A Place Among the Living

From the mean streets of the Belleville district of Paris to the dazzling limelight of New York's most famous concert halls, Edith Piaf's life was a constant battle to sing and survive, to live and love. Raised in her grandmother's brothel, Piaf was discovered in 1935 by nightclub owner Louis Leplee, who persuaded her to sing despite her extreme nervousness. Piaf became one of France's immortal icons, her voice one of the indelible signatures of the 20th century.

An inexperienced young actress is invited to play a role in a film based on Dostoyevsky's 'The Possessed'. The film director, a Czech immigrant in Paris, takes over her life, and in a short time she is unable to draw the line between acting and reality. She winds up playing a real-life role posing as the dead wife of another Czech immigrant, who is manipulated by the filmmaker into commiting a political assassination.

Young Frenchwoman Mathilde searches for the truth about her missing fiancé, lost during World War I, and learns many unexpected things along the way. The love of her life is gone. But she refuses to believe he's gone forever — and she needs to know for sure.

Jesse, a small-time criminal, high-tails it to Los Angeles to rendezvous with a French exchange student. Stealing a car and accidentally killing a highway patrolman, he becomes the most wanted fugitive in L.A.

In early 1920s France, an author, lying on his deathbed, looks at various photographs and is flooded with memories of the people and events that have shaped his life.

An attorney defends a young man on trial for killing his aunt — a psychiatrist who took him in to study possible homicidal tendencies.

To be able to travel to Europe and find the love of his life, Sam Ali, a Syrian refugee, accepts to have his back tattooed by one of the most sulfurous contemporary artist; becoming that way a precious work of art.

In the early 1800s, Prussian geographer Alexander Von Humboldt and French botanist Aimé Bonpland launch an expedition to explore the Amazon region, including the Orinoco River, from Venezuela to the border of Portuguese Brazil.

After the end of World War II, a collaborationist seeks redemption.

Manga tries to tell his parents he is gay and in love with Sory, another twenty-year-old. His parents don't believe him and his mother attempts witchcraft.

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.

Chris, a sexy teenager who appears mostly bare-breasted on the French Riviera, has a crush on Romain, her mother's lover. In reaction to her inability to attract his attention, she experiments with other risque affairs.

During the Nazi occupation of France, two filmmakers try to build a career without compromising their ideals.

Feeling suffocated by a possessive boyfriend, work and suburban life, a young woman starts spending the weekends in her Paris apartment in order to reclaim some of her lost freedom.

At the end of the XIX century in Russia, Prince Dimitri Necklivdov is called as a jury-man in a trial. The defendant is Katiuscia Maslova, accused of murdering a merchant in order to rob him. Dimitri recognizes Katiuscia: she was the girl he seduced many years before. Dimitri decides to save her.

Stéphane Villiers, a pediatrician in his thirties, leads a carefree life in Bordeaux. This charming man finds it easy to win over one woman’s heart after another, yet he fails to form lasting bonds with the young women he so effortlessly seduces. His life takes a dramatic turn one night when 12-year-old Eva is found sitting in his stairwell; she manages to secure shelter in his home through a clever ruse. With her romantic view of the world, sensational piano playing, and demanding nature, the bright girl quickly breaks through Stéphane’s emotional defenses. The two grow far closer than is socially or professionally advisable. Eva longs to be loved, while Stéphane is forbidden to love. As the doctor grapples with his inner emotional turmoil, he discovers that Eva is suffering from a progressive brain disease and resolves to do everything in his power to save her using a daring new treatment.

Prague, 1920. Milena's father wants her to follow in his footsteps and be one of the first female doctors in Czechoslovakia, but she is determined to be a writer. She elopes to Vienna with the Jewish music critic Ernst Pollak, and starts a correspondence with Franz Kafka. She leaves Pollak and returns to Prague with her father, where she befriends and translates Kafka. As a journalist, Milena covers the 1923 Ruhr worker's strike and meets the communist architect Jaromir.

A war photographer and absent father, who spends more time taking care of his camera than his four daughters, enjoys a happy life in the Alps with his new girlfriend. But his life is turned upside down the day that his best friend tries to reconcile him with his family by telling them a big lie.

When a group of student actors travel to a workshop in Dordogne to put on a production of Shakespeare's As You Like It as a summer project, they are as lively and high-spirited a group as one could ask for. While they are there, the young man who has the leading role begins casting cow eyes at the director's wife (Valerie Stroh), and soon she and the boy are having an affair. By the end of the summer, the wife is sufficiently charmed to wonder how she could have gotten into this situation where she deeply loves both men.

Rose, 20, lives in Camargue with her brother Vincent, her elder, and her mechanic father who has never recovered from the departure of their mother when they were children. She serves as the wife and mother to both and, tired of this situation, she wants to go to Marseille to find a job, and then live there.

