Portraits rêvés

Marc and Camille live with their little daughter in an isolated house on the Estérel coast. The fish Marc catches in the morning are enough to keep his family fed. In the afternoon, he's a parking lot attendant. The family enjoys a peaceful existence on the fringes of society - until the day that a gendarme decides to put an end to this freedom.

1968 and 1969 in Paris: during and after the student and trade union revolt. François is 20, a poet, dodging military service. He takes to the barricades, but won't throw a Molotov cocktail at the police. He smokes opium and talks about revolution with his friend, Antoine, who has an inheritance and a flat where François can stay. François meets Lilie, a sculptor who works at a foundry to support herself. They fall in love. A year passes; François continues to write, talk, smoke, and be with Lilie. Opportunities come to Lilie: what will she and François do?

Spring 1944. «Some love stories seem self-evident. Perhaps they were unaware of its fatal outcome. In any case, it was inevitable.» Coming from a family of Resistance fighters, Henriette lives the inconceivable : she falls in love with Josef, a young German soldier. Marcel, her friend since childhood, secretly in love with her, discovers their romance and joins the maquis the day before the Liberation. When he will come back, he will not be alone anymore, and they will wear the armband of the FFI.

During his acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award, Nicolas Chauvin – a farmer-soldier, a veteran of the Revolutionary Army and the Napoleonic Wars, “father” of the chauvinism that bears his name – embarks on a monologue and recounts his life story. At the bend of a road, a spectral encounter shocks his (non-)existence.

At the end of the 1980s, Stella, Victor, Adèle and Etienne are 20 years old. They take the entrance exam to the famous acting school created by Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Romans at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre. Launched at full speed into life, passion, and love, together they will experience the turning point of their lives, but also their first tragedy.

After a bad breakup, a college-aged Parisian moves into her father's flat only to discover that he is living with his new girlfriend - a young woman her age.

Judith leads a double life between Switzerland and France. On the one hand Abdel, with whom she is raising a little girl, on the other Melvil with whom she has two older boys. Little by little, this fragile balance, made up of lies, secrets and back and forth, cracks dangerously. Trapped, Judith chooses to head forward, at the risk of losing everything.

The professional and emotional cross-currents between two romantically entwined theater actors played by the director’s son Louis and Anna Mouglalis.

1992, South of France. Charlotte and Liza, both 17, are inseparable. Together, they dream of music and imagine themselves performing on Parisian stages. But a tragedy tears them apart, leaving Charlotte alone, with dreams meant for two.

Pierre and Manon are poor. They make documentaries with nothing and they live by doing odd jobs. Pierre meets a young intern, Elisabeth, and she becomes his mistress. But Pierre will not leave Manon for Elisabeth; he wants to keep both.

Three siblings comprise the latest generation in a family of puppeteers led with passion by their father. They are magicians of a kind, but can barely make ends meet, working mainly for the love of their craft. Their grandmother contributes too, not only as a seamstress but also as a repository of memories and wisdom. A tragic event will challenge the desire of each sibling to carry on.

An ultra-orthodox Jewish family from Aix-les-Bains comes to a farm in southern Italy for a brief stay every year to carry out a sacