Sophie is a brilliant student. Encouraged by her maths teacher, she leaves the family farm to attend a science preparatory class. Between new encounters, successes and failures, and faced with fierce competition, Sophie realizes that her dream of joining the Polytechnique represents more than an entrance examination but a true challenge of social climbing.

While the world of wine mourns the death of Alexandre Léger, his estranged daughter, Camille, learns his extraordinary collection is now hers. But before she can claim her inheritance, Camille must best Alexandre's protégé, Issei, in a test of their senses.

Simone Veil's life story through the pivotal events of Twentieth Century. Her childhood, her political battles, her tragedies. An intimate and epic portrait of an extraordinary woman who eminently challenged and transformed her era defending a humanist message still keenly relevant today.

Beatrice, recently widowed by a far right sympathetic policeman, lives with her son & mother. She doesn’t like migrant and foreigners. When she meets Mokhtar, an Iranian entered illegally in France, her world crumbles. This is the beginning of a passionate love story leading Beatrice to defy her racist entourage and the law so that he can cross the Channel.

In the heart of Morvan, Nico, the last vet in the area, struggles to save his patients, his clinic, and his family. When Michel, his partner and mentor, announces his retirement, Nico knows that the hard part is yet to come. "Don't worry, I've found the next generation" Except that ... The next generation is Alexandra, a 24-hour graduate, brilliant, misanthropic, and not at all willing to return to bury herself in the village of her childhood. Will Nico manage to make her stay?

Juste wanders the streets of Paris looking for people only he can see. He collects their last memory before helping them into the afterlife. One day Agathe, a young woman, recognizes him. She belongs to his previous life. She is alive and he is a ghost. How will they manage to love each other and seize this second chance?

Anna and Adam, a young couple from Paris with Polish Jewish origins, leave for the first time of their lives in Poland. They were invited to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the destruction of the birth village community of Adam's grandfather. If Adam is not very excited about this trip, Anna is excited to discover the land that is also her grandmother's. Finally - from what little she knows. Here they are, looking for their origins in a journey full of surprises, during which they will not find exactly what they came for.

Max is a battle-weary veteran of the wedding-planning racket. His latest — and last — gig is a hell of a fête, involving stuffy period costumes for the caterers, a vain, hyper- sensitive singer who thinks he's a Gallic James Brown, and a morose, micromanaging groom determined to make Max's night as miserable as possible. But what makes the affair too bitter to endure is that Max's colleague and ostensible girlfriend, Joisette, seems to have written him off, coolly going about her professional duties while openly flirting with a much younger server. It's going to be a very long night… especially once the groom's aerial serenade gets underway.

After the French defeat of summer 1940, Addi Ba, a young Senegalese rifleman escapes and hides in the Vosges. Aided by some villagers, he gets false documents that allow him to live openly.

Who would kill a Carthusian monk and why? As the investigators will find out, the key to the mystery lies in the ultra-secret formula of the Chartreuse plant liqueur.

Ondine and Paul have loved each other. When she leaves him, he swears not to love again. To prove this to himself, he pursues the beautiful Camille, whom he intends to seduce and abandon. But Camille puts a spell on Paul whom she desires for herself alone. And, while falling under Camille’s charms, Paul has to deal with the memory of his past love.

1997 - An old notable French provincial family falls under the spell of a manipulator with no scruples able to make a whole family become paranoid.

Pierre Blum, 40, is a writer who had his time of glory in the early 2000s. One evening, on a casino terrace, he meets Joseph Paskin. This mysterious man, charismatic and manipulative, is influential in the world of politics and persuades Pierre to take on a strange mission that takes him back to a past he’d prefer to forget, and puts his life in danger. In the middle of all this, Pierre falls in love with Laura, a young extreme-left activist. But in this world of subterfuge, who can really be trusted?

Drama about a father and son who set out to find their missing daughter/sister with the help of an American headhunter.

