Loves, obsessions, and tension that sweep you away without warning. In France, everything seems simple, until it pulls you in by the sleeve.

Normal

Blending the innocence of a children’s fable with the raw reality of the wild, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s major commercial and artistic triumph becomes a meditation on the relationship between humans and nature, not as a conflict but as a fragile coexistence.

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A young bear cub is orphaned when its mother is killed by hunters. Roaming the mountains alone, it finds unexpected protection in a large male bear. As the hunters press on with their pursuit, the cub learns to survive in a world where trust and danger exist side by side.

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Nomination for Best Film Editing | Oscars | 1990
Nomination for Best Cinematography | BAFTA Awards | 1990
Best Director | César Awards | 1989
Best Editing | César Awards | 1989

The Bear

Leconte's assured, yet delicate, directorial touch creates a world of melancholy and mourning, employing intricate costumes, imposing spaces and moody music. He crafts a film that moves at its own unique pace, while Alan Rickman is brilliant in one of his last roles.

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Germany, 1912. A young man gets a job at a steel plant, and the owner, impressed by his work, makes him his secretary. When his employer’s health worsens forcing him to stay indoors, his secretary moves in with him and his younger wife. He falls in love with her and when his boss announces that he is sending him to Mexico for two years, she makes a promise: when he comes back, she will be his. Eight years later, after millions of deaths and Europe destroyed by war, he returns home.

A Promise

An example of passion at its fullest as we know it in the French cinema, through an emotional torrent that was awarded with the Film Director Award at Cannes for Andre Techine and turned Juliette Binoche into a star overnight.

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A young girl arrives in Paris determined to become an actress and experience love. Her path in life and art will be stormy and completely different from what she imagined at the beginning.

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Best Director | Cannes Film Festival | 1985

Rendez-vous

French cinema legend Gérard Depardieu stars in an unusual and touching comedy set in a retirement home that gradually turns into an impromptu and insane family.

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To avoid prison, Milan, 30, is forced to perform 300 hours of community service in a retirement home. His first few weeks are a real hell! But he is quickly adopted by retirees, especially by a group of 7 inseparable people who teach him, each in his own way, his vision of life. As the weeks go by, Milan discovers that the institution is exploiting the vulnerability of its residents. He then decides to organize a great escape, but his troubles are never-ending.

Retirement Home

The biggest box-office hit in France for 30 years, until Titanic came along, and still the fifth most successful film to date, this ageless classic remains sharp, biting, and hilarious, with Louis de Funès and Bourvil lead a group of brave but bumbling misfits trying to escape the Nazis in occupied France.

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During World War II, a British allied plane is shot down by the Germans and crashes in Nazi-occupied Paris. A high-strung orchestra conductor (Louis de Funès) and a kind-hearted house painter (André Bourvil) come to the rescue of the crew, and together they set out on a chaotic mission to escape to England.

Don't Look Now - We're Being Shot At!

Based on a true story, this powerful drama of abortions and prostitution during World War II, is one of Isabelle Huppert’s finest collaborations with the great Claude Chabrol, and gave the actress a completely fair award in the 1988 International Venice Film Festival.

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In German-occupied France during World War II, struggling to make ends meet when her husband returns home after being wounded in the war, a poor woman tries to earn money and support her family by performing illegal abortions.

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Golden Ciak Award for Best Film | Venice Film Festival | 1988
Best Actress (Isabelle Huppert) | Venice Film Festival | 1988

A Story of Women

uniquely beautiful animation by the great Michel Ocelot; a "handmade" artwork, ideal for young and old, which provides at the same time an exciting glimpse into the French culture of the last century.

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In Belle Epoque Paris of the previous century, a young girl of the Kanak tribe, who has arrived to the city from New Caledonia, wants to discover everything with inexhaustible studiousness and curiosity, thus starting a unique and wonderful adventure.

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Best Animated Film | César Awards | 2019

Dilili in Paris

A map of Paris that resembles a children’s board game and a plot born from the imagination of the director and his leading ladies are the starting point for a dark, yet enchanting quest through ‘70s France, in one of Jacques Rivette’s most famous films.

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Marie, a bank robber just out of prison, can no longer bear to live between four walls. Baptiste says she comes from somewhere else and intends to live by her own rules. They keep running into each other on the streets of Paris and finally become companions in a very strange and very weird, mysterious adventure that includes a secret map of Paris, and murky figures from the criminal world.

The North Bridge

Contemporary and almost prophetic, the masterful Michael Haneke regards our brave, new and globalized world as a multicultural Babel on the verge of collapse, where people, societies, cultures, and languages entropically seek connection and communication.

