Jean-Louis Bory

We thought we'd seen, read, and heard everything there was to see about the Cannes Film Festival, from the glitz and gossip to the scandals and censorship. And yet, Emmanuel Barnault's "Morceaux de Cannes" (Pieces of Cannes), by this leading expert on Italian and French cinema, convinces us otherwise. The third largest event in the world (after the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup) reveals its secrets only sparingly, as this film attests. The result of passionate research in the INA archives, these 52 minutes, without interviews or voice-over narration, string together rare and sometimes previously unseen footage. Taken together, they tell a surprising, original, and heartwarming story of the Festival. On the beach, on a street corner, in a restaurant, or in the privacy of a hotel room, these forgotten archives summon the greatest filmmakers, actors, and actresses of the last seventy years, from Jean Cocteau to David Lynch, for an anthology of the Festival's history.

An industrialist is falsely accused of murdering one of his creditors and, because he cannot reveal that it was his mistress who gave him the money needed to pay the debt, he is sentenced to life in prison. He escapes, makes a fortune, and, years later, discovers the real culprit.

Antonin is a young French soldier who returns home from World War I to recover from his wounds. When he falls in love with a young widow, Antonin questions his role in battle and contemplates desertion as he recalls the horrors of war. He is pressured by his patriotic father to honor his military commitment even if it means he will die.

An adaptation of the novel by Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly.

Élisabeth Fischer, a farmer's daughter and cousin of Adeline Fischer, now Baroness Hulot d'Ervy, has been furiously jealous of the latter since their early childhood. After arriving in Paris as a passementerie worker, she set out to harm the Hulot d'Ervy family by any means necessary. She pushed the Baron into debauchery and tried to destroy the relationship between his niece Hortense Hulot and Wenceslas Steinbock. But her schemes bring her no satisfaction, and she dies of rage.

Jean, nicknamed Brasse-Bouillon, and his brother Ferdinand live with their paternal grandmother, who is responsible for their upbringing. But when their parents returned from Japan, they settled in Belle-Angerie and resumed their role with the children, while their grandmother had to leave for cousins. The boys soon come up against the contempt of their mother, Marthe. Faced with this shrew, whom he nicknamed "Folcoche" (a contraction of "madwoman" and "pig"), Jean decided to join the resistance.