While creating SHE IS CONANN, Bertrand Mandico also filmed two short films simultaneously to create an entire "Barbarian Cycle" that brings you deeper into the world that Mandico has created. Presented in this program are: Rainer, A Vicious Dog in a Skull Valley (26min); Apocalypse After (35min); and We Barbarians (27min).

Histoires courtes, the France 2 program, gives carte blanche to Bertrand Mandico who brings together three of his short films here: Rainer, A Vicious Dog in Skull Valley, Nous les barbares and The Last Cartoon.

Traveling through the abyss, underworld dog Rainer recounts the six lives of Conann, perpetually put to death by her own future, across eras, myths and ages. From her childhood, a slave of Sanja and her barbarian horde, to her accession to the summits of cruelty at the doors of our world.

Paris, 2009. The true story of the scam of the century. Billions are going up in smoke on the new 'carbon quotas' market, invented to fight pollution. A gang of small-time crooks from Belleville partner with an upper-class trader to carry off an epic swindle.

Marie-Line is juggling between odd jobs to support her agoraphobic father. Despite the precariousness of their lifestyle, she remains a lively and cheerful young woman. Yet, after a series of unfortunate events, she is fired from her job and sentenced by a judge to a small penalty. A few days later, this very judge will be in a position to help her get back on track – a chance for Marie-Line but also the beginning of an unlikely friendship.

In a world hit by a wave of mutations transforming humans into animals, François does everything he can to save his wife. As some of the creatures disappear into a nearby forest, he and their son Émile embark on a quest that will change their lives forever.

Hans and Jan Bitner live separated from each other by an iron curtain. Hans works in an office in Strasbourg, he leads a quiet, almost monotonous life. Bitner is a Polish patriot, involved in the affairs of "Solidarity" and the fight for a free Poland. He lives in Sopot with his family. Seemingly, their lives are completely different, but there is one detail that connected their lives forever. Both will have to answer very important questions about their identity.

An experienced airline pilot, Estelle leads a perfect life between long-haul flights with her loving, protective husband Guillaume. One day, by chance, in an airport corridor, she crosses paths with Ana, a photographer with whom she had a passionate affair twenty years earlier. Little does Estelle know that this reunion will send her into a nightmarish spiral, turning her life upside down and irrational.

Within my walls, many people are taking a break. Waiting to live.

On the set of a film in the making, four actresses take turns guiding us. They unknowingly drag us into their damnation.

Greg is a police lieutenant; he must collect informations on eco-activists, infiltrating them for months. Myriam, a young free woman, is fighting to save a forest from the building of a dam. They meet and fall in love on the Zone. A beautiful life, a joy that Greg discovers, despite the risks of being unmasked. For each of them, time is short: soon everything will disappear.

When Blanche meets Grégoire, she thinks she has found the one. The ties that bind them grow quickly, and a passionate affair ensues. Together, they relocate. For Blanche, far from her family, from her twin sister, Rose, a new life begins. But little by little, she finds herself caught in the grip of a deeply possessive and dangerous man.

Born to dance, Neneh is a 12-year-old black girl who dreams of entering the Paris Opera Ballet School. Despite her enthusiasm, she will have to redouble her efforts to escape from her condition and be accepted by the director of the school, Marianne Bellage, the guarantor of traditions and the bearer of a secret that links her to the little ballerina.

Mira is an American movie star disillusioned by her career and a recent breakup, who comes to France to star as “Irma Vep” in a remake of the French silent film classic, “Les Vampires.” Set against the backdrop of a lurid crime thriller, Mira struggles as the distinctions between herself and the character she plays begin to blur and merge.

In a faraway future, on a wild and untamed female inhabited planet called After Blue, a lonely teenager named Roxy unknowingly releases a mystical, dangerous, and sensual assassin from her prison.

When her elderly father has a stroke, Emmanuelle rushes to his bedside. Sick and half-paralysed in his hospital bed, he asks Emmanuelle to help him end his life.

Images from helicopters. Video recordings from the American and the French military forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The intervention is taking place right before our eyes. How far can the desire to see lead to, when it has no limits?

Set in the port town of Dover in the South-East of England, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.

Three young girls: Samia, Louise and Jessica aged 15 to 20 are looking for an easy way to earn money. While Samia blind sighted by all the cash follows Louise and her boyfriend and start selling herself, the older Jessica learns she's pregnant. Three girls. Three paths. One question: how to make it through?

