiro where he manages to foil an attempt to murder him and he evens the score with a gang of killers--all by accident."

"In Jean-Charles Tacchella's film, a pair of distant cousins meet at a wedding and the two develop a friendship so deep that their spouses become suspicious." - from Criterion.com

"A young mail carrier, Jules (Frederic Andrei), becomes entranced with the voice of American diva Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez). She doesn't believe in being recorded, but Jules secretly records her singing on a tape. His recording gets mixed up with another tape that incriminates a police chief, who is working with the mob. Jules quickly becomes the target of mob gangsters, and he must find a way to get himself out of the situation alive."

"Set in 16th-century France, the film centers around the identity of Martin, a moody youth who mysteriously disappears, deserting his beautiful wife and son. Eight years later a handsome, vibrant man returns; the whole village accepts him as Martin. After he demands from his uncle the profit earned from the farm for those eight years, questions are raised as to his true identity. A case is brought against Martin and a tense courtroom drama unfolds. Only his wife holds the key to unlock the mystery."

"When a police informant is gunned down, a determined vice cop must recruit a new stool pigeon--one that can finally take down the unassailable mob boss. The line between the cops and gangsters becomes blurred as Dédé, a charismatic pimp, is forced to 'rat out' his former boss and nemesis, the elusive Massina."

"Heavily pregnant Helene (Nathalie Baye) is on a train, on the run from her abusive boyfriend (Richard Bohringer), when she meets the also-pregnant Patricia. When a train-crash kills Patricia and her intended husband, Helene is mistaken for her and adopted by her new in-laws. Helene assumes this new identity, trying to secure a future for her baby, and finds a charmed life on a Bordeaux vineyard. However, the specter of the past threatens her newfound happiness."

"7 year-old boy Ernesto intrigues people around him for several reasons. Despite such a young age, he looks like a man on his 40's and also seems a little more intelligent than any of his peers - and the latter fact is what causes him to quit school, refusing to attend it because he doesn't want to learn the things he does not know. His family is very supportive of his actions, even though they don't have any clue of what's to become of him; at the same time the school headmaster and a journalist are concerned about Ernesto's real motivations for leaving school."—Rodrigo Amaro, IMDb.com

"Caught up in the romantic idealism of Paris in the 1950's, fifteen-year-old Nadia discovers the conflicts between the powers of love and political conviction."

"Pregnant and wanting to devote attention to her coming baby, French mother Claire (Christine Pascal) takes her 9-year-old son, Louis (Antoine Hubert), to a farm in Brittany and leaves him with old friend Marcelle (Anémone) and her husband, Pelo (Richard Bohringer). There, Louis is to spend the summer getting acquainted with the country after living in Paris his whole life. It's tough at first, but with the help of neighbor girl Martine (Vanessa Guedj), Louis begins to experience rural bliss."

"Sixteen year-old Mouchette kills her lover, the Marquis of Cadignan. The conclusion is suicide but the teenager confesses her crime to Abbé Donissan, the humble parish priest, and recounts her story. A strange relationship develops between them."

"Gerard Depardieu delivers a riveting (The New York Times) performance as a man torn between ethereal beauty and earthy passion in this hypnotic (Los Angeles Times) portrait of a most unusual love triangle. Winner* of five César Awards, including Best Picture, this witty, provocative tale offers fresh insight into the old, old story of marital infidelity (Variety). Bernard (Depardieu) has a stunningly gorgeous wife (Carole Bouquet), a thriving career and two beautiful children. But his enviable life spirals out of control when he falls madly in love with hisdecidedly plain secretary (Josiane Balasko). Could it be possible that physical beauty is finally no match for a woman who can touch a man's heart?" - Amazon.com

"Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) is a butcher who owns a run-down apartment building in post-apocalyptic France. The building is in constant need of a handyman, because Clapet routinely butchers them and sells them as food. The latest in the long ling of disposable workers is Louison (Dominique Pinon), a former circus clown desperate for work and lodging. But this time Clapet's plan hits a snag when his young daughter (Marie-Laure Dougnac) falls head over heels for the lovable Louison."

"A homeless artist who is losing her sight finds herself drawn into a passionate relationship with a troubled street performer. Despite all obstacles, they find love and shelter on the famed Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris. But in time, their unlikely love will be tested as the artist's secret past catches up with her."

"Violin player Camille (Emmanuelle Béart) begins an affair with Maxime (André Dussollier), who is prepared to leave his wife. But then Camille goes to Maxime's violin repair shop and meets his employee, Stephane (Daniel Auteuil), and she instantly falls in love. While Camille freely expresses her emotions for Stephane, he acts increasingly introverted, shunning her affections even though he cares for her, too. Camille soon becomes obsessed in her determination to win Stephane over."

"Set in French Indochina in the 1930s as the Vietnamese begin to rebel against French colonialism. Dramatizes the last years of French rule through the relationship between plantation owner Éliane, French by birth but born and raised in Indochina, and her adopted daughter Camille, an orphaned Annamese princess who becomes a Vietnamese revolutionary and representative at the Geneva Conference after having a child by French officer Jean-Baptiste, Éliane's past lover."

"Ten years after being injured in the Napoleonic Wars, Frenchman Col. Chabert (Gérard Depardieu) returns to Paris, finally recovered. There, he finds his wife is now known as Countess Ferraud (Fanny Ardant), married to Count Ferraud (André Dussollier), and the mother of the man's children. Chabert also learns his wife declared him dead in order to inherit his fortune. The couple then claims that Chabert is an impostor, which sparks the colonel to take legal action to reclaim his honor and wealth." Based on the novella by Honoré de Balzac.

"Margot (Isabelle Adjani) is one of several in line to inherit the crown in France, where Roman Catholics and Protestants are jockeying for power. Margot's mother, Catherine de Medici (Virna Lisi), is intent on seeing her son take the throne once the reign of King Charles IX (Jean-Hugues Anglade) ends. After being married to a man she doesn't love and starting a tryst with one she does, Margot contends with her mother's at-all-costs plan to control the political fate of the volatile country."

"Benoit, a shy young man, meets a woman through the personal ads. After they marry, Benoit's best friend realizes that he loves her, too."

"Presents three stories about the Holocaust and how it affected the lives of three people: one the last Holocaust survivor, one doing research on a concentration camp in Drancy, and the third about a ship's captain and his journey into an unknown territory. Includes collectible booklet."

"When Yvette's second husband suddenly dies days before Christmas, she turns to her three daughters from her first marriage to console her during the holidays. Not wanting their father to be alone, one of the girls invites him to Christmas dinner, forcing their parents to speak to eachother for the first time in 25 years. As their complicated lives converge, secrets are revealed that will test their love and their loyalties."

"Teenagers Gwen and Lise have always spent their summer vacations together on the Brittany coast, but this summer is different. The death of Lise's estranged father keeps her at home, leaving Gwen alone to explore her budding sexuality with the local boys of the resort town. One day, Lise shows up unexpectedly at Gwen's house, but their reunion is soon soured by Lise's resentment of Gwen's newfound interest in the opposite sex. The days that follow are filled with awkwardness, tenderness and rage as the two girls reexamine their friendship amid the strains of adolescence."

