Primitifs

Fabienne is a star; a star of French cinema. She reigns amongst men who love and admire her. When she publishes her memoirs, her daughter Lumir returns from New York to Paris with her husband and young child. The reunion between mother and daughter will quickly turn to confrontation: truths will be told, accounts settled, loves and resentments confessed.

When 43-year-old hairdresser Suze Trappet finds out that she's seriously ill, she decides to go looking for a child she was forced to abandon when she was only 15. On her madcap bureaucratic quest she crosses paths with JB, a 50-year-old man in the middle of a burnout, and Mr. Blin, a blind archivist prone to overenthusiasm. The unlikely trio set off on a hilarious and poignant helterskelter journey across the city in search of Suze's long-lost child.

Julien Schulmann is a comedian. He has just lost his father, a Polish Jew and extermination camp survivor. Before he died, his father left a "will" in which he requested that his other son, Pierre, who hasn't been heard from for two years, spread his ashes in Poland. His father's preference comes as a rude shock for Julien, and it opens a chasm inside him, slowly bringing to light an unspeakable secret.

In 2013, Vanessa Springora recounts how she found herself under the influence of a famous writer. In 1986, she was 13; him, almost 50. The victim of a triple predation: sexual, literary, and psychic, there's more beyond her individual story. She questions the excesses of an era, and the complacency of an environment blinded by talent and celebrity.

Sophie and Olivier are a couple leading a straightforward life. They’re bakers in Paris and their lives are regulated by the constraints of their job. Sophie gets the feeling that her husband is no longer really interested in her. They then read a personal ad pinned to their bakery’s notice board and get in touch with Paul and Colette, a rather strange couple who want to sell their holiday home. They buy the house – without even taking a look at it first – little knowing that it’s located in a nudist colony.

Follows Philippe, an 80-year-old who has to fight against his children and some developers that want to take his mansion away by selling it and tearing it down.

At a wake one night in 1945, a group of aged women recall the life of one of their number. Sixty years before, Thérèse was barely 20 years old when she eloped with her boyfriend, Firmin, a blacksmith, to Châtillon, a town in Provence. Here, she makes the acquaintance of the wealthy Madame Numance, who is known for her good deeds. Realising that Thérèse is pregnant and unemployed, Madame Numance insists that she moves into a house on her estate. Whilst Firmin resents the arrangement, Thérèse soon finds that she can exploit the situation, using her benefactor's naivety and generosity for her own gain..

This fictionalized story, based on the family life of writer James Jones, is an emotional slice-of-life story. Jones is portrayed here as Bill Willis, a former war hero turned author who combats alcoholism and is starting to experience health problems. Living in France with his wife, daughter, and an adopted son, the family travels an unconventional road which casts them as outsiders to others. Preaching a sexual freedom, his daughter's sexual discovery begins at an early age and betrays her when the family moves to Hanover in America. Her overt sexuality clashes with the values of her teenage American peers and gives her a problematic reputation. Meanwhile, her brooding brother copes with his own interior pain regarding his past, only comfortable communicating within the domestic space.

Drama set in the Second World War, focused on Jean Moulin, hero, martyr and symbol of the French resistance and the patriotism during the dark years of Nazi occupation.

Parisian authorities clash with the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) in director Alain Tasma’s recounting of one of the darkest moments of the Algerian War of Independence. As the war wound to a close and violence persisted in the streets of Paris, the FLN and its supporters adopted the tactic of murdering French policemen in hopes of forcing a withdrawal. When French law enforcement retaliated by brutalizing Algerians and imposing a strict curfew, the FLN organizes a peaceful demonstration that drew over 11,000 supporters, resulting in an order from the Paris police chief to take brutal countermeasures. Told through the eyes of both French policemen as well as Algerian protestors, Tasma’s film attempts to get to the root of the tragedy by presenting both sides of the story.

In Paris, where he wields his money scams, Alex has an unexpected encounter with two girls: Fred, who’s nothing to do with his world and who he falls for straight away, and Sylvia – sweet, but lonely, Sylvia. To test Alex, Fred devises a curious game of seduction. Like a character out of a Marivaux play, she toys with setting up delightful obstacles necessary to Love’s flourishing: Sylvia must seduce Alex, and Alex, must in turn, truly desire Sylvia. But Fred gets caught in her own trap. She falls head over heels in love with Alex. However, he no longer knows who to choose, all the more so now that Sylvia is falling in love with him, too. During an eventful night of confusion and intrigue, crazy laughter and tears, our threesome come to realize that what really draws them together is an emotional bond: true love.

An ongoing collection of single static shot, mute, showing a view of the cinema facades where Cinematons have been screened.

Reel 34 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

A film about an ongoing cinematic adventure that began in 1978: a vast anthology of personality portraits called Cinématons, dealing with people in the arts. Historical, ethnological, sociological and psychological, this anthology is a living record of the artistic community of the last 20th century which attempts to answer these questions: Why film everyone? Why choose cultural personalities? How do the subjects look at their image? How much exhibitionism and narcissism is involved in being filmed?

Ulysses, an idealistic, novice film director, invites Clothilde, his young and pretty neighbor, to accompany him to the Love Film Festival on Réunion Island, where his debut film has been selected. Unfortunately, the day before they're due to leave, Ulysses learns that his film has been removed from the program. Afraid of disappointing Clotilde, he hides the truth and flies with her to Réunion, determined to do everything in his power to get his film back in the official selection and, at the same time, win the favors of the young woman, who dreams of becoming an actress. But Ulysses must cope with internal rivalries and struggles behind the scenes if he wants love and cinema to triumph.

Antoine is a lawyer living in New York. On his way back to France for the final round of a job interview, Antoine finds himself sitting right next to his ex-girlfriend Julie. With a seven-hour flight ahead of them, they are going to have to speak to each other.

A few days before Christmas, traveling entertainer Marc Stevens is stuck at nightfall in a remote wood in the swampy Hautes Fagnes region of Liège when his van breaks down. An odd chap who's looking for a lost dog then leads Marc to a shuttered inn.

It is in a small popular district that the pot of the Eurogagnant, 124 million euros, is won - But who is the lucky winner?

It's been ten years since the paths of René and François parted ways. From the glorious era when, as cops, they roamed the Montmartre district, they only have a handful of memories left, the money from their cronies having evaporated over time. Everything comes to an end. Until it starts again.

Serge Vaudier, a mathematics teacher, wins the lotto twice and claims he can do it again, thanks to an infallible system he has designed. Is a he genius or a con man? Angèle, the head of the the government's bureau, is determined to entrap him. She asks her secret lover, Jacques Loriot, an expert player in the casinos, for help.

Life takes Lucie and mistreats Ezra. It is not because somewhere else it is better, but it is that here to live is impossible.

How do you ask a wild, impetuous hairdresser on a date if you're a pathologically timid philosophy student with no social skills?