France works at her family’s karaoke restaurant on an old boat at the shores of lake Nam Ngum. She falls in love with Xana, an underwater logger, while Tony Wong, a quiet and sentimental Chinese billionaire which is exploiting this subwater richness declares his heart to her. It’s then that Hugo arrives in search of his wife Nadine who left one year ago… He enters a surreal period of exile, captivated by life around the lake’s splendour.

Karim, 30, drives every night. One day at dawn, he drives his last client - a foreign artist, the same age than him. Karim feels irresistibly attracted towards this young man. What he feels will start questioning who he thought he was.

Christmas Day 2018. Isabelle Barrere has just been elected President of her Party. Her son Jupiter, a parlementary assistant, has been put in charge of the reception of a unique official gift: The Ortega Ham.

Still pining for his ex-boyfriend, Géraud has come to a French seaside town to present his new experimental film, but the only person keen on seeing it is the cinema's underage projectionist who becomes smitten with the handsome director.

An abandoned seaside resort. The shooting for a fantasy film about the end of an era wraps up. Two women, both members of the film crew, one an actrice, the other a director, Apocalypse and Joy, are on the verge of concluding their love affair.

Broke, with nothing but her cat to her name and doors closing in her face, Paula is back in Paris after a long absence. As she meets different people along the way, there is one thing she knows for sure: she's determined to make a new start and she'll do it with style and panache.

A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.

Island of La Réunion, in the beginning of the 20th century. Five teenagers commit a savage crime. As punishment, a Dutch captain takes them to a supernatural island with luxuriant vegetation and bewitching powers.

Max and Minou are having a relationship crisis: she's crying, he's getting annoyed. Their car has been vandalised but this is not why she's crying. While looking for a car repairer on a small industrial estate, they come across some people who are even more troubled than they are. The world seems about to erupt.

A man leaves everything behind to travel aimlessly through France, letting himself be guided only by the people and landscapes he encounters: four days and four nights of wandering, during which his lover tries to locate him via Grindr, a smartphone dating app.

A nurse's aid, Cathy lives alone. Too alone. When her sister, with whom she's had a falling-out, calls her for her birthday and invites her to the beach, Cathy is exhilarated. But the day gradually slips away from her.

A quiet community is devastated by the murder of a teenage supporter during a local football match.

Two actresses rehearse a play during a week-end in a country house. But one of them digs up a strange thing from earth while walking in the woods. A creature the size of a seal, without any holes nor members. The mass of flesh and skin, covered with hair, breathes loudly. The creature becomes an object of lust for both women. The relationship between the two actresses becomes tense. Both women are desperate to own the thing. This leads to a series of burlesque and violent situations. The two actresses have no idea that they have unearthed "Notre-Dame des Hormones"

This journey through time retraces fourteen centuries of a rich shared history between Jews and Muslims. A story of great historical rigor, without concessions or bias, driven by fluid and inspired realization.

Born out of wedlock early in the last century, Violette Leduc meets Simone de Beauvoir in postwar Saint-Germain-des-Près. An intense lifelong relationship develops between the two women authors, based on Violette's quest for freedom through writing and on Simone's conviction that she holds in her hands the destiny of an extraordinary writer.

Isabelle, a 17-year-old student, loses her virginity during a quick holiday romance. When she returns home, she begins a secret life as a prostitute for a year.

Merle follows the invitation of her lover to spend the summer in the South of France. She is surprised to find only his children in the summer house. Did she expect more than she should have? An ambiguous summer full of silent desire.

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

The Jewish Cardinal tells the amazing true story of Jean-Marie Lustiger, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, who maintained his cultural identity as a Jew even after converting to Catholicism at a young age, and later joining the priesthood. Quickly rising within the ranks of the Church, Lustiger was appointed Archbishop of Paris by Pope John Paul II―and found a new platform to celebrate his dual identity as a Catholic Jew, earning him both friends and enemies from either group. When Carmelite nuns settle down to build a convent within the cursed walls of Auschwitz, Lustiger finds himself a mediator between the two communities―and he may be forced, at last, to choose his side.

Violette lives in the country with her parents, wealthy Picardie land owners. Gabriel works as a cashier in a supermarket. On the face of it, both of these two young people appear to have led ordinary lives without incident, and yet they both have dark secrets and a yearning to escape from their stifling present reality. Their chance meeting will set them free, but with unexpected consequences...