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A series of stories and characters linked through their relationship with contemporary Europe: a continent of refugees, racism and alienation, but also hope for a better future. An actress auditioning for a movie takes a walk with her partner’s brother, a war correspondent in Yugoslavia. Later, the brother throws trash at a homeless person and a second-generation Malian immigrant intervenes.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 2000
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury | Cannes Film Festival | 2000

Code Unknown

The great provocateur of world cinema changes his style, but remains shocking. Haneke's Amour enters Noé's hallucinatory universe and invites us into a relentlessly realistic horror story, where the horror stems from the hardships of getting old.

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A loving, elderly couple spends their days in a Paris apartment, battling the early stages of dementia. In split-screen, we follow their daily life, and as it becomes increasingly difficult and their son tries to take care of them, the oblivion shifts to something more disturbing and the two of them enter a spiral of mental and physical degeneration.

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Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Prize for Best Film | San Sebastian Film Festival | 2021
Official Selection | Locarno Film Festival | 2021
FIRPESCI Prize | Istanbul Film Festival | 2022
Official Selection | Cannes Premiere | 2021

Vortex

Innocence’s epilogue was brought upon by the war and the transformation of the once funny jester into a delightfully cynical figure was something that the world was not yet ready to digest. Although unfavourably acclaimed in its time, it’s now regarded, not unfairly, as his black masterpiece.

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Inspired by notorious French serial killer Landru, Henri Verdoux lures wealthy women by promising them sweet happy-everafters. After the wedding bells chime, however, he murders them for their fortunes. In this particularly dark comedy, Chaplin questions our perception of evil: isn’t this refined criminal a mere amateur compared to weapons suppliers and dictators? We stand ready to condemn a murderer, but when war victims are counted in millions, we celebrate a hero!

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Nominated for Best Original Screenplay | Oscars | 1948

Monsieur Verdoux

Live every day like it is your last, as people say. But what does that mean for Claire Darling? An outstanding portrait of a deeply flawed, compelling heroine, featuring Catherine Deneuve in one of her greatest contemporary performances, set in the beautiful French countryside.

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In a small village in Northern France, on the first day of summer, Claire Darling wakes up determined to live her final day. She decides to empty out her house as each object resonates something from her tragic, yet passionate life. Until the return of Mary, her daughter whom she has not seen in 20 years.

Claire Darling

Real life often surpasses any fanciful story, even one by Beckett. Deeply human and touching, feelgood comedy inspired by real events, about everything that (doesn't) separate people from art, awarded Comedy of the Year at the European Film Awards.

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Etienne is an unemployed actor who works as a director of a theater workshop in a prison. There he gathers an unusual troupe of prisoners to stage Waiting for Godot, a hit with unexpected consequences.

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Best European Comedy | European Film Awards | 2020

The Big Hit

A love story full of tension and sensibility, starring the –real life, during filming– couple of Emmanuelle Béart and Daniel Auteuil, whose chemistry is carried on screen and absolutely captivates us. Golden Lion in Venice.

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The effusive Maxim rules the craft of violin making with an iron fist, together with his best friend Stefan, a very lonely and introverted man, but an authority on violin repair. One day Maxim falls deeply in love with a violinist, Camille. And while they are about to move in together, Stefan comes out of his shell and decides to claim the beautiful woman, much to his friend's dismay.

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Best Director | Venice Film Festival | 1992
Pasinetti Award for Best Actress (Emmanuelle Béart) | Venice Film Festival | 1992
Best Director | César Awards | 1993
Best Actor (Daniel Auteuil) | European Film Awards | 1993

A Heart in Winter

Shortly after Queen Margot, Patrice Chéreau shifts creative course, bringing together rising talents and seasoned performers, tuning in to the sound of the ’90s and delivering one of the finest examples of ensemble drama - a subgenre that was just beginning to come into its own at the time.

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Friends and relatives of the painter Jean-Baptiste-Émeric travel by train to Limoges to attend his funeral, thus fulfilling his final wish.

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Official Selection | Cannes Film Festival | 1998
Best Director | César Awards | 1999
Best Supporting Actress (Dominique Blanc) | César Awards | 1999

Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train

Loosely inspired by the turbulent life of Jean Genet and starring the great Michel Piccoli, Nikos Papatakis' last film is a fascinating exercise in the balance between lust and toxicity.

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In the 1960s, a famous gay writer and poet, a lover of the circus and its extreme dangers, makes it his sole purpose to turn a young Arab into the best tightrope walker in the world.

Walking a Tightrope

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And don’t things become more immediate when there’s the testimony of an image? Wim Wenders, in his Oscar-nominated documentary, follows photographer and activist Salgado, who has been capturing neglected societies for decades.

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For the past 40 years, photographer Sebastiao Salgado has been travelling across the continents, recording humanity’s impact and witnessing major events of our recent history. Present during wars, famines, refugee waves, companion of people from all over the world, he continues to travel, seeking pristine spots, wild flora and fauna and majestic landscapes, on a mission to record the beauty of planet Earth.