Two mothers each try to come to terms with the pain of losing a child after four young scouts and a young man who tried to save them drown, with the inquiry revealing negligence on the part of the supervisors.

Élise lives with her 10-year-old son Léo, whose father is deceased. She has a chaotic relationship with Paul her lover. They go from happy moments to intense feuds. Élise introduces him to Léo and in time, they get to know and appreciate each other.

At fifty Louis Gravet, a serious actor, would like to become a comedian. His brother Peter, a film director, has the idea of hiring him for the lead role of a comedy. Family circumstances, their wives, their children, niece, lead him to make another film, new and unexpected.

Murders in... is a collection of French-Belgian police TV movies taking place each time in a different French city and region.

From the moment they meet - and against their will - Helene and Joachim begin a lovers' dance they are powerless to stop.

After she has been dumped by her boyfriend, Pauline allows her sister to take her to a palace on the Italian Riviera. Instead of savouring the delights of a carefree existence, Pauline prefers to take on the role of an amateur sleuth, convinced that a crime has been committed in the environs. She ropes a handsome lifeguard into her investigation...

It is the moment of the first holiday departures, the weather is nice and warm. Leo, aged nine, is alone with his father, his mother has just died. He does not know what he is going to do, tomorrow, or later.

An 18-year-old beauty develops an attraction to an older photographer.

Paule is pushing 50, as she repeatedly observes in her voice-over commentary. When she – a philosophy lecturer with a 10-year marriage and a 15-year-old daughter – learns that her husband is having an affair with a 28-year-old, this number takes on a special weight. The Internet site “L’âme-sœur” is supposed to help Paule get through her burgeoning midlife crisis...

The ambiguous suicide of a local beauty, weathergirl, cheese model, and Marilyn Monroe look-a-like finds an eager sleuth in David Rousseau, best-selling crime novelist. When Rousseau visits a remote Alps village for the reading of his friend's will he unwittingly, but irresistibly, gets caught in the tangled web of murder and small town politics in this off-beat mystery.

Paris, 1871. This is a story of the women trapped in a luxury brothel, 'Paradise'. The very young Rose came to Paris in search of her mother, former prostitute. She is trapped and forced to enroll in Paradise. Vera is 35 years. She knows that the end of her career as a prostitute is near. She is betting everything on the Baron Du Plessis, her main client, and the only one able to redeem her debt. Hortense is the owner of Paradise. She must take care of her girls and resist pressure from a suburban thug who is charging her money.

Step into a world of seedy seduction, sinister plots, bloody murder, and hard vengeance: the pulp-fueled realm of "Suite Noire."

It is the end of a meal. Eight people are gathered around a big table. They evoke the memory of a lost friend. Through the stories of each about the absentee, the character traits, the haabits or the expressions, a portrait in hollow is outlined.

An Indian delegation, headed by Kuldip Badhwar, is going to Cateneau's French power plant to negotiate the purchase of four new generation nuclear reactors. Before signing the contract, the Indian representative requires guarantees on the safety of the installations and requests an emergency shutdown test of the reactor. But a succession of incidents occur and seem to turn to disaster.

Elsa Valentin is in the middle of a brutal divorce and custody battle when she is struck by the appearance of a pretty young girl named Lola (Héloïse Cunin). Her interest in the child grows to an obsession, and she finds any possible excuse to be near her. When Lola's mother, Claire, grows unnerved by all this, Elsa admits she believes Lola is her daughter.

"The choice of each period is intimate, as each period awakens a particular emotion in me. This emotion reflects what is around me, not everyone is able to recognise it -- that is the risk I take. I think that this is good enough reason to make a film that will make visible small yet revealing things in differeent ways. I believe in tropisms and that is what interests me in this film." -- Marie Vermillard [taken from London Film Festival 2006 catalogue]

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

Five young men from well-off families, whom fate never intended to be partisans in an occupied Paris, so different from one other and yet so close, reject the French defeat and resulting German occupation and decide to take on Nazi Germany.