"Michèle is a 20-year-old model who has just broken up with her boyfriend. Although her life appears to be full, she becomes convinced something is missing and sets out on a mission to inject a bit of spirituality into her life. At first she dons a bindi and dabbles with Buddha. Along the way, she meets François, a veterinarian and non-practicing Jew. Festooning François' front door with a mezuzah, and asking to meet his parents, Michèle's passing interest in Judaism soon resembles a somewhat disturbing obsession."

"Milan (Johnny Hallyday) is a beleaguered old thief who rolls into a small French town with the aim of robbing its bank. However, a chance meeting with a local professor, Monsieur Manesquier (Jean Rochefort), delays his scheme and leads to an unexpected friendship. Milan has grown tired of his adventurous life on the run and wishes to retire in peace; Manesquier craves the danger he's never known in his bookish existence. Their shared admiration and envy inspires each to follow his dream."

"For Momo (Pierre Boulanger), a young Jewish kid growing up in Paris in the early 1960s, life is pretty exciting. He's friends with many of the local prostitutes and loses his virginity to one of them, Sylvie (Anne Suarez). He also catches glimpses of a famous movie star (Isabelle Adjani) filming in his neighborhood. But it's his friendship with a Muslim shopkeeper, Ibrahim (Omar Sharif), that's the most rewarding part of his life. Gradually, the older man becomes a surrogate father to Momo."

"Loosely based on true episodes, this film tells the story of German, French, and Scottish soldiers in the bloody trenches of World War I and the miraculous Christmas Eve truce they unexpectedly forge. Follows a French lieutenant, a Scottish priest, and a German tenor and his beloved Danish soprano as music and the spirit of Christmas create bonds between enemies."

"In 1988, Johnny Leclerc, from a Norman mother and an Alsatian father , lives in a suburban estate with his friends, mostly Arabs . He behaves like a Muslim , celebrates Ramadan and wears a djelaba . He is even convinced that his name is Abdelbachir and that he was born in a small village in the bled . When his friend Yacine has some trouble with a local caïd and decides to return for the holidays to Algeria, he embarks clandestinely in the baggage of the Sabri family to fulfill his dream and finally know his "roots". Barely arrived on the Algerian coast, Johnny feels at home. But Yacine opposes his father, who wants to arrange his marriage ..." - from Wikipedia

"Pierre Levasseur is an important CEO who is photographed with his lover, Elena, a world-famous model. In an attempt to salvage his marriage, he tries to convince his wife that Elena is not his lover, but that of François Pignon, the porter who was passing by and ended up on the photograph. To make his story believable, Levasseur convinces Pignon and Elena to move in together and to pretend to be a couple. Things get more complicated when this creates tensions between Pignon and his former flatmate Richard and his love interest Émilie. Ultimately, Levasseur's wife discovers the truth and decides to play games with her husband."

"In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Satrapi 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 as she 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 winner of four César awards, including best picture and director, Abdellatif Kechiche’s The Secret of the Grain is a stirring drama about the daily joys and struggles of a bustling French-Arab family. It has the texture of a documentary but a classic, almost Shakespearean structure: when patriarch Slimane acts on his wish to open a portside restaurant specializing in his ex-wife’s couscous and fish, the extended clan’s passions and problems explode, leading to an engrossing, suspenseful climax. With sensitivity and grit, The Secret of the Grain celebrates the role food plays in family life and gets to the core of contemporary immigrant experience." - from Criterion.com

"In 17th-century France, playwright and actor Molière (Romain Duris) has his debts paid off by Monsieur Jourdain (Fabrice Luchini), freeing him from debtors prison. In return, Jourdain asks for acting lessons so he can win the heart of the beautiful widow Célimène (Ludivine Sagnier) by performing a short play for her. Presented to Jourdain's family as the priest Tartuffe, Molière begins to fall in love with Monsieur Jourdain's disregarded wife, Elmire (Laura Morante)."

"Attractive widow Jeanne tells Charles that she is getting married again and kicks him, along with his dog, out of her house. With no other resource except a tiny pension, it's the street that awaits Charles and his dog. No hand reaches out to him and his dignity forbids him to hold out his own. When they find themselves on the railway tracks while a rattling train bears down upon them, they wonder if it signals the end of their lives or the beginning of a new life."

"Post office manager Philippe longs for a transfer to the sunny, sophisticated south of France. But when his attempt to cheat his way into a transfer backfires, he is sent instead to Nord-Pas de Calais. This northern province is known for its chilly dampness, its drunken, unemployable population, its terrible food and an impenetrable dialect known as Ch'timi. But Philippe soon learns to love these people so much that he must devise a strategy, with the help of the natives, to keep his left-behind wife from discovering his secret."

"Based on Bégaudeau's semi-autographical book Entre Les Murs (Between the Walls) 'The Class' dramatizes a year in the life of a middle school in an immigrant heavy, multiracial neighborhood in Paris. The students are also nonprofessionals, and classroom sessions were improvised from workshops around specific themes. The documentary-approach to the filming puts the lie to the one-teacher-can-make-a-difference myth propagated by so many other films about school. The shifting classroom dynamics emphasize how traditions, economics, and language hold these students back, not only in education, but also with forging any kind of unified French identity. Additionally, the film suggests it is not just racists or reactionaries that are worrisome; it is when genuine idealists are finally worn down, when the gulf between meaning well and doing well becomes unbridgable. Until the system can be changed, both battles and victories will be moment to moment."

"Despite her principal's warnings, an emotionally fragile teacher at a school for difficult children wears a skirt to work and when the insults become too much, she takes her class hostage after finding a gun in a student's bag."

"This powerful documentary tells the story of Leon Blum - a Jew who served as prime minister of France, and who was also a prisoner of the Nazis at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Blum, the first Jew to lead France, devoted his life to improving the well-being of workers and was an early champion of women's rights. In 1936, as the head of the Popular Front, an alliance of leftwing movements, he became prime minister. In 1940, his socialist views and Jewish heritage placed him in jeopardy, and the Vichy government deported him to Buchenwald. After the war, Blum was welcomed home by the French people and was re-elected prime minister in 1946." - from Amazon.com

"By the 1920s, Coco Chanel has established herself in the world of fashion. After a disastrous reaction to an early production of his Rite of Spring ballet, Igor Stravinsky has become a penniless refugee living in exile. When the two are introduced, the attraction is immediate and together they embark on a passionate affair, which results in a period of great artistic achievement for both artists."

"Lovely and quietly intelligent, French chambermaid Hélène ... comes upon a couple ... engaged in an intensely sensual chess match and discovers she has a knack for the game. This obsession, much to the chagrin of her husband and teenage daughter, leads her to seek the clandestine tutelage of a reclusive American doctor ... a liaison that radically transforms both of their lackluster lives."

