French

“Robert Guédiguian is well-known for his idiosyncratic slices of life set
in his beloved Marseille, in films such as Marius et Jeannette (1997)
and À la place du coeur (1998). Whilst most of Guédiguian’s films are set in this historic
French port they span a remarkable range of genres and encompass a
dizzying assortment of themes, including noir-style thriller intrigue,
classic romance and pressing social issues. Ki lo sa?, Guédiguian’s
third feature, is one of his more unusual films in this series, a
surprisingly dark and mystical work which explores various
existentialist concerns through the interlocking prisms of black comedy
and social realism.Read More »

NYFF wrote:
The Dardenne Brothers won this year’s Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for this brave new work, another intimate portrayal-in-furious-motion of a protagonist in crisis. The filmmakers’ radical empathy alights on a Muslim teenager (extraordinary first-time actor Idir Ben Addi) in a small Belgian town who is being gradually radicalized into extremism despite the desperate protestations of his single mother (Claire Bodson), and who winds up hatching a murderous plot targeting his beloved teacher (Myriem Akheddiou). Taking a serious view of a difficult issue—the effect of fanaticism on the body and soul—the Dardennes here remind viewers why they continue to be at the center of 21st-century cinema.Read More »

A couple of young skaters dream to work in Chicago but travel is too much expensive. A shady photographer want to help them…

Un couple de jeunes patineurs rêve de se produire à Chicago mais le voyage n’est pas à la portée de leur bourse. Un photographe, personnage louche, propose son aide…Read More »

Debut director Mia Hansen-Love turns seemingly random slices from the life of a disintegrating family unit into a remarkably graceful, natural film about what it is to be human. Perhaps the most persuasive aspect of this hopeful parable of failure is the way casting, acting, script, and camerawork conspire to usher us into an immediately believable world which is observed with a painterly eye yet never seems staged.Read More »

Rousseau’s first full-length feature, and one of the best documentaries/experimental films of the past few decades, sprung equally from Robert Bresson, Michael Snow, and Jean-Marie Straub (who has called Rousseau one of the three best working artists in modern Europe). Again hard places played against drifting sounds from unseen sites beyond the image; the images and sounds, repeated, become inflections of each other. But this time there are historical inflections; Rousseau’s film, like Straub’s, takes place in a sort of meta-history as characters and ancient sites each become products of outside light and shadow.Read More »

Delphine and Carole – Delphine Seyrig, the actress who starred in the films of Resnais and Buñuel, Duras and Akerman; and Carole Roussopoulos, the pioneering video-maker, who, after Jean-Luc Godard, was only the second person in France to use video as a film production tool. From the mid-1970s, in the turbulence of post’68 and the feminist movement, the two women embarked on a militant working partnership, making a series of videos devised as political interventions to champion the struggle of women, whether actresses, prostitutes or workers.
Read More »

IMDB wrote:
Simone and Martine are usherettes in a porno cinema in Montparnasse. Installed in the hall, they greet regulars, put men in their place, chat and pass the time. At midnight Simone departs to a lesbian nightclub.Read More »

IMDB:
A police chief in northern France tries to solve a case where an old woman was brutally murdered.Read More »

SYNOPSIS from amg
Running a mere two reels, Van Gogh was fledgling filmmaker Alain Resnais’ first effort in his documentary series about famous artists. Produced by Pierre Braunberger, who would underwrite most of Resnais’ classics of the 1950s and 1960s, the film won several international awards. Concentrating on Van Gogh’s paintings, Resnais charts the artist’s self-destructive streak and descent into madness — and at the same time celebrates his brilliance and “lust for life.” The narration was written by G. Diehl and R. Hessens. The music, which many reviewers felt was the film’s strongest asset, was by Jacques Besse.Read More »