In Paris, Clara, psycho motor therapist, and Ismaël, music teacher, have been lovers for four years. Happy, the couple are expecting their first child and decide to move in together. But the news is not well received by their respective families because Clara is Jewish and Ishmael a Muslim. Although not practicing, this difference will gradually sow trouble in their love life.

1943. They have never stepped foot on French soil but because France was at war, Said, Abdelkader, Messaoud and Yassir enlist in the French Army, along with 130,000 other “indigenous” soldiers, to liberate the “fatherland” from the Nazi enemy. Heroes that history has forgotten…

On a mission to loosen up, a miser's sets about buying a house in the country for his family.

Raymond (Bernard Blancan) is a very lonely peasant who lives so detached from the world that the peasants of the village nearby his family house consider him as dead for more than 30 years. None sees him but people know he is around and, as all secretly reproach themselves to not have helped the young Raymond after his all family death before he disappeared, they consider the family house as haunted by Raymonds ghost.When Frédéric (Antoine Chappey), Caroline (Lucia Sanchez) and their children come from the city to install themselves in the countryside, they know nothing about these villages tells and find in Raymonds family house a rare opportunity.

At night she dreams about it, during the day she believes she's dreaming. However, Élise continues, reacts, and despite her pain, chooses life.

The four days following the death of a small town doctor, seen through the eyes of Nelly, his wife, a nurse.

A rookie policeman from provincial Le Havre volunteers for the high pressure Parisian homicide bureau and is assigned to a middle-aged woman detective.

As young French couple Gilles and Marion officially separate, we see, in reverse order, the milestone moments in their relationship: Gilles revealing his unfaithfulness at a tense dinner party; Marion giving birth to their premature son while Gilles is elsewhere; Gilles and Marion's joyous wedding; and, finally, the fateful moment when they meet as acquaintances at an Italian beach resort, and their love affair begins.

A writer of novels in need of an editor accepts the contract offered to him by a famous writer: to eliminate his ex-wife against a large sum of money.

A story that mixes fantasy, philosophy and everyday reality. The problem with Antoine Martin is that he only exists one day out of two. And it is from this circumstance so personal that he meets Clémentine, a girl who lives full time. All this will only deepen his anguish.

This tale of childhood and adolescence is told through brief sequences that take place in the life of a modest family from the Pas-de-Calais region during the forties, fifties and sixties. Paul, the main character, who we meet when he’s 5, 13 and 18, is the throughline of this tale told in a fragmentary way well adapted to the scattered nature of memories.

This program of short films by Vincent Ravalec (Never twice, Le Masseur and Les Mots de l'amour) deals with themes such as desire and death through the journey of a group of characters.

A young female writer whose father was a militant activist struggles to come to terms with this cumbersome legacy.

The comfortable daily routines of aging Parisian actor Gilbert Valence, 76, are suddenly shaken when he learns that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in a car crash. Having to take care of his now-orphaned grandson, he struggles to go on with his lifelong acting career like he's used to. But the roles he is offered -- a flashy TV show and a hectic last-minute replacement in an English-language film of Joyce's Ulysses -- finally convince him that it's time to retire.

Fanfan leaves his friend Charles and thinks he can be accommodated by his friend, Joss. However, at the same time, Joss abandons the marital home. Fanfan and Joss have only to knock on the door of Manu, Fanfan's sister, who gathers them until Mytch, Manu's companion, throws everyone out. The three young women find themselves in the street and continue their run, while their lovers gang up to track them down. The mini-war of the sexes will flare up.

Matthieu and Eric are two brothers who work at the same factory as their father in Normandy. When his father is dismissed for smoking on the factory floor, Matthieu is incensed and tries to have him reinstated, in vain. His brother has just got married and, with a child and mortgage on the way, is reluctant to stir up trouble...