"A married father of three, lives in Créteil doing odd jobs and spends his time at the local PMU bar. One day, to please his daughter, he promises a little too quick to take the whole family on vacation to ski. The only problem: if he breaks his promise, his wife will divorce him."

"An order of Trappist monks whose members include Christian (Lambert Wilson) and Luc (Michael Lonsdale) live among the Muslim population in a quiet corner of Algeria. As the country is plunged into civil war in the mid-1990s, the men of God must decide whether to stay among the impoverished residents who have been their neighbors, or flee the encroaching fundamentalist terrorists. The situation that unfolds, based on actual events, has tragic consequences."

"An irreverent, uplifting comedy about friendship, trust, and human possibility. Based on a true story of friendship between a handicapped millionaire and his street-smart ex-con caretaker, The Intouchables depicts an unlikely camaraderie rooted in honesty and humor between two individuals who, on the surface, would seem to have nothing in common."After a paragliding accident, Philippe, a rich aristocrat, is confined to his home. He employs Driss as home help. Driss is a young guy from the projects recently out of prison. In short, the person the least adapted for the job. Vivaldi and Earth, Wind and Fire, fine language and slang, suits and jogging outfits come together and a clash is inevitable. Two worlds collide and win each other over to give birth to a friendship as crazy, funny, and fierce as it is unexpected. A unique relationship that will make sparks fly and render Philippe and Driss untouchable." - Unifrance website

"In the 1920s, actor George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a bona fide matinee idol with many adoring fans. While working on his latest film, George finds himself falling in love with an ingenue named Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) and, what's more, it seems Peppy feels the same way. But George is reluctant to cheat on his wife with the beautiful young actress. The growing popularity of sound in movies further separates the potential lovers, as George's career begins to fade while Peppy's star rises."

"Travelling alone, internationally acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Raymond Depardon spent six years, along with his long-time partner and collaborator Claudine Nougaret, creating an extraordinary travel journal. Interspersed with his journey are remarkable glimpses from his archives, including an unforgettable meeting with Nelson Mandela. Intimate, compelling, revelatory, Journal de France offers a unique portrait of a country and its landscapes, an overview of a truly momentous career, and a fascinating résumé of the art of photography over the past half century."

"Mrs. Gallienne, a rather temperamental upper middle-class lady, has three children, two of whom she considers as her sons and another she calls Guillaume. Logically indeed, the latter teenage creature does not picture himself as a boy, rather as a girl or at best as a homosexual. But how can a mother act in such an objectionable way? And why? Through a series of painful chain of experiences, Guillaume will discover little by little who he is actually and will manage to break free from her pernicious influence." - from Amazon.com

"In this modern-day retelling of Ovid's Metamorphoses, a young girl named Europa is seduced by a magnetic stranger named Jupiter and embarks on a mythical journey to a land of powerful gods." - from Amazon.com

"Parties and love affairs lead to heart searching deep desires, and the craving to live life to the fullest, as a group of good friends come to terms with the unexpected death of beloved group member, Hugo. Ana, Hugo's partner, attempts to overcome her loss by going to sex clubs, while Hugo's brother, Arthur finds comfort in hook-ups."

"The vintage camping trailer making its way along France’s secondary highways looks utterly unremarkable. But once Raymond Depardon parks it—in front of stores, businesses, and town squares across the country—it become the location for dozens of remarkable conversations. Through his documentary films and photography, Depardon is known as one of the great chroniclers of contemporary France. In FRANCE, he takes a new approach: he mics his trailer, installs cameras pointed at a small table by the window, then invites strangers to come in and have a conversation with each other. (Depardon himself is never on-camera.) The participants range in age from their teens to their 80s: couples, friends, parents, children. Despite, or perhaps because of, the unusual setting, many of the conversations are strikingly intimate. A young man talks to his girlfriend about how he struggles with her jealousy. A single mother working as a stripper vents all her frustrations to a near-silent friend. Two high school seniors reminisce about their school days in a scene straight out of a coming-of-age film. A mother tries to make her son understand how his destructive behaviour affects the whole family and causes endless worry. Some of the conversations feel like near-perfect one-act plays, like the one with a middle-aged couple (he’s a fortune-teller, she’s a self-described rationalist) who start off talking about holiday plans and end up wondering why they are together. FRANCE does not set out to offer a definitive overview of French life. But certain themes do emerge, including women who find themselves in difficult relationships or chasing after exes for child support; parents worrying about their adult children and feeling left out of their lives; young men with appallingly retrograde attitudes towards women; and young couples who face challenges with trepidation but also who clearly delight in each other’s company." - from Icarus Films

"SPEAK UP is a film about francophone European black women from the diaspora. The film focuses on the experience of discrimination related to those two indistinct dimensions of identity : "woman" and 'black'. It deals with the intersections of discrimination, art, blackness in all its expressions, and why black women choose to reclaim the narrative about themselves." - from filmfreeway.com

"Recent violence and growing nationalism in France have brought fierce debates about the country’s identity to the forefront. In Mariannes Noires, seven French-born women of African and Caribbean descent unravel what it means to be Black and French; to be Black in France. They are entrepreneurs, scholars, filmmakers, dancers, and artists, whose Frenchness is rooted in a cultural space stretching from metropolitan France to Africa and its many diasporas. This documentary is a mosaic of seven narratives that raise the veil on a multicultural France." - film website

"Two men meet in a sex club, become entangled in a passionate embrace, and spend the night getting to know each other. As they wander through the empty streets of Paris, they must confront the feelings that are growing between them."

"Philosopher, Marxist, professor, murderer. More than a quarter century after his death, Louis Althusser, one of the most influential leftist thinkers of the 20th century, remains an enigmatic figure: a man whose work rejuvenated Marxist theory through books such as For Marx and Reading Capital."-

"In Paris in the early 1990s, a group of activists goes to battle for those stricken with HIV/AIDS, taking on sluggish government agencies and major pharmaceutical companies in bold, invasive actions. The organization is ACT UP, and its members, many of them gay and HIV-positive, embrace their mission with a literal life-or-death urgency. Amid rallies, protests, fierce debates and ecstatic dance parties, the newcomer Nathan falls in love with Sean, the group's radical firebrand, and their passion sparks against the shadow of mortality as the activists fight for a breakthrough."

"Desire is mysterious. Desire is overwhelming. Desire is tragic. Desire is FURIOUS. The many permutations of that strange thing called desire are on full display in this stunning collection of short films: Daytime Doorman tracks the burgeoning desire between Marcelo and his sexy doorman Marcio. Xavier charts the beginnings of desire, when Nicholas begins to notice his son, Xavier, only pays attention to certain types of boys. The Other Side is about the frustrations of unfulfilled desire when the object of your lust is beyond your reach- literally. The Tigers Fight explores what happens when one man, unbound by the ancient traditions, decides to subvert what's expected of him to declare his desire for his best friend, and finally, in Loris Is Fine we learn about the lengths two young lovers will go to prove that their love is beyond desire."

"A group of 40-something guys, all on the verge of a mid-life crisis, decide to form their local pool’s first ever synchronized swimming team – for men. Braving the skepticism and ridicule of those around them, and trained by a fallen champion trying to pull herself together, the group set out on an unlikely adventure, and on the way will rediscover a little self-esteem and a lot about themselves and each other." - from cineuropa.com

"From director Gaspar Noe comes a hypnotic, hallucinatory, and ultimately hair-raising depiction of a party that descends into delirium over the course of one night. A troupe of young dancers gathers in a remote and empty school building to rehearse. Afterward, they begin an all-night celebration that turns nightmarish as they discover they've been pounding sangria laced with potent LSD. Tracking their journey from jubilation to chaos and anarchy, Noe observes crushes, rivalries, and violence."

"Paris, summer 1979. Anne is a producer of cheap gay porn. When Loïs, her editor and companion, leaves her, she tries to win her back by shooting a more ambitious film with her lifelong accomplice, the flamboyant Archibald. But one of their actors is found brutally murdered and Anne is drawn into a strange investigation that will turn her life upside down." - adapted from allocine.fr

"For years, stories of West African migrants and refugees have been told through the lenses of foreign journalists. Revenir is a story from the inside: a bold new documentary by Australian filmmaker David Fedele in collaboration with Kumut Imesh, a refugee from the Ivory Coast now living in Paris. Part road-trip, part memoir, Revenir follows Kumut Imesh as he returns to the African continent and attempts to retrace the same journey that he himself took when forced to flee civil war in his country ... but this time with a camera in his hand. Traveling alone, Kumut documents his own journey; both as the main protagonist in front of the camera, as well as the person behind it, revealing the human struggle for freedom and dignity on one of the most dangerous migratory routes in the world. Revenir is a major addition to David Fedele's growing body of observational and participatory cinema that expresses his compassion as well as an investigative flair and a bold approach to the documentary form." - from roninfilms.com

"Star choreographer Maguy Marin burst onto the 1970s French new wave dance scene. A contemporary of Pina Bausch, Marin’s work stood out for its theatrical aesthetic, political commentary, and audacious integration of traditional dance with unexpected narrative, musical and physical elements. In 1981, Marin’s work 'May B,' inspired by the work of modernist playwright Samuel Beckett, upset the dance world; it rejected traditional ideals of beauty and embraced a fiercely political perspective. Since then, Marin’s work has grown in popularity; she has won numerous awards and her pieces are regularly presented at all major dance festivals, from the Rio Favellas (Lilia Rodrigues’s company) to the Joyce Theater (NY). The documentary Maguy Marin: Time to Act offers remarkable footage of live performances, as well as first person interviews with a choreographer whose work is daring, moving and continues to defy convention." - from Icarus Films

"Jean discovers his son, Maxime, and his son's boyfriend hanged in a hotel room. The autopsy shows that he died from an overdose, just seven minutes after his boyfriend. During an evening organized by Maxime's friends, Jean discovers a club where his son used to frequent. Trying to discover more about what happened, Jean goes to the club several times and is welcomed by the patrons. Jean quickly begins mixing his mourning with the desire to discover his son's world."

"A Cannes Film Festival sensation and Palme d'Or winner, TITANE is a feverish and jaw-dropping ride from the mind of Julia Ducournau (RAW). With a titanium plate surgically fused to her skull following a car crash as a child, car model Alexia embarks on a wild and ultimately unpredictable journey that questions our assumptions about family, identity and love." - from Amazon.com

"The Crucible (French: Les Sorcières de Salem, German: Die Hexen von Salem or Hexenjagd) is a 1957 joint Franco-East German film production directed by Raymond Rouleau with a screenplay adapted by Jean-Paul Sartre from the 1953 play The Crucible, by Arthur Miller."

"An important landmark of twentieth-century theater, first presented in 1935. Rewriting the events of the Illiad, Jean Giraudoux simultaneously gave new direction to the French stage."

"In one of Akerman’s most penetrating character studies, Anna, an accomplished filmmaker (played by Aurore Clément), makes her way through a series of European cities to promote her latest movie. Via a succession of eerie, exquisitely shot, brief encounters—with men and women, family and strangers—we come to see her emotional and physical detachment from the world." - Criterion.com

"Filmmaker Chantal Akerman documents choreographer Pina Bausch and her dance company for five weeks while they are on tour in Germany, Italy and France."

"La promesse is the breakthrough feature from Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, who would go on to become a force in world filmmaking. The brothers brought the unerring eye for detail and the compassion for those on society’s lowest rungs developed in their earlier documentary work to this absorbing drama about a teenager (Jérémie Renier) gradually coming to understand the implications of his father’s making a living through the exploitation of undocumented workers. Filmed in the Dardennes’ industrial hometown of Seraing, Belgium, La promesse is a brilliantly economical and observant tale of a boy’s troubled moral awakening." - from Criterion.com

"The Belgian filmmaking team of brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne turned heads with Rosetta, an intense vérité drama that closely follows a poor young woman struggling to hold on to a job to support herself and her alcoholic mother. It’s a swift and simple tale made revelatory by the raw, empathetic way in which the directors render Rosetta’s desperation, keeping the camera nearly perched on her shoulder throughout. Many have copied the Dardennes’ style, but few have equaled it. This ferocious film won big at Cannes, earning the Palme d’Or for the filmmakers and the best actress prize for the indomitable Émilie Dequenne." - from Criterion.com

"After giving birth, teenage Sonia (Déborah François) returns home to find that her boyfriend, irresponsible petty criminal Bruno (Jérémie Segard), has sublet their apartment. Sonia tracks Bruno down on the street, and after the couple spends the night together, they decide to start a new life with the baby. But the next morning, Bruno sells their child for cash, sending Sonia into shock. Shaken by her decision to press charges against him, Bruno sets out to retrieve the baby."

"A comic allegory set in a food stall in Brussels. Albert, the owner, on the eve of the new millennium, realizes that his shop, located on Belgium's linguistic border has been divided leaving Francophone Albert trapped on the Flemish side."

"Seven-year-old Ludovic (Georges Du Fresne) announces to his startled parents, Pierre (Jean-Philippe Écoffey) and Hanna (Michèle Laroque), that he is in fact a girl. His parents first view his newfound taste for girls' clothes and toys as a harmless phase, but as other neighborhood parents grow concerned -- particularly Albert (Daniel Hanssens), Pierre's prudish boss and the father of Jerome (Julien Rivière), the boy Ludovic has decided he wants to marry -- they take steps to 'cure' him."

"Tania is a former teacher from Russia, living illegally in Belgium with her 14-year-old son, Ivan. One day, they are stopped on the street for a routine check by the police; Tania is arrested and placed in an immigration detention center for women, while Ivan manages to escape. Threatened with imminent deportation and fearful for Ivan's fate, Tania embarks on a harrowing journey, determined to preserve her dignity and find her son.Short film summary: Rita, who is blind, shelters a boy after he suddenly breaks into her home. This enigmatic event allows Rita a brief moment of freedom."