Ebbo and Vera Velten have spent the better part of the past twenty years living in different African countries. Ebbo is the manager of a sleeping sickness programme. His work is fulfilling. Vera, however, feels increasingly lost in Yaounde’s ex-pat community. She can’t bear the separation from her 14-year-old daughter, Helen, who is attending boarding school in Germany. Ebbo must give up his life in Africa or he risks losing the woman he loves. But his fear of returning to a land now remote to him increases with each passing day. Years later. Alex Nzila, a young French doctor of Congolese origin, travels to Cameroon to evaluate a development project. It’s been a long time since he set foot on this continent, but, instead of finding new prospects, he encounters a destructive, lost man. Like a phantom, Ebbo slips away from his evaluator.

A young biracial woman raised in France travels to Burkina Faso in search of the mother she hasn’t seen in many years. Meanwhile, in Paris, an émigré from Burkina Faso who makes her living as a cleaner teaches the Dioula language to a white middle-class office worker, in this affecting story of global displacement.

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy spend their childhood at an idyllic and secluded English boarding school. As they grow into adults, they must come to terms with the complexity and strength of their love for one another while also preparing for the haunting reality awaiting them.

Georges Nail lives in a new suburb. He's married, loves his wife, son and dog. Paul Hammer is good looking, rich and intelligent. But he is torn by his severe judgment of the world and a desire to be part of it. One day, their paths meet. Nail sees this meeting as an opportunity to create a new friendship. On his side, Hammer sees it as a new reason for living : to crucify the perfect image of the happy western man and his incarnation in the person of Georges Nail. A nail is the perfect victim for a hammer.

French adaptations of the stories by Agatha Christie.

A banker has died. He trafficked in nuclear material, so French intelligence assign two agents to find his list of contacts, which are on a flash drive: Muriel - the boss, acerbic, willing to sleep with any man, wondering if she should have a child - and Philippe, younger, boyish, meticulous, bothered by Muriel's frank sexual interest. They watch Constance, the banker's widow: a naïve, friendly, open, trusting. She's taking opera lessons, so the French spies join the class, which Muriel enjoys. It seems that other spies are after the same USB, and some of them sing as well. Singing, spying, and sex lead to duets of all kinds as well as to an eventual showdown.

While on a joyride with the headlights turned off, two men hit and kill another man carrying a satchel full of money. The two men decide to take the money and throw the body into a pond and bury the money in a coal hill. The next morning the police discover the body of a kidnapped 12-year blind girl, Melody, in a warehouse near the site of the hit-and-run. They determine that the kidnapper saw the girl's father bringing the ransom to him and also witnessed the hit-and-run and the men stealing the ransom.

A Parisian lawyer moves to a working-class neighborhood in an attempt to shed his social conditioning and bourgeois values.

A group of friends blessed with the privileges of birth and status are about to leave for a short break. Carl is the first to arrive and discovers that the four-star hotel they've booked is nothing more than an ordinary family pension. This means the beginning of social clashes and unexpected approaches.

When he learns of the death of his older brother Richard, Thomas sets out for Marseilles to identify the body. Having collected his brother’s possessions, he returns to their home town, hoping to recall their earlier life together. Here, Thomas insinuates himself into the company of Richard’s friends, whilst keeping his own identity a secret. As he does so, he begins to bring his brother back to life, although not all the memories are pleasant ones...

A married couple is terrorized by a series of videotapes planted on their front porch.

Because of a motorcycle accident, a young man from the poor outskirts of Paris must find a steady job in order to avoid being sent to prison. He gets into more trouble trying to do that.

Condor is a quiet and merry little town in the Gers which actively promotes sports. But things are not always what they seem and when horrible murders are committed there, it means tranquility is over - During the opening night of the Bandas festival, the mayor of the town is found dead, electrocuted in a fountain. The investigation gives Captain Julie Leroy a unique opportunity to dispel the mystery about her origins.

Pierre Esteban is a middle-aged technology teacher, divorced from Hélène, who has two children. Jeanne Lancry is a lively estate agent in the same situation : a divorcée with two children. They discover they love visiting empty apartments together and...more than just that! Life would be just wonderful if they were fifteen years earlier. But there are the children. It would be fine to live altogether in the same place. The question is : will the kids get on well with each other?

While visiting her sister in Paris, a young woman finds romance and learns her brother-in-law is a philanderer.

