L'Idole Des Jeunes

The film follows four families, with different nationalities (French, German, Russian and American) but with the same passion for music, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The various story lines cross each other time and again in different places and times, with their own theme scores that evolve as time passes. The main event in the film is the Second World War, which throws the stories of the four musical families together and mixes their fates. Although all characters are fictional, many of them are loosely based on historical musical icons (Édith Piaf, Josephine Baker, Herbert von Karajan, Glenn Miller, Rudolf Nureyev, etc.) The Boléro dance sequence at the end brings all the threads together.

Upon their release from prison twen­ty years ear­li­er, Gérard, Ary and Philippe asked them­selves if hon­esty was not the best rack­et of them all. Today, they are insep­a­ra­ble and scrupu­lous­ly above board. But Gérard learns he is ter­mi­nal­ly ill. Their friend’s days being num­bered, Ary and Philippe want to offer him one last love sto­ry… because, as Gérard likes to say : love is bet­ter than life.

Four guys working for a small grocer in trouble, declare war on a new giant neighborhood supermarket by attempting several coups. A film about the big store taking over the business of smaller stores.

In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.

In 1955, a year after the birth of the National Liberation Front (FLN), Mahmoud was expelled from Algeria by the colonial authorities who feared his revolutionary speeches. At the age of 27, he arrived in the Algerian slum of Nanterre. Roughly questioned by FLN activists, in disagreement with the Algerian Nationalist Movement (MNA) who wanted to recognize theirs, he was then accepted as the local hairdresser and shoemaker. Subsequently, he became a driver during anti-MNA expeditions. Accepting increasingly dangerous missions, he is imprisoned by the French police and once again undergoes interrogations and special treatment by the police which will definitively undermine his sanity. One day, he no longer recognized his companions, and when joy broke out among the FLN militants, at the announcement of the signing of the Evian Accords, Mahmoud remained alone, frozen in an attitude of refusal, walled in his madness. Algeria has just won its independence.

A man who had everything taken away from him, including his family, by his brother teams up with a young card player in order to take revenge on the brother.

Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series' significance.

Spinoza, attempting to discover why his son committed suicide, meets his girlfriend and his rival for her affections.

Le PDG d'une importante société pétrolière voit ses manoeuvres illicites déjouées par un jeune concurrent dont la femme n'est autre que la fille de son fournisseur arabe.

A fake documentary on the life forms of the Paris Suburbs, viewed through the eyes of homeless, unemployed people the sharks of politics and building societies push to hopeless life.

Botticelli's Venus emerges from the waters, that of Yvan Lagrange, is she shipwrecked?...

This is the only feature directed by the famed French painter and sculptor Martial Raysse. In keeping with the revolutionary spirit of the time, the movie has no plot to speak of and appears to have been largely made up on the spot. We follow the cat man into a bizarre fantasy universe presented in negative exposure that reverses color values (black is white and vice versa) and written words. The cat man steals a car and then picks up a young girl he promises to take to “Heaven.” Heaven turns out to be a country chateau inhabited by several more animal mask wearing weirdoes...

In the civil war that tore apart Algeria in the 1990s, police chief Brahim Llob hunts down Islamist extremists on a daily basis. Having become the favorite target for them, it is with fear that he goes every morning to his office at the Central Commissariat of Algiers. Annoyed by the power in place, preparing to publish a whistle-blower book, Morituri, Llob is obliged to take early retirement.

Anita is a barmaid at the center of a community of street preachers, prostitutes, dealers and users. When a beloved friend (and young drug dealer) is caught by narcotics agents, Anita takes it upon herself to score for his struggling clients.

Albert is a Franciscan monk and a medical orderly at a monastery in France. Although he is German, the kindly monk helps hide French resistance members. Albert tries to maintain the delicate balance between the warring factions by helping out the afflicted and not getting involved in political ideology.

Zine and Rayanne plan to flee to a dreamland, a fantasy haven on the north shore of the Mediterranean. The crossing is commonly made in fishing boats and other small craft; hundreds of harragas die each year. Zine embarks for Spain with a group of others, while Rayyane decides to stay back to raise more money for the crossing - which involves tricking his uncle into lending him money under the pretense of running a local business. But, like so many other working poor around the world, Rayanne refuses to weigh the danger against the prospect of a better world.

This tragic musical drama chronicles the star-crossed love between beloved French singer Edith Piaf and World Middleweight boxing champion Marcel Cerdan who died in a plane crash. The tumultuous affair is paralleled by the love affair of a French POW and his young pen pal who get engaged after writing to each other for four years and having never met. Their romances are framed by the sad, torchy songs of Piaf.

Jeanne looks back on her love for Jean. The melancholic young man wouldn't accept the world as it was, always wishing to depart. She doesn't know that he's dead.

The body of a young woman falls on the terrace of Martha, who intrigued, meets her neighbor. In contact with this strange man, she learns to have a different look about her own life and her marital problems.

1957, the town of Mostaganem, Algeria: the country is still under French occupation, and repression of the National Liberation Front is at its height. The authorities indulge in torture, intimidation and public executions.

Robert Lamoureux plays a General in the Resistance. With an unlikely team of French patriots, he easily outwits the buffoonish Germans and steals the master copy of their plans to invade England. By doing so, he prevents the invasion and makes it more likely that the Allies will win the war.

Camille, Dov and Joëlle live on the edge of society and are involved in petty theft helping them to buy their drug doses and to survive as best they can. One day, while attempting to rob a movie theater, they activate the alarm signal and it is Pierre, Camille's brother, who is doing a heist in the same building, who is arrested red-handed. The three young people decide to kidnap a police officer and exchange him for Pierre.

An in-demand model, Nathalie can't shake the memory of her fiancé Michel, who died in a tragic car accident. To help her forget, she attends erotic parties organized by a friend. One day, she meets Pierre, who invites her to his château.

At 45, divorced, unemployed and father of two children, Franois Morot realizes that he can no longer support the society in which he lives and decides to leave everything.

Silent film shot on 16 mm in the 1970s by the actor Denis Develoux, mainly known for the main role he played in L'idole des Jeunes (1976) by Yvan Lagrange. In Homicide, in a neo-impressionist style (Dulac, Epstein, Kirsanoff), a cyclical structure presents the parallel destinies of characters with hieratic behavior, having no links between them. They symbolize "states": the heterosexual couple, the homosexual couple, female solitude, offering few prospects of happiness or fulfillment. From the film there emerges an impression of disenchantment which at the same time bears witness to an era and transcends it.