"Denys Arcand is best known outside Canada for three films that were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Foreign-Language Film: The Decline of the American Empire (1986), Jesus of Montreal (1989), and The Barbarian Invasions (2003), the last of which won the Award. Yet Arcand has been making films since the early 1960s. When he started making films, Quebec was rapidly transforming from a relatively homogeneous community, united by its Catholic faith and French language and culture, into a more fragmented modern society. The Films of Denys Arcand sheds light on how Arcand addressed the impact of these changes from the 1960s, when the long-drawn-out debate on Quebec's possible separation from the rest of Canada began, to the present, in which the traditional cultural heritage has been further fragmented by the increasing presence of diasporic communities. His career and films offer an ideal case study for exploring the contradictions and tensions that have shaped Quebec cinema and culture in a period of increasing globalization and technological change." - from the publisher

"A Montreal shrine seeks to inspire its congregants by modernizing its staging of the Passion play. A promising cast of vibrant young actors are signed on-- one fresh from perfume commercials, another from the pornographic film industry, and another who had an affair with the basilica's priest-- quickly drive the production on to become a smash hit. But as the play enjoys the success, the actors become more and more challenged to separate their real lives from their lives onstage."

"After the death of their mother, a set of twins makes a life-altering discovery. The pair travels to the Middle East on a mission to uncover the truth about the father they thought was dead, but who is still very much alive, and the brother they never knew existed. Along the way they will piece together the story of the woman who brought them into the world, discovering a tragic fate as well as the courage of an exceptional woman."

"After rising through the ranks of her male-dominated profession, idealistic FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) receives a top assignment. Recruited by mysterious government official Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), Kate joins a task force for the escalating war against drugs. Led by the intense and shadowy Alejandro (Benicio del Toro), the team travels back-and-forth across the U.S.-Mexican border, using one cartel boss (Bernardo Saracino) to flush out a bigger one (Julio Cesar Cedillo)."

"Linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) leads an elite team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touch down in 12 locations around the world. As nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew must race against time to find a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors. Hoping to unravel the mystery, she takes a chance that could threaten her life and quite possibly all of mankind." Based on the short story "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang.

"Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. K’s discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years." - from WarnerBros.com

"A mythic and emotionally charged hero’s journey, DUNE tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence—a commodity capable of unlocking humanity’s greatest potential—only those who can conquer their fear will survive." - from Legendary Pictures. Based on the novel by Frank Herbert.

"Francis (Xavier Dolan) is a young gay man, Marie (Monia Chokri) is a young straight woman and the two of them are best friends -- until the day the gorgeous Nicolas (Niels Schneider) walks into a Montreal coffee shop. The two friends, instantly and equally infatuated, compete for Nicolas' indeterminate affections, a conflict that climaxes when the trio visit the vacation home of Nicolas' mother. The frothy comedy unfolds through narrative, fantasy sequences and confessional monologues."

"In the '90s, Laurence tells his girlfriend Fred that he wants to become a woman. In spite of the odds, they confront the prejudices of their friends, ignore the counsel of their families, and brave the phobias of the society they offend. For ten years, they try to live through this transition, and embark on an epic journey which, unbeknownst to them, may cost Fred and Laurence their love."

"In this animated feature, Roman troops are storming through Europe in the first century B.C., and just a sliver of British soil remains free of Caesar's grasp. After learning of the British plight, Asterix (Roger Carel) and Obelix (Pierre Tornade), two brave souls from similarly besieged Gaul, set out to aid their northern neighbors. Their quest: to deliver a potion that will boost British resolve and fighting skills. By turns, their journey proves whimsical, arduous and terrifying."

"An obsessive woman (Pascale Bussières) sees her estranged friend (Emmanuelle Béart) after 10 years and becomes even more attracted to her."

"Komona (Rachel Mwanza) is only 12 years old when she is kidnapped by rebel soldiers and enslaved to a life of guerrilla warfare in the African jungle. Forced to commit unspeakable acts of brutality, she finds hope for survival in protective, ghost-like visions (inspiring a rebel chief to anoint her War Witch ), and in a tender relationship with a fellow soldier named Magician (Serge Kanyinda). Together, they manage to escape the rebels' clutches, and a normal life finally seems within reach. But after their freedom proves short-lived, Komona realizes she must find a way to bury the ghosts of her past." - from Amazon.com

"Tim, a shy 16-year-old athlete with a natural gift for running, is dealing with the loss of his mother, as well as his sexuality. After a personal video is posted to social media, Tim's private life is about to explode into the public eye."

"Writer-director Sophie Deraspe’s incisive liberal adaptation of the Greek tragedy by Sophocles is the daring story of one young woman’s commitment to her family, even if it means sacrificing herself. Newcomer Nahéma Ricci gives a stunning, luminous performance as Antigone, an Algerian-born teenager living in Montreal with her immigrant family. Her world is shaken when her oldest brother is wrongfully gunned down by police during the arrest of her other brother who, if convicted, faces deportation. She invents a fearless, dangerous plan to free him, but can it succeed? As Antigone’s predicament intensifies and the consequences of her actions spiral out of control, the film deftly incorporates urgent and explosive contemporary questions of immigration and belonging, social media and identity, and the power of idealism." - from Amazon.com

"Samba Gadjigo presents a unique personal portrait and intellectual history of novelist and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène. Though Sembène has persistently deflected attention away from his personality, his life, and his past, Gadjigo has had unprecedented access to the artist and his family. This book is the first comprehensive biography of Sembène and contributes a critical appraisal of his life and art in the context of the political and social influences on his work. Beginning with Sembène's life in Casamance, Senegal, and ending with his militant career as a dockworker in Marseilles, Gadjigo places Sembène into the context of African colonial and postcolonial culture and charts his achievements in film and literature. This landmark book reveals the inner workings of one of Africa's most distinguished and controversial figures." - from the publisher

"Undoubtedly one of Africa's most influential first generation of writers and filmmakers, Ousmane Sembene's creative works of fiction as well as his films have been the subject of a considerable number of scholarly articles. The schemas of reading applied to Sembene's oeuvre (novels, short stories and films) have, in the main, focused either on his militant posture against colonialism, his disenchantment with African leadership, or his infatuation with documenting the past in an attempt to present a balanced and nuanced view of African history. While these studies, unquestionably contribute to a better understanding of his works, they collectively ignore Sembene's relentless preoccupation with culture in his entire career as a writer and filmmaker. The collection of essays in Sembene and the Politics of Culture sets out to fill that gap as the contributors at once foreground Sembene's fixation on the centrality of culture in the articulation of the discourse of national consciousness and reevaluate his intellectual and artistic legacy within an overarching framework of African liberation. The contributors critically reassess the ideological underpinnings of Sembene's thoughts, his role as one of the foundational pillars of African cultural production, and his relevance in current discourses of nationhood. They do so through a wide variety of interdisciplinary approaches that draw on linguistics, feminist theory, film theory, historiography, Marxist criticism, psychoanalysis and a host of other approaches that give novel insights in the critical analysis of the works under study. In the part entitled "Testimonies," a collection of conversations with people who worked closely with Sembene, each of the interlocutors provide illuminating insights into the man's life and work. The variety of themes and critical approaches in this critical anthology will certainly be of interest not only to students and scholars of African literature and cinema at various levels of intellectual and cultural sophistication but also anyone interested in the analysis of the nexus between power, culture, and the discourse of liberation." - from the publisher