People and life can be cruel, and in their face, Fannette is cool: toward an old acquaintance, to her daughter, to colleagues. Beneath the surface, she roils with passion for a lost love, Philippe. She watches "An Affair to Remember" again and again, and when she receives a letter from Philippe asking her to meet him atop the Empire State Building, she swoons. She's writing a book on an aged painter, so she organizes a trip to New York ostensibly to secure photographs of some of his pieces. The publisher assigns her a photographer, Matt, on the surface spontaneous and flip, but also aggressive about his attraction to her. Will she be with the one she loves? Will she smile? Written by

A female detective investigates the case of a young mother whose infant left behind has died.

The 20-year-old Juliette tries to come to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, despite a lack of support from the father of the child and from her mother.

After an injury, Graham suffers from short-term memory loss, which causes him to fall back into the abyss of amnesia every 10 minutes. Those around him both profit and suffer from his condition -- his sex-crazed boss, Sabine, tricks him into regular trysts, while his family tries to come to terms with the situation. But when temp Irene starts working at Graham's company, they fall into an affair that begins to make a mark on his memory.

Recently the victim of a car accident, Paul, a teacher, is no longer the same man. He no longer shows any interest in his environment and, even more worryingly, he seems to have become impervious to all feelings, all emotions. His wife, Marianne, and his mistress, Luisa, are of little more interest to him than his students, which is to say very little. Desperate, Luisa meets Marianne to try to understand.

Student Eric kills time by spying on his neighbors. Compulsively taking notes on everything within binocular range from his bedroom window, he harasses his neighbors by sending unsigned notes and making their private affairs public. When they discover his identity and draw him in, will this release him from his solitude, or confirm in his mind that he will always be the outsider?

Bisexual attorney Alain is bedding his female boss, his murderer client, the client's hairdresser girlfriend, and a precocious boy who knows what he wants and tries to convince Alain that he can 'have it all'.

A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters' lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.

Irene is an ordinary married woman living in Amiens, in the North of France. She works in a bank where, one day, she finds herself duty-bound to strip a client of her credit card and check book for ten years. Later on, while walking in a park Irene notices a mysterious homeless woman wearing a yellow coat. At a time she witnesses her shoplifting in a store. One night, on her way back home, she is attacked by the mysterious woman.

A bittersweet drama covering 30 years in the lives of group of friends united by their devotion to the theatre, 30 Ans begins in Paris in 1974, when Aurelian, his girlfriend Barbara, and childhood friend Antoine form a theatre. Taking the plight of Pinochet's oppressed Chile as its cause, the theatre attracts the involvement of Jeanne, a young actress who immediately sparks the attentions of both Aurelian and Antoine. When Chilean dissident actor Luis is brought to the theatre by Barbara's diplomat father, Jeanne falls in love with him, and the two carry out an affair that ends when a sudden development causes Jeanne to disappear. 8 years later, Aurelian has a new girlfriend and is directing a travelling troupe, and Antoine is a high-priced image consultant who gets his old friend a gig at Dunkirk. Aurelian, deeply immersed in a mid-life crisis, still loves Jeanne, continuing to carry a picture of the enigmatic actress in his wallet and writing about her in his diary.

A book editor juggles relationships with two women while coping with his best friend's terminal illness.

Anne is partly handicapped following a car accident and in the year of her rehabilitation she has rarely left her apartment in America. She lives with her husband Donny, an architect, and spends all day reorganising her apartment and with other futilities. While the couple are very fond of each other, the agoraphobia and the physical discomfort are not without their consequences for the marriage. Yet neither of them takes the plunge and talks about the frustrations and the lack of sexual contact. Change comes to this tense, silent existence cut off from the world when Anne's half-sister Iris comes to visit from Israel. A teenager filled with energy and fun, who is however attracted to the withdrawn and secure lifestyle of Anne and Donny. She nestles into the house like a wasp in a bottle of beer, but her presence brings the couple's suppressed fears and desires at the surface.

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.

Three women live together in an old rectory on the seashore. Alda lends her body to a string of carnal relationships but never commits her feelings. Olga, the elder sister, has opted for a reclusive life as the soul of the household. Her daughter, Sigga, is a young adolescent. The house harbors a finely balanced marriage between desire and memory—until Olga’s destiny tips the scales.

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.

