French

The four thousand inhabitants of Courneuve go to the post office once in a while to collect their benefit or pay their bills. The young postal workers belong to the small group of people in the region with a paid job. Every day they are confronted with the poverty of the people at the other side of the counter. Dominique Cabrera alternately put his camera on either side of the counter and registered the behaviour and faces of the people who are involved in small financial transactions. Against the background of the post office buzz, he listened to the conversations that are part of the exchange of money. Une poste à la courneuve draws a colourful image of the effect an economic crisis can have on the lives of ordinary people.Read More »

A wicked political satire about African dictators, this film tells the story of the president of a fictitious African nation who spends a sleepless night playing checkers with a pot-smoking vagabond who is claimed to be the “all-around champion”. However the rules of the game entail opponents howling vulgar and foul obscenities at one another. The Champion proceeds to insult, and trounce the President. His reward – and fate – are not exactly unexpected in this hilarious send-up of living under tyranny.Read More »

Short film commissioned by the Cinemathèque Suisse to celebrate Jean-Marie Straub’s 85th birthday. Directed by Jean-Claude Rousseau.

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Quote:
After promising 1100 employees that they would protect their jobs, the managers of a factory decide to suddenly close up shop. Laurent takes the lead in a fight against this decision.Read More »

Olivia captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent sent away for a year to a small finishing school outside Paris. The innocent but watchful Olivia develops an infatuation for her headmistress, Mlle. Julie, and through this screen of love observes the tense romance between Mlle. Julie and the other head of the school, Mlle. Cara, in its final months. Although not strictly autobiographical, Olivia draws on the author’s experiences at finishing schools run by the charismatic Mlle. Marie Souvestre, whose influence lived on through former students like Natalie Barney and Eleanor Roosevelt. Colette wrote the screenplay for the 1951 film adaptation of the novel.Read More »

On Entrevues Belfort website :
“Ideas improve. The meaning of words plays a role in that improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one.”Read More »

Synopsis:
Nicolas is an insecure child plagued by visions of disasters and horrible accidents. His peers tease him, and his teachers are frustrated by his lack of social skiills. Nicolas disconnects from the world around him, inhabiting his own friendless, nightmarish realm. On a class trip to a ski resort, Hadkann, the class bully, befriends Nicolas and becomes intrigued by his dreams. As the line between reality and hallucination blurs Nicolas’s visions begin to come true when police find a dead child in the woods, murdered and mutilated. Nicolas knows there is a connection between this crime and his visions, and with Hadkann’s help, he sets out to find it.Read More »

Synopsis:
In Paris, the ex-cop Choucas is a private detective that works with a mysterious partner, Tarpon, and the secretary Charlotte. He is presently working in an embezzlement case of an employee of the pharmacist Jude. When the middle-aged Isabelle Pigot hires him to investigate the disappearance of her blind twenty year-old daughter Marthe Pigot that worked at the Drillard Foundation for blinds, the Police Inspector Coccioli seeks Choucas out and asks him to drop the case. But Choucas proceeds with the investigation and schedules an encounter with Isabelle in a square, but she is murdered with a shot on the forehead.Read More »

Ali Essafi’s bitingly comic documentary is a portrait of a small Moroccan town whose economy is driven by the many movie crews drawn by its exotic desert scenery. Turning his camera on crabby casting directors for an Italian biblical epic, would-be extras in Astérix et Obélix and an old local hand who once carried Pasolini’s bags, Essafi cannily skewers the international film industry and the disparity between movie magic and economic reality.Read More »