"Ousmane Sembène was one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived, as well as the most renowned African director of the twentieth century—and yet his name still deserves to be better known in the rest of the world. He made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring Black Girl. Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot—about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally—into a complexly layered critique of the lingering colonialist mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world. Featuring a moving central performance by M’Bissine Thérèse Diop, Black Girl is a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement—and one of the essential films of the 1960s." - from Criterion.com

"This savagely funny satire portrays El Hadji, a prosperous, self-satisfied, politically crooked modern businessman who is struck down by the xala (pronounced "ha-la") - a curse rendering its victim impotent. While he chases after witch doctors and soothsayers on a frantic, often hilarious search for a cure, his impotence becomes a mirror of the powerlessness of young African nations over dependent on white technology. Unable to consummate his third (polygamous) marriage, and neglecting his business affairs and political activities as he seeks a cure, his social stature is stripped away, leaving him shamed and humiliated. And while humorous, there is a sympathy in his downfall at the hands of others who are even more corrupt than he is. XALA is a moving and comical look at a man caught up in the corruption of his country and the tribulations of a changing society." - from Amazon.com

"In Faat Kine, Ousmane Sembene, the unquestioned father of African cinema, calls his fellow Africans to a reckoning of the post-independence era at the beginning of a new century. At 77, he sums up 40 years of path-breaking filmmaking with a penetrating analysis of the interplay of gender, economics and power in today's Africa. Sembene accomplishes all this through the deceptively light domestic drama of Faat Kine, a gas station operator born, significantly, the same year as Senegalese independence, 1960. Faat Kine is, from its first shot to its surprising last, Sembene's tribute to what he calls the 'everyday heroism of African women.' In the opening frame, a procession of traditionally dressed women wends its way majestically through the hectic heart of modern Dakar. Faat Kine lets them pass and drives on as she carries their story into the present. Sembene has said: "Africa's society and economy are held together today by women. But how can women have these responsibilities and yet be denied the same privileges as men?" Although the film covers several days, it feels more like a single day in the life of Faat Kine, from learning of her children's successful exam results in the morning to their party that night. This apparently uneventful plot is interspersed with brief flashbacks, announced by music cues, as Faat Kine recalls the struggles that made this moment of quiet achievement possible. Sembene dares in this latest film to reduce narrative to a minimum because Faat Kine is not so much a drama of events, as a drama of recognition, a long-overdue accounting which in its last scenes turns into a virtual public trial of a generation of misleaders. Throughout the film, it becomes clear that traditional roles, between males and females, parents and children, no longer apply and that it is time to start calling things by their real names. For example, Mammy describes herself as the 'daughter' of her daughter." - from Amazon.com

"In the village of Djerisso, women tend to their work and children, while men debate in the mosque and make the rules. One day, four little girls appear on Collé's doorstep seeking sanctuary from their coming 'purification' ceremony. Years ago, Collé refused to allow her daughter to undergo the procedure. She takes them in and declares a moolaadé, a protective spirit, or safe zone that will bring a terrible curse upon anyone who breaks it. Thus begins a standoff that escalates into a bloody showdown between tradition and modernization, men and women, and progress and stagnation. Confronting the village elders and red-robed priestesses who perform the ritual, Collé has eyes saddened by experience, but made righteously fiery with the hope that she can reduce the misery of future generations. At 81, Mr. Sembene has made a masterpiece, both a critique of traditional forms of authority and a celebration of the warmth and dynamism of African village life."

"In the destitute Algerian neighborhood of Bab El-Oued, Islamic fundamentalists have installed speakers throughout so they can broadcast their propaganda. But when the incessant noise drives young baker Boualem (Hassan Abdou) to tear down the speaker on his apartment building and throw it into the sea, local fundamentalist leader Said (Mohamed Ourdache) becomes determined to make an example of him, despite the fact that Boualem is romantically involved with Said's sister."

"Set in the northern Algerian port city of Mostaganem. The title refers to the hordes of refugees, the 'Harragas', who smuggle themselves out of the country via any means possible. Here we meet one such group, Rachid, Nasser and Imene who pay a smuggler, Hassan, to take them to Spain in his rickety boat. Along with a group of African and Arab migrants, they are risking all they have to cross the stormy Straits."

"After being kicked out of her African village three decades earlier for getting pregnant out of wedlock, Linguere (Ami Diakhate) has returned home. While Linguere has done well for herself, her home village has fallen on hard economic times. Intent on punishing Dramaan (Mansour Diouf), the man who fathered her child but refused to own up to the act, Linguere makes a proposal: She will help the town financially, if the locals agree to execute Dramaan."

"In Senegal, poverty-stricken musician Marigo (Dieye Ma Dieye) buys a lottery ticket after his landlady (Aminta Fall) confiscates his instruments in exchange for unpaid rent money and a dwarf (Demba Ba) supplies him with some supposedly lucky digits. Marigo then glues the ticket to his door, hoping to show the landlady that he may have money one day. It's a winning ticket, though, and now Marigo has to remove his door and carry it for miles in order to claim his fortune."

"A disabled Senegalese girl, Sili, decides to do a boys job and starts selling newspapers on the streets of Dakar. Sili does a great job but the boys are not happy, the story tells her battle about daring to imagine what she can be and not caring about what anyone else thinks."

"Years of economic and political chaos in Haiti have led to environmental devastation, crushing poverty and a mass exodus of Haitians trying to reach the mecca of the United States. The tragedy is that the islanders who realize this dream are precisely those with the drive, initiative and energy needed to rebuild their homeland's shattered economy. Raoul Peck's evocative documentary takes the form of a journey through Haiti - a journey with different travelers, along different routes, to different destinations in the Caribbean's poorest country. Guiding the viewer along the way is the narrator, a fictional, wise old peasant, who draws on his ancestral knowledge of life and death, to provide a running commentary on the plight of the real life Haitians he encounters on his travels." - from IMDb.com

""Lumumba" is a gripping political thriller which tells the story of the legendary African leader Patrice Emery Lumumba. Called "the politico of the bush" by journalists of his day, the brilliant and charismatic Lumumba rose rapidly to the office of Prime Minister when Belgium conceded the Congo's independence in June, 1960. He would last two months in office. This is a true story."