Nicolas Lanson, a young stockbroker, lives a fast life of money and luxury until the day his high-risk initiatives cause the fall of the bank. He flees with a price on his head. On the run, Nicolas meets Charlotte, pregnant for a man who doesn't want her. Although Nicolas isn't her type, Charlotte seduces him once she discovers his identity. Little does Nicolas know, Charlotte is not leading them to see her brother, but an older lover who just happens to be a cop.

An ordinary night in the village of Beugneux. Mademoiselle Tronchet discovers her brother Léon - a notary and a great collector of garden gnomes - hanging from the beams of the attic. It could be the start of a police intrigue.

A well-bred, lovely, spiritual, sad young woman marries an attentive physician who loves her. She feels affection but no love. Soon after, without design, she falls in love with Pedro Abrunhosa, a poet and performance artist. He also loves her. She keeps her distance from him, confessing her love to a friend who is a nun and, later, to her husband. Hunger for her love and jealousy consume him; she attends him as he wastes away. With his death, she can marry and express her passion, but what she does and how she explains herself, particularly to her cloistered friend, is at the heart of the film. Glimpses of convent life and of Abrunhosa on stage give contrast and mute comment.

Raphaëlle André is a brillant lawyer. The enigmatic death of her husband lead her into an investigation where she discovers new sides of the life of her late husband.

Solange is unhappy. She's a meter maid in Tours, working in the rain, subject to verbal abuse from those she cites. Her husband Patrick is consumed by the work of finishing their new house: carpet, tile, faucets. He's also a hothead, subjecting Sonange to tantrums. While she's often quiet and withdrawn, she longs to be a singer. When by chance she meets Mylène, an accomplished, beautiful Parisian writer she admires, Solange gives her a demo tape. Mylène is encouraging, a friendship of sorts develops, and when Solange despairs after a series of personal, emotional setbacks, she heads for Mylène's doorstep in Paris. Does a singing career await, and what about Patrick?

French novelist Vincent Ravalec made his directorial debut with this French drama about small-time crook Gaston (Yvan Attal) who poses as a millionaire after he picks up hitchhiking 16-year-old Marie-Pierre (Virginie Lanoue). Actually living in a seedy apartment, Gaston deals in stolen goods, but he soon climbs to bigger heists, including car thefts. Concealing his illegal activities, Gaston operates his company, Extramill, out of upscale, posh offices, while he and Marie-Pierre move into a sedate upper-middle-class neighborhood. Life is sweet, but the onset of paranoia, kinky sex activities, and police probes eventually culminate in violence.

Twenty-four hours in the life of a young musician, Noël Akchoté, in his dealings with improvisation, technique, money, concerts, studios, guitars, history, independents, majors. Between fiction and documentary, between laughter and seriousness, a "jazz" portrait.

Max is a kind of modern Zadig embarked upon an existential and sentimental quest. Jewish and Russian all rolled into one, he quickly feels cramped in his native Ukraine. One day, he leaves his parents, family and enemies for the city of his dreams: Paris. He discovers the capital and the occasionally ferocious and complex ways of its natives.

A group of young unemployed people from Le Mans (France) decide to create a new political party.

The life of a family of boatmen flows gently along the water when a desperate man, wanting to throw himself off a bridge, lands on the pile of sand they were carrying. The film is preceded by a short film by the same author, "Someone", which recounts the memory of fifteen years of frequenting the same barber.

Michel and Juliette have just broken up over Michel's affair with the much younger Romance. Alice and Nicolas are still together, but maybe this is because Nicolas does not know of Alice's affair with handsome sports photographer Gaspard. This sly sex comedy, the sophomore effort of Belgian filmmaker Lucas Belvaux, follows the covert sexual misadventures of the troubled foursome.

