Valérie Loiseleux

In 2016, French writer and photographer Carole Achache took her own life. After Carole's death, her daughter Mona Achache, a film director, discovers thousands of photos, letters and recordings that Carole left behind, but these buried secrets make her disappearance even more of an enigma. Through the power of filmmaking and the beauty of incarnation with the help of actress Marion Cotillard, the director brings her mother back to life to retrace her journey and find out who she really was.

Kurdish-Iranian poet Sahel has just been released from a thirty-year prison sentence in Iran. Now the one thing keeping him going is the thought of finding his wife, who thinks he's been dead for over twenty years.

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

Micheline, who is pregnant, lives in a home for women from which she tries to observe the world with calm and serenity. Among other women of the home who are also pregnant the frequently asked question is whether they will keep their baby or not.

Nathalie is being stalked. By an interesting, intelligent young woman called Anaïs, who makes quite an impression on Nathalie, whose real name is Célimène and who happens to be a writer experiencing a crisis.

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.

The comfortable daily routines of aging Parisian actor Gilbert Valence, 76, are suddenly shaken when he learns that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in a car crash. Having to take care of his now-orphaned grandson, he struggles to go on with his lifelong acting career like he's used to. But the roles he is offered -- a flashy TV show and a hectic last-minute replacement in an English-language film of Joyce's Ulysses -- finally convince him that it's time to retire.

The battle of the sexes? The forces of despair and seduction? On S. Miguel in the Azores, Rogério, a young man with old money, and his enigmatic wife Leonor host a garden party at their villa. The intriguing guests are an older unmarried couple, the philosophical and observant Irene, and Michel, a roué. While Rogério and Irene talk, Michel and Leonor go down to the sea. The conversations upset Rogério and capture Leonor's imagination. Five years later, the four dine at the villa. Michel and Leonor again leave the other two. Intentions and undercurrents are subtle. One of the four proves strong, one weak, and two must choose. Wind and rain bring down the curtain on both acts.

In a mental institution the patients see themselves as people like Jesus, Lazarus, Martha, Mary, Adam, Eve, Sonia, Raskolnikov, Aliosha e Ivan Karamasov, a Philosopher, a Profet, Santa Teresa d'Avila, reciting the Divine Comedy.

A meditation on civilization. July, 2001: friends wave as a cruise ship departs Lisbon for Mediterranean ports and the Indian Ocean. On board and on day trips in Marseilles, Pompeii, Athens, Istanbul, and Cairo, a professor tells her young daughter about myth, history, religion, and wars. Men approach her; she's cool, on her way to her husband in Bombay. After Cairo, for two evenings divided by a stop in Aden, the captain charms three successful, famous (and childless) women, who talk with wit and intellect, each understanding the others' native tongue, a European union. The captain asks mother and child to join them. He gives the girl a gift. Helena sings. Life can be sweet.

A special surreal encounter between Nikita Khrouchtchev and the Pope John XXIII.

The journey of Michael Padovic, an American professor who arrives with his wife, Helene, at a Portuguese convent where he expects to find the documents needed to prove his theory: Shakespeare was born in Spain; not in England.

A well-bred, lovely, spiritual, sad young woman marries an attentive physician who loves her. She feels affection but no love. Soon after, without design, she falls in love with Pedro Abrunhosa, a poet and performance artist. He also loves her. She keeps her distance from him, confessing her love to a friend who is a nun and, later, to her husband. Hunger for her love and jealousy consume him; she attends him as he wastes away. With his death, she can marry and express her passion, but what she does and how she explains herself, particularly to her cloistered friend, is at the heart of the film. Glimpses of convent life and of Abrunhosa on stage give contrast and mute comment.

Actresses' hairstyle in movies always carries a strong aesthetic statement associated with erotic, social, and historical meanings. In a bold and unexpected way, the film revisits this ultimate symbol of femininity in international cinema.

Published in 1949, The Second Sex became the bible of global feminism. An essential work that passionately advocates for gender equality, women's independence, and the liberation of morals. Today, how does this seminal work continue to resonate in our contemporary world? Conceived as an initiatory journey to the origins of Simone de Beauvoir's thinking, the film The Second Sex: In the Footsteps of Simone de Beauvoir takes us to the United States, to the places that inspired the philosopher and nourished her theories. An American road trip bringing together the worst and the best, predatory capitalism and mad love. A unique reinterpretation in the company of the great thinkers of our century.

38 years after the events in the Luis Buñuel classic Belle de Jour, Henri Husson thinks he sees Séverine one night at a concert. He follows her and makes her face her past and then takes a slow revenge on her.

20-year-old Margaux makes the acquaintance of 45-year-old Margaux: they have a lot in common – so much so that it turns out they are one and the same person, at two different ages and stages of their life…

Ema is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. In her youth she marries Dr. Carlos Paiva, her father's friend, to whom she is not attracted. They move to the valley of Abraham. Carlos loves her, but decides to sleep in a separate room to avoid waking Ema when he has to return late at night. As time goes by she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage, so she finds a new lover.

In 1949, philosopher and novelist Simone de Beauvoir wrote the groundbreaking The Second Sex, launching a disruptive discourse on women’s oppression and second-class citizenship. This film dissects the origins and relevance of this bible of feminism, charting de Beauvoir’s fact-finding journey across the US to research her book. The timely and fascinating film honors de Beauvoir’s brilliance and limitations, connecting her revolutionary ideas to the pressing issues women face today.

Despite his age and general weariness, Gebo keeps on working as an accountant to provide for his family. He lives with his wife, Doroteia, and his daughter-in-law, Sofia, but it is the absence of João, son and husband, that worries them.Gebo seems to be hiding something, especially to Doroteia, who is anxiously waiting to see her son again. Sofia is also waiting for her husband to come home, and yet she fears him. All of a sudden, João arrives and everything changes.

A young man who lives with his mother and has never known his father, heads off to look for him. He finds a cynical and Machiavellian man who works as a publisher in Paris. After he attempts to kill him, he finds filial love thanks to his uncle.

After selecting a building at random in a Jewish neighborhood in Paris, French director Ruth Zylberman meticulously reconstructed its community of inhabitants during the German occupation. What results is the spellbinding 209 RUE SAINT-MAUR, an experimental historiography that tells the emotional story of lives uprooted and destroyed under the Nazis.

Portrait of the last days of the life of Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco.

A photographer, Isaac, is asked by hotel owners to take portraits of their recently deceased daughter Angélica. When he looks at her through the lens of his camera, she appears to come back to life just for him. He instantly falls in love with her. From that moment, he will be haunted by Angélica day and night.

An intimate portrait of the lives of the artists, founders of modern art, who lived in Montmartre from 1900 until the liberation of France from the German yoke in 1944, near the end of World War II.