"When the Hutu nationalists raised arms against their Tutsi countrymen in Rwanda in April 1994, the violent uprising marked the beginning of one of the darkest times in African history which resulted in the deaths of almost 800,000 people." - from IMDb.com

"Raoul Peck claims Alexander Sokurov’s Moloch as his own. Transplanting the Russian director’s unsettling mountain idyll between Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun from Bavaria to the green heat of Haiti, Peck tucks a searing critique of absolute power within the most elegant chamber drama." - from hrw.org (Human Rights Watch)

"Using James Baldwin's unfinished final manuscript, Remember This House, this documentary follows the lives and successive assassinations of three of the author's friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., delving into the legacy of these iconic figures and narrating historic events using Baldwin's original words and a flood of rich archival material. An up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, this film is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter."I Am Not Your Negro envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, a radical narration about race in America, using [only] the writer's original words, as read by actor Samuel L. Jackson. Alongside a flood of rich archival material, the film draws upon Baldwin's notes on the lives and assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. to explore and bring a fresh and radical perspective to the current racial narrative in America. Raoul Peck's Oscar-nominated documentary is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of these three leaders, Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for."

"Exterminate All the Brutes, from acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro, HBO’s Sometimes in April), is a four-part hybrid docuseries that provides a visually arresting journey through time, into the darkest hours of humanity. Through his personal voyage, Peck deconstructs the making and masking of history, digging deep into the exploitative and genocidal aspects of European colonialism — from America to Africa and its impact on society today. Based on works by three authors and scholars — Sven Lindqvist’s Exterminate All the Brutes, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past — Exterminate All the Brutes revisits and reframes the profound meaning of the Native American genocide and American slavery, and their fundamental implications for our present. The series disrupts formal and artistic film conventions by weaving together rich documentary footage and archival material, as well as animation and interpretive scripted scenes that offer a counter-narrative to white Eurocentric history. Through a sweeping story in which history, contemporary life and fiction are wholly intertwined, the series challenges the audience to re-think the very notion of how history is being written. Exterminate All the Brutes is produced by Velvet Film. Written and directed by Raoul Peck. Executive produced by Raoul Peck and Rémi Grellety." - from HBO.com

"A compelling and sardonic essay on the history of colonialism in Cameroon, and by extension, on the African continent. Focuses on historical as well as contemporary European cultural domination, particularly in the publishing and media industry."

"Jean-Marie Teno's two provocative new documentaries Chef! and La tęte dans les nuages together with his earlier Afrique, je te plumerai offer the most searching critiques available on film of the political and economic stagnation besetting many African states. At the same time, he introduces us to grassroots forces in civil society and the informal economy which are usually overlooked by the Western media but which could point the way towards vigorous democratic development in Africa." - from newsreel.org

"The filmmaker looks at European colonialism in Africa through the lens of Christian evangelism as the model for the relationship between Africa and western countries today. The history of German missionaries in Namibia in the 19th and 20th centuries is discussed by African and German historians and theologians, revealing how colonialism destroyed African beliefs and social systems and replaced them with European ones."

"Tabataba tells the story of a small Malagasy village during the independence uprising which took place in 1947 in the south of the country. For several months, part of the Malagasy population revolted against the French colonial army in a bloody struggle." - from Wikipedia.com

"Kapila (Jean Rabenjamina) is born during a solar eclipse. That gives him destructive powers, according to traditional beliefs in Madagascar, and he is put in a cattle pen and left to be trampled to death. But Kapila is rescued by Raivo (Rondro Rasoanaivo), who raises him as her own child in another village. Growing up embittered because of his injured leg, Kapila is prodded by the guidance of a mystical blind woman (Aimée Razafindrafarasoa) to return home to learn about his past."

"A young teacher, Sango Malo, comes to a rural village with ideas of promoting rural development through practical education. He clashes with the established headmaster, who insists on a traditional French-style education. Malo alienates many of his supporters through his impatience and is arrested by the army on the behalf of the village chief, storeowner and priest. But he has taught well and the villagers carry on his ideas without him."

"The life of humanitarian Albert Schweitzer (André Wilms) is given a more critical slant in this story behind his missionary hospital. Schweitzer moves with his wife, Helene (Marisa Berenson), from Alsace, France, to Gabon, Africa, where he establishes a hospital to treat the natives. However, while Schweitzer's medical exploits are noble, he is unreceptive to the culture and heritage of the Africans -- a conflict manifested in his icy relationship with one of his doctors, Koumba (Alex Descas)."

"In a twist on the old story of Westerners' encounters with African cultures, Le silence de la forêt focuses instead on what happens when a European-educated African interacts with the rainforest people incorrectly and pejoratively known as "pygmies" (who are more accurately called the Biaka). It is about the difficulty for even the most well-intentioned person to know and respect people of cultures so different from their own."

"Tells the story of an idealistic young politician's rise and fall. Daam, a well-intentioned but vacillating European-trained politician, must choose between two social paradigms exemplified by his two wives. The film offers a view of how modernization, as practiced in today's Africa, corrodes traditional communities and retards grassroots development."

"A Senegalese man living in Paris with his French wife and children receives a letter from his father back home saying he has arranged for him to take a second wife. The man's indecision outrages his French wife and leads to the end of his marriage, his return to Senegal and his reflection about how his life has ended up."

"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."

"This series introduces the celebrated Martinican author who coined the term 'negritude' and lauched the movement called the 'Great Black Cry.' This three part study features many of the most important and artistic intellectual figures of the past six decades."

"Features the life and work of John Langalibalele Dube (1871-1946) pioneer educator, journalist, musician, churchman and politician who co-founded the African National Congress in 1912 and served as its first President until 1917. Oberlin-Inanda connects Dube's American education with his struggle for political and economic independence and celebrates his enduring legacy in today's democratic South Africa."

"The director, a West African who resides in the U.S., takes us along his eight-year journey on the footsteps of two families, the Wilcoxes and the Dubes, one of white American missionaries, and the other, Zulus from Inanda, whose friendship in the late 19th century, stands as a major landmark in the struggle for Black liberation and Democracy in South Africa. Along the way, the scholar-director brings to both families some lost pieces of their history and makes them reconnect after losing touch with each other for ninety years. However, during his eight years of going back and forth between the U.S. and South Africa, the scholar never stopped asking himself why he, a West African Muslim and a professor of Francophone literature, had to be the one piecing together the story of two Protestant missionaries in the distant land of South Africa. The answer comes to him the day he discovers that he had been chosen to go on this historic and spiritual quest by two 'unappeased' souls in the town where he lives in the U.S."

"On Saturday, August 31, 2013, Nokutela Mdima Dube was welcomed into the pantheon of the first South African liberation heroes, when a gravestone was officially unveiled for her, after she had suffered for almost a century the indignity of total oblivion in an unmarked grave in Johannesburg. All to often, unfortunately, the history of women is reduced to a footnote in the epic of brave men. In Africa, even that footnote disappears when a woman has not been able to bear a child. Remembering Nokutela [uKukhumbula uNokutela] is the 4-year long journey of an African-born US director, Professor Cherif Keita, to rescue Nokutela Dube (1873-1917), a forgotten woman pioneer of the liberation movement in South Africa from the Purgatory of history, almost a century after her death at the age of 44."

"The story of a young visionary, who was determined to recover from the trauma of WWII by forging a better future for his people through education. It invites us also to ponder the dystopian reality of our 'independent' African nations gripped by a crisis of fanaticisms caused by the demise of the very school system that once carried the hope of Namballa Keïta and his generation."