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Nominated for Best Documentary | Oscars | 2015
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury - Special Mention | Cannes Film Festival | 2014
Special Jury Prize - Un Certain Regard  | Cannes Film Festival | 2014
Audience Award | San Sebastián Film Festival | 2014

The Salt of the Earth: A Journey with Sebastião Salgado

Experienced in the French crime drama genre, Nicolas Boukhrief returns with a powerful social drama, dominated by the always captivating presence of Vincent Lindon.

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A history professor who has lost faith in his profession witnesses an attack on a shopkeeper by three young robbers. He captures one of the attackers, a 14-year-old Romani boy, and, moved by his situation, regains his passionate faith in education, but quickly comes into conflict with the ruthless laws of the boy's community.

Like a Son

In his most provocative and hard-hitting film, Nikos Papatakis mercilessly attacks all forms of authority and leads his then-wife Olga Karlatos in a magnificent and sweepingly paroxysmal performance.

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A director is making a film about torture in Algeria. His wife portrays an Algerian prisoner. In order to be able to play her role more convincingly, she is subjected to various tortures. Reality and fiction are constantly entwined, until her life becomes an unrelenting humiliation.

Gloria Mundi

Truffaut's last film pays tribute to the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, which the French director adored. Pairing it with the conventions of film noir, he produces a delightfully cinephile union.

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Based on Charles Williams' "The Long Saturday Night", the film takes place over a few days in a small town in southern France. The manager of a real estate agency is a suspect for the double murder of his wife and her lover. Faced with evidence against him as well as the charge of a third murder, the man escapes. Meanwhile, his secretary, conducting her own research to uncover the truth, gets entangled in difficult situations.

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Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | BAFTA Awards | 1984

Confidentially Yours - Finally Sunday!

Has anyone spoken more eloquently and fervently about "amour fou", crazy love, than French cinema? In Desplechin’s gem of a film, we travel to the protagonist's vividly colored memories and his first great love. We follow along, enchanted.

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An anthropologist is about to leave Tajikistan. He reminisces about his childhood, his mother's manic episodes and his close relationship to his brother, a devout but violent child. He remembers his father, an inconsolable widower and his first adventurous trip to the Soviet Union. He thinks about himself as a student in Paris and his increasingly strong inclination towards anthropology. But above all, he remembers the greatest love of his life.

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SACD Prize | Cannes Film Festival | 2015
Best Director | César Awards | 2016

My Golden Days

A film within a film? An actual life veiled under the pretense of fiction? A middle-age crisis? Canet’s deeply self-deprecating and enjoyable comedy turns the camera on himself, with terrifically fun (and somewhat psychoanalytic) results.

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For the 43-year-old Guillaume Canet, life doesn't get any better. He has a job he loves, a happy family and he’s famous. But during the shoot of his new film, his young co-star informs him that he is not considered cool by the new generation. Everything collapses; his quiet private life with Marion Cotillard, his horses and their country house are neither interesting nor sexy. Guillaume realizes he has to take drastic measures to transform his image; but his loved ones disapprove of his choices.

Rock'n Roll

Is happiness cumulative? Shortly before the May ‘68 riots, Agnes Varda -in a masterpiece replete with colors, movement, glances and the looming presence of death- explores the possibilities of romantic threesomes.

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A young carpenter lives a comfortable, tranquil life, married to a lovely wife with whom he shares two wonderful children. Although their marriage is a happy one, he initiates an extramarital affair with a woman he meets on a business trip. When his wife observes that he is unusually joyful, he, unable to lie to her, reveals his infidelity, but says that nothing has changed between them.

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Special Prize of the Jury | Berlin International Film Festival | 1965

Le Bonheur

Timeless and eerily prophetic about the labor dead end of the 21st century, Laurent Cantet’s masterful social thriller works both as satire and as horror, portraying the corporate world as a fragile bubble that grants prestige, until it bursts, throwing its characters into chaos.

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A man is fired from his job but tells his family he has secured a new position in Geneva. He spends his days wandering the streets, resorting to small scams to make ends meet, unable to confess the truth - one that he will eventually be forced to face.

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Don Quixote Award | Venice Film Festival | 2001

Time Out

The rom-com as we loved it in the 90s returns with the unmistakable ingredients of the Parisian bookstore Shakespeare & Company, Jane Austen and a hopelessly romantic but single protagonist. Comfortingly classic, refreshingly modern and unpretentiously funny.

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Agathe finds herself in desperate singlehood. Her dream is to experience love akin to a Jane Austen novel and her ultimate aspiration is to become a writer. Instead, she spends her days selling books in Shakespeare & Co, in Paris.  Soon, she must confront her insecurities to finally fulfill her ambition of becoming a novelist and put an end to wasting her sentimental life.

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Official Selection | Toronto Film Festival | 2024