Hong Kong action diva Maggie Cheung (playing herself) comes to France when a past-his-prime director casts her in a remake of the silent classic Les Vampires. Clad in a rubber catsuit and unable to speak a word of French, Cheung finds herself adrift in the insanity of the film industry…

This French-Belgian drama, based on a novel by Odon von Horvath, is set in 1938 in a German city along the banks of the Rhine and Ruhr rivers. It attempts to provide insight as to why certain German youths were so easily lead into becoming Nazis by using two narrators, one a teacher who challenged the movement and another by a student who embraced it. Pabst teaches a group of teenage boys, all of whom seem to be young Nazis. The trouble begins when Pabst and a WW I vet are assigned to take the class to a military camp and a nature outing for urban kids. While there a boy is brutally murdered and they blame one local girl. During her trial, Pabst speaks out against Hitler and becomes pariah. Still he continues investigating the death, at great personal expense until at last he brings the real killer to justice.

Stephanie is a hostile and mute newcomer in a home for troubled minors. She disorients the staff. Louise, a young educator, is determined and determined to overcome the aggressiveness of the girls, who give her a hard time. She gets caught up in the game and oversteps her role, triggering the teenager to act out in unexpected ways.

40 international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds, (2) no synchronized sound was permitted, and (3) no more than three takes.

The film will tell what happens to a group of characters, precisely between July 14 and August 15, 1994 in Paris. It will tell the story of three young ladies, Louise, Ninon, Ida, in the summer of 1994, their adventures in the big city. On the streets, in the gardens, in ballrooms and in libraries and lofts, deserted at the time of holidays and summer heat, Louis, Ninon and Ida proceed on mysterious paths.

When his grandmother dies, Petit Bus goes to Pornic to find his mother.

In a rural French town, a 15-year-old closeted gay boy breaks free from his idolization of his older and ostensibly free-wheeling half-sister, learning to trust himself and become independent.

Joan has succeeded in lifting the siege on Orléans and Charles VII has been ordained King of France. However, she is injured in her failed attempt to take Paris, weakening her position at court. When she is finally captured and put on trial, she finds both her life and the sanctity of her body at stake.

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.

A naive, sixteen-year-old boy named Richard becomes involved with a single mother after babysitting her child.

Emmanuel Brémont, a ten-year-old boy, suffers day after day the destructive madness of his mother. The young woman, a cashier in a supermarket, hates her son and does not hesitate to tell him. One Friday evening, Madame Brémont decides to go for a weekend. Emmanuel, on the other hand, will be waiting for his mother in the apartment, locked in double turn in the kitchen cupboard.

When demanding actress Leila is found drowned there are numerous suspects but the main suspect is her husband Ted. Adapted from the novel by Mary Higgins Clark.

A young woman enters her new apartment. Her husband will come to join her in a few days. The apartment, very dirty, is located between a cemetery and a hospital. She undertakes a major cleaning. The more she cleans, the dirtier she gets. Objects resist and revolt.

A young woman leaves the man she lives with in the middle of the night. All the next day, she searches for a place to sleep, in vain.

Feckless aspiring architect Stéphane leaves his pregnant girlfriend for theater designer Sabine; Sabine in turn vainly attempts to overcome her violent obsession with an actor in her theater company. A game of emotional chutes and ladders ensues.

Anna, Joyce, Claude and Lucia are all students under the tutelage of Constance Dumas, a renowned film instructor. Lucia moves in with the other girls. Soon after, she is attacked on the street outside her home and saved by a mysterious stranger.

Three young women at a hair salon all like the son of the clothing store proprietors across the mall. Although Robby is selfish and shallow, he's appealing to Lili, the salon's manager, who's trendy and also the salon-owner's moll; to Mado, who's innocent and sweet; and to Pascale, who's intelligent but passive and downcast. Robby's dad tells him to grow up and see beyond the mercurial Lili, so he proposes suddenly to Mado. She's delighted, but the day before the wedding, Lili returns to give Robby another look. In the background, a Yank who was a soldier in France in World War II returns to Paris and tries to recapture the love of his wartime sweetheart, Robby's mom.

An absurdly brutal and minimalist examination of the desperate search for financial backing by two small-time filmmakers, 'Rise and Fall' is knowingly self-referential, sad, and appropriately enough, a film shot on a miniscule budget in 16mm. Based on a novel by James Hadley Chase, with script by Jean-Luc Godard.

Série noire is a French crime television series created by Pierre Grimblat in 1984. The series was adapted from crime books by the publishing imprint of the same name. 36 episodes were filmed between 1984 and 1989, and were aired until 1991 on TF1.

A meeting between the Swedish/French Simone and the Norwegian Stein at a book convention in Frankfurt turns into something more. They keep contact by phone and cassettes, but it seems they don't dare to take the relationship any further.