All Recommendations
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher, a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery, an employee in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a two-year tour of combat in Algeria, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant and must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant.
Donkey Skin
A fairy godmother helps a princess disguise herself so she won't have to marry her father.
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
Geneviève lives with her mother who runs an umbrella shop in Cherbourg. She falls in love with Guy, who is called up for military service in Algeria and leaves the city. The lovers separate, promising each other eternal love. But Geneviève soon discovers that she is pregnant and ends up giving in to her mother's pressure by marrying Roland, a rich jeweler who has long coveted her. When Guy returns to Cherbourg, he discovers Geneviève's marriage and finds his seriously ill aunt who is faithfully cared for by Madeleine, who has been in love with him for years.
Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold
Griffin Dunne’s years-in-the-making documentary portrait of his aunt Joan Didion moves with the spirit of her uncannily lucid writing: the film simultaneously expands and zeroes in, covering a vast stretch of turbulent cultural history with elegance and candor.
Lola
A bored young man meets with his former girlfriend, now a cabaret dancer and single mother, and soon finds himself falling back in love with her.
Feelings
Two seemingly happily married French couples are forced to contend with a number of issues.
The Lovers
A shallow, provincial wife finds her relationship with her preoccupied husband strained by romantic notions of love, leading her further towards Paris and the country wilderness.
Outrage
A young woman who has just become engaged has her life completely shattered when she is raped while on her way home from work.
Les Misérables
In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.
Happy New Year
Released from prison under a New Year amnesty, a criminal tries to pick up the threads of a life changed not only by his daring plan to rob a jewelry store in out-of-season Cannes, but also by a very special someone he met there.
Model Shop
While trying to raise money to prevent his car from being repossessed, George is attracted to Lola, a Frenchwoman who works in a "model shop", an establishment that rents out beautiful pin-up models to photographers. George spends his last twelve dollars to photograph Lola, and discovers that she is as unhappy as he.
A Moment of Innocence
A semi-autobiographical account of Makhmalbaf's experience as a teenager when, as a 17-year-old, he stabbed a policeman at a protest rally. Two decades later, he tracks down the policeman he injured in an attempt to make amends.
Spring in a Small Town
A married couple living in a desolate small town in post-WWII China are paid a surprise visit by an old friend of the husband's.
Domestic Life
Juliette was simply not sure about coming to live in this residential suburb of the greater Paris metropolitan area. All the women here are in their forties, have children to raise, houses to keep and husbands who return home late at night.Today she has an appointment in Paris that is important for her career, but she also has to run errands and pick up the kids from school. During the course of her day, monopolized by petty, everyday tasks, Juliette can feel the noose of domestic obligations and household chores slowly tightening around her neck.
Two Lives
Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a “war child”; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealments and secrets is unveiled, until Katrine is finally stripped of everything, and her loved ones are forced to take a stand: What carries more weight, the life they have lived together, or the lie it is based on?
Viva Maria!
An IRA operative escapes to the Americas and teams up with a circus singer to create a popular vaudeville act. When the singer falls for a rebel, they leave the circus behind to become fierce revolutionaries.
Everybody's Talking About Jamie
Jamie is 16 and lives on a council estate in Sheffield. Jamie doesn't quite fit in. Jamie is terrified about the future. Jamie is going to be a sensation. Supported by his brilliant loving mum and surrounded by his friends, Jamie overcomes prejudice, beats the bullies and steps out of the darkness, into the spotlight. Sixteen: the edge of possibility. Time to make your dreams come true.
The Great Alibi
Like every weekend senator Henri Pagès and his wife entertain guests at their beautiful mansion in a peaceful village near Paris. But this time around, things go awry: Pierre Collier, a psychoanalyst and consummate womanizer, is brutally murdered. Claire, his wife, dazed and confused by his corpse, with a smoking gun still in her hand, seems to be the ideal culprit...
The Velvet Vampire
A married couple accept the invitation of mysterious vixen Diane LeFanu to visit her in her secluded desert estate. Tensions arise when the couple, unaware at first that Diane is a centuries-old vampire, realize that they are both objects of the pale temptress' seductions.
How to Make Good When One Is a Jerk and a Crybaby
A story about a guy who still lives with his mother and sells some really awful alcohol to bartenders. The only way for him to do this is to cry and invent himself an awful life. Then he meets the beautiful woman whose goal in life is to sleep with the less exciting guys on Earth.