"Shot in the spring of 1976, the film features Lila, a thirty-year-old architect returning to her native region in the mountains of Chenoua, in the company of her daughter and her husband, whose legs were disabled after an accident. Between fiction, documentary images and literary incursions, Djebar's first film documents and orchestrates an incessant back and forth between memory, history and the present, focusing on women during the resistance." - from Wikipedia

"A film adaptation of one of the great oral epics of the Bambara people, set during the powerful Mali Empire of the 13th century. Tells the story of Nianankoro, a young Bambara warrior destined to destroy a corrupt older society, the secret Komo cult, and with it his father, and, inevitably, himself. The climactic flash of light which floods the screen at the film's end ushers in a new purified world order and captures the Bambara belief in time as circular, not linear, always returning to that initial "brightness" which created the world."

"Explores the life and work of the psychoanalytic theorist and activist Frantz Fanon who was born in Martinique, educated in Paris and worked in Algeria. Examines Fanon's theories of identity and race, and traces his involvement in the anti-colonial struggle in Algeria and throughout the world." - from IMDb.com

"Following the Algerian War, Georges Montero (Claude Brasseur), a Pied-Noir living in his hometown of Oran, Algeria, decides to leave his canning factory for eye surgery in Paris. Once in Paris, he is reunited with his sister (Marthe Villalonga) and friends who emigrated from Algeria. While his friends and family try to convince him to move to Paris, Georges forges a friendship with his eye doctor, Tarek (Roschdy Zem), a Frenchman with Arab roots who has forsaken his culture."

"This Belgian comedy follows African king Mani Kongo (Gerard Essomba), who journeys to Brussels in order to track down his daughter, Mwana (Dominique Mesa), who left their homeland to study medicine. As he searches for Mwana, the ruler discovers shocking revelations -- namely that she isn't in school, and leads a trouble-filled life that includes dating cabbie Chaka-Jo (Jean-Louis Daulne). While abroad, the king must also contend with considerable prejudice, making his quest far from easy."

"Ali, Kwita, Omar and Boubker are a group of street urchins living in the hard streets of Casablanca. Their everyday lives are filled with violence, begging, and indifference. In order to survive, they create a bond of friendship and family between them. The bond is cut short when Ali is senselessly killed at the beginning of the film; his life taken by a single act of a rival gang. Ali's friends decide not to report his death to the police, but rather to bury him "like a prince". Ali Zaoua captures the power of dreams and presence of hope in the harshest of circumstances."

"Ossei is a strong-willed young man who sets out to rescue his mother when their village is raided. His quest leads him to the stronghold of the dreaded King Adanggaman, an arrogant despot who thrives on the slave trade and uses fierce female warriors to enforce his power. One of these Amazons, herself a former slave, falls in love with Ossei, and they escape to the bush."

"A young Swiss woman travels to her birthplace - an isolated, barren Berber settlement in the mountainous desert landscape of Algeria - to find her biological mother, who she has never met. The perilous journey immerses her in a world virtually untouched by contemporary society, one that still clings to tribal mores and strict religious codes of conduct."

"The first-full length feature film by Yaminda Bachir-Choikh evokes memories of the worst atrocities of the terror in Algeria. The forces of violence and ignorance erode but don't conquer decency and enlightenment in Rachida, the story of a vivacious young schoolteacher who refuses to buckle under intimidation, despite her anguish at living under the constant threat of terror in unexpected places. The film also highlights the corruption of an education system that has become the breeding ground of a culture of hatred." - from Films Media Group

"A few weeks before his college entrance exams, Réda, a young man who lives in the south of France, finds himself obligated to drive his father to Mecca. The wide cultural and generational gap between the two is worsened by their lack of communication. Réda finds it hard to accommodate his father, who demands respect for himself and his pilgrimage. From France, through Italy, Serbia, Turkey, Syria, Jordan to Saudi Arabia, the two embark on a road trip that will change their lives forever. Named one of the top films of the decade by the London Times." - from Film Movement

"In Casabanca, wealthy, carefree Moroccan teenagers spend their final year of high school partying hard instead of studying for their exams. Life revolves around driving fast, drinking, and dancing. But friendships and the first forays into love, along with the anxiety of leaving childhood behind for adult life, also play their part." - Unifrance web site

"Tells the story of Ezra, a young boy kidnapped and forced to become a soldier with a rebel faction in the Sierra Leone Civil War. Ten years later, he is brought before a truth and reconciliation commission and made to revisit and understand his crimes so as to begin the process of psychological healing."

"In late 18th-century Martinique, a plantation owner, his irresponsible young aristocratic wife and his beautiful black mistress are drawn into a spiral of violence that reflects all the horror and inhumanity of the perverse relations between masters and slaves." - from IMDb.com

"While planning her suicide, a precocious 11-year-old (Garance Le Guillermic) befriends a new neighbor (Togo Igawa) and a prickly recluse (Josiane Balasko)." Adapted from the book The elegance of the hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.

"This documentary demonstrates that Timbuktu was a leading cultural, economic, scientific and religious center that made a significant and lasting impact on Africa and the entire world. Featuring commentary by African sholars, and rich reenactments, the film documents that Africa had vibrant scholarly institutions and written cultures long before European intervention. It establishes the importance of preserving ancient manuscripts as an exciting and empowering legacy for Africana scholarship today."

"Kakuma refugee camp, built in the middle of the Turkana desert (Kenya), is the fastest growing city in the region. Many of its new arrivals are children sent out of conflict zones by their parents. Against all odds, these children grab all opportunities in the camp to rebuild their life. While waiting for her mother to return from South Sudan, Nyakong (8) starts to go to school. Slowly she creates a new home in the camp. At the age of 17, teenagers like Claude and Khadijo consequently compete for international scholarships, get a job, even build their own house. Filmmaker Lieven Corthouts decided to stay in one of the toughest places on earth and make this camp his home. While filming his friends for more than 4 years, he unveils the accomplishments of these strong, smart children and the true dynamics of a refugee camp. Can Kakuma really offer a future? Or is it just a waiting room, where the only option is to plan your journey to Europe?"

"In 2009 the body of Alice B is found washed up on an African beach. Next to the corpse of the white, 30-year old European woman lie those of a dozen black migrants. Eight years after this tragedy, Pierre-Alain Meier travels to Senegal in the hope of understanding the story behind this shipwreck. When he was Alice’s age, he wandered the streets of Dakar planning the production of the film Hyenas. Like her, he was a white person in Africa. Perhaps like her, he would hoped he could blend in a bit more with his African friends and co-workers and not be so unmistakeably foreign. Following in Alice’s footsteps, the filmmaker today puts his own story into perspective, with humility and affection, allowing us access to a very intimate terrain. Farewell to Africa tells the story of a final journey and sets out to explore the complex ties – both rich and asymmetrical – that have never ceased to exist between Europe and French-speaking Africa." - from princefilm.ch