After fatally shooting a stalker, Parisian bar-maid Lea must live the life of the title reptile. At the time of the killing she was living with Francis, a much older American ex-con. After committing the murder, the fleeing and frightened Lea is saved by Paris paper boys Jean and Luc. Later she tells her sad story to hard-drinking Moskowitz, a middle-aged cop who secretly desires her. His unrequited love leads to tragedy. Meanwhile, Lea continues living with Francis, but also shacks up with Luc while trying to avoid the jealous cop.

An upper middle-class French family celebrates a birthday in a restaurant. In one evening and during one meal, family history, tensions, collective and separate grudges, delights, and memories both clash and coalesce.

Sandrine dreams of becoming a singer in Paris but for the time being she is only a salesgirl at Tati's and lives in a second rate hotel under the careful eye of Ahmed, the night watchman. One day, she meets Gérald, her brother's former boyfriend, who persuades her to move into his apartment. He soon takes control over Sandrine's life, organizing erotic rendezvous for her, taking her to her clients and waiting for her until she is through with her task.

When Chloe, a young Parisian, decides to take a long-overdue vacation, she has to find someone to look after Gris-Gris, her beloved cat. Everyone, including her gay male roommate, refuses to help her, but she finally makes an arrangement with the elderly Madame Renée, who often watches over other peoples' cats and dogs. However, when Chloe comes back, Madame Renée tells her that unfortunately the cat has been lost, and the unlucky owner goes on a search for her dear animal friend. While looking for the cat, she meets many colorful characters who populate the neighborhood.

Ten years after their Upper Sixth, Bruno, Momo, Leon and Alain meet together in the waiting room of a maternity hospital. The father of the awaited baby is Tomasi, their best friend at that time, who died one month before due to an overdose. They remember their teenage, their laughs, their dreams, their stupid pranks... a description of the French youth in the middle of the seventies. Part of ARTE's series "The high school years".

After much hesitation, a gigolo decides to take a shot of a radical remedy to save his failing virility.

In the sixties, in a suburb near Paris, Martine wants to lose her virginity.

Ninon is a spirited hotel-manager who teaches self-defense classes to her terrified eldery neighbors. Daiga, an aspiring Lithuanian actress newly arrived to Paris, becomes fascinated with the life of a mysteriously beautiful drag performer.

Several lives intersect when a middle-aged woman is left by her husband, and she decides to trek him down with the help of her equally troubled sister.

Clara (Karin Viard) is a stripper with a high-strung, jealous boyfriend with the curious name of Loockeed (Antoine Chappey). The couple are friends with the even-temperred, almost saintly Max (Gerald Laroche), an auto mechanic. The three of them set out from their home in the north to journey to the Alpine mountains near Switzerland and Italy, where they will help a fourth friend take care of his pleasure boat business at Lake Annecy while he is in military service. As the trio attempt to establish some sort of equilibrium in their new lives, Max must constantly deal with Loockeed's testy, jealous barbs. Despite this, the three of them remain friends.

Martine is 25. Since breaking up with François, she has the feeling that the world is caving in on her. Between small jobs and one-night stands, she can't seem to get a fix on herself. In desperation, after a last quarrel with François, she unintentionally causes an accident that leads her to the emergency ward of a psychiatric hospital. During her brief stay, she unexpectedly sparks into life. She takes an interest in two young patients, Pierre and Anne, convinced that she is doing the right thing in supervising their love life...

Actor and singer on the decline, Sergio, alcoholic, goes adrift. His son, Simon, undertakes to make a film with and on him, to try to bring him back to life, "by force with others"

Lepetit, an ambitious and determined man, is named the new CEO of a department store. His mission is to improve the store's financial position. He decides that the human factor will be his catchword and introduces new methods, which he also applied to himself. But tensions slowly arise between members of the staff.

Mona is the girlfriend of Pierre, who is a member of a rather pathetic rock band in France. Their hero is the singer "Johnny Valentine " who, seeing that Mona is being neglected, decides to make her his own.