Louis XIV, the French sun-king has two passions, establishing absolute rule over the realm -after decades of religious/civil wars- by divine right and artistic brilliancy as a dancer

During the long train ride from Montreal to Vancouver, a man and woman find themselves increasingly attracted to each other.

In the French countryside at the beginning of the 20th century, Raboliot, who gets his name from looking like a burrowing rabbit, is a small-time poacher who loves and lives for freedom. Married with two children but traumatised by the war, it is only when he is out hunting at night that he feels really free and happy. But these escapades do not please the local policeman, Sommedieu, who is set on putting an end to them.

In 1942, Edouard and Lucas are two childhood friends, both policemen in Nancy in different police stations. Soon the beautiful friendship between the two policemen will shatter with all the suffering and disappointment that implies.

In Estaque, a northern suburb of Marseilles, stuck between oil refinery smokestacks and the Mediterranean sea, a handful of die-hards has taken refuge in a cabaret. There is José, the owner, a big-hearted gypsy who loves cars and women's bodies; Joséfa, his wife, the establishment's stripper despite her advanced years and Marie-Sol who climbs the hill every day to visit Notre-Dame de la Garde and beseech Virgin Mary to give her a child. There is Patrick, her husband who has been unemployed for ages but who is kind despite appearances and their friend Jaco who is having a hard time. His wife and daughters hate him for not keeping up on the mortgage repayments. Last but not least is Papa Carlossa who believes that Franco still rules Spain and fantasizes about bumping him off.

From the director of Marius et Jeannette, this story of two working-class families is a fable with an optimist streak. A young black man, Francois, is wrongly accused of rape by a racist policeman. The story is told in voiceover by his childhood friend, neighbor, and the mother of his future child, Clementine, who is white. The city is Marseilles as in the previous film, symbolic with its churches, prisons and ruins. Except in this film, director Robert Guediguian also ventures outside, taking the story to Sarajevo; two different cities, one devastated by war, the other by a bad economy and unemployment. A la Place du coeur won a Special Jury Prize at the 1998 San Sebastian Film Festival and was also shown at the 1998 Toronto Film Festival and the 1998 Montreal Film Festival.

Two scriptwriter friends with opposing personalities fuss and fight as they cobble together a script for a modern political film. Their arguments seem endless, they constantly stray from the plot, but the story slowly takes shape around garage mechanics at Moliterno & co. who fight a multinational in order to save their business.

A dark tale of working-class life in Marseilles, a city in crisis. Interesting characters include a hard-bitten but compassionate fish market worker with a drug addicted daughter and a moody bartender with a shocking secret life.

Two lifelong best friends spend a weekend at a secluded cabin. Through intimate conversations and silent moments, they explore their deep understanding of each other's personalities and desires.

At a tiny Parisian café, the adorable yet painfully shy Amélie accidentally discovers a gift for helping others. Soon Amelie is spending her days as a matchmaker, guardian angel, and all-around do-gooder. But when she bumps into a handsome stranger, will she find the courage to become the star of her very own love story?

A scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they slow his aging process.

A legendary secret service agent comes out of hiding and returns to France to help the son he's never met get out of trouble.

Nathalie and Jean-Pierre have been together for five years, to celebrate their anniversary, Jean-Pierre prepare a surprise present for his girlfriend: a cute four month english bullgod. Nathalie loves her present and calls the puppy "Tresor"; her relationship with the dog is close and strong since the begining but causes problems in the couple.

Hubert Durieux is a banker in a small French town who is struggling to keep up with the demands of all the women in his life. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, his precious white Citroën is stolen under his eyes by a beautiful gypsy girl, Mona.

Adventures of a group of youngsters set in a provincial French city in the 1950's.

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

Clara takes her daughter and her friends to a weekend visit at her grandfather's village. They all have a great time, but after they return home people start dying. First Clara's grandfather mysteriously drowns, then the children start getting sick and one, her goddaughter, dies. Around same time clients at the spa she teaches aqua-aerobics start getting sick with one dying. She finds some mysterious algea, related to Caulerpa taxifolia, planted near where her grandfather supposedly drowned. Clara suspects the algea and all of these illnesses and deaths are related to some sort of poisonings of fish caught near her Grandfather's village.

On a hospital bed, Marcello is plunged into a deep coma. His guardian angel asks the angel in charge of bringing him back to the afterlife to extend the contract of his protégé.

Madeleine is with her lover, Jean-Paul, when her husband arrives home and catches the two together. Madeleine kills her husband and tells Jean-Paul to flee before the police arrive. After Jean-Paul drives away, he picks up a hitchhiker. When the car, stolen by the hitchhiker, explodes, police believe the dead hitchhiker is Jean-Paul. Madeleine takes up with Jean-Paul's brother, Bastien, while Jean-Paul, arriving in Strasbourg, is mistaken for the heir to a fortune. The detective on the case spends more time writing crime novels than investigating real-life crimes.