Dominique Cabrera

With the President of the Republic very ill, an advisor offers an unusual suggestion: hire a double to replace him during his convalescence. The lucky chosen one is a member of the Comédie-Française but he is also shy, unexciting and often consigned to the supporting role...But a seismic change is about to happen in the Republic.

Corniche Kennedy. In the blue of the Mediterranean, at the foot of luxurious villas, the young kids of Marseille defy the laws of gravity. Marco, Mehdi, Franck, Mélissa, Hamza, Mamaa, Julie : girls and boys dive, take flight, take risks to experience life to the fullest. Suzanne devours them with her eyes from inside her chic villa. Their free bodies, their excess. She wants to be part of them. She will be part of them.

Un couple se dirige vers un train en partance pour Venise. Sur le quai, Julien annonce à Marie qu’il part en rejoindre une autre et s’en va, la laissant seule à Paris, enceinte. Bouleversée, Marie se refuse à être victime de cette situation. Elle trouve du réconfort dans son travail auprès de ses deux « cow-boys » de patrons, Jean-Jacques et Jean-Loup, qui dirigent un cinéma du quartier latin spécialisé dans les films classiques américains…

Set in the summer of 1942 during WWII, the film traces the trajectory of simple people thrown into extraordinary lives, revealing the heart-warming flame of hope and humanity that endures, even in times of war and dispair. As young Julien, his family and a group of friends traverse the French countryside after fleeing the institution they called home, Julien must deal with his father's extreme violence and his mother's rosy fantasies and once again form a family that society tries to forget.

As death hovers, Dominique films precious moments of a great love story.

This film deals with the aftermath of the Algerian war of liberation. Georges Montero, an Algerian-born Frenchman, manages an olive canning factory in Oran. He travels to Paris for a cataract operation. Marinette, his sister, and Belka, his friend and a recent immigrant, want him to return to France permanently. Friction develops between the two friends as Georges is pressured to sell his factory. Friendship developed between Georges and his surgeon, who as a French Arab has severed ties with his culture and country of origin.

Single mother Nadia is surviving on welfare while transport strikes are paralyzing France in December 1995. While watching the news, she recognizes the father of her child among the strikers and decides to go and search for him. But she has nowhere to go. The film, shot almost entirely at night, carries documentary qualities, part of which is due to the appearances of actual railroad workers in several group scenes.

A woman, scared by motherhood and her new born baby, runs away from her home and family to find a shelter at her upstairs neighbour's place.

Here: France in 1987, there: Algeria in 1963. How can we accept this legacy? A film about memory through portraits of Dominique Cabrera's family. "Reflections on the feelings aroused in me by my Pied-Noir parents' experiences of the Algerian War."

For the 30th anniversaire of FIDMarseille about thirty directors have done us the honor of offering us some very beautiful short films.

Two lesbians are victims of a break-in. Together with their clan of friends, they undertake a wild investigation, with suspense and rigour, to arrive at the truth. Sensitivities are aroused around life choices, and political choices. Questions of morality comically embellished with words of abuse falling into drunkenness.

A few months before he died, Jean-Louis Comolli meets up with Dominique Cabrera for some free conversations with Isabelle Le Corff. They talk about cinema, life, love, death and Chassagne-Montrachet wine. There is laughter and smiles. One is not really serious at the age of eighty.

Algiers. From the port to the souks, passing through the Jardin d'Essai, Dominique Cabrera transports us to the land where she was born, on the other side of the Mediterranean "where the sea is saltier". If most of the pieds-noirs left Algeria in the summer of 1962, some -a minority- remained. By going to meet them, the director makes her own inner journey.

In Paris, at an exhibition on the French writer, photographer and filmmaker Chris Marker (1921-2012), Jean-Henri Cabrera thinks he sees himself in a specific shot of the short film La Jetée, directed by Marker in 1962.

In the blocs of low-cost housing in Colombes, the tenants’ association takes part in renovating the buildings.

Réjane is a cleaning-woman in one of the tower-building in Val Fourré, a suburb near Paris. Following her, listening to her and watching her in action we learn what it means to be a woman of 45 and hanging by a thread. Balancing delicately between her crazy but charming personality, the barriers of poverty and unemployment, Rejane, a bit lost, smiles and moves away dancing "There is no problem !" We are sad at heart to be so close and so far from her.

On September 26, 1992, four towers in the Val Fourré neighborhood of Mantes-la-Jolie were destroyed. In the spring of 1991, Dominique Cabrera proposed to some of the former residents to retrace their steps. They go through their old dwellings evoking the memories of the past years. All the life of the housing estate resurfaces, convivial, and to say the least, happy.

French filmmaker Dominique Cabrera made this documentary diary by videotaping for nine months during 1995, probing her own life as a single mother in a Paris suburb and capturing her depression, therapist, lover, and intake of food and Prozac

A few days in the life of the postal workers and customers at La Courneuve.

1992, September. Val Fourré, Mantes-la-Jolie. A suburb near Paris. Watched by the crowd, the four towers in Val Fourré crash with a terrible noise. In a cloud of dust, journalists, statesmen (members of the government) and the people of the neighbourhood. A page is turned. People want to believe that things will be better tomorrow. It is a symbol that is blown up. Great projects are announced. A few months later, those who expressed their feeling at the time, are reflecting on the past events, as we watch and listen to their words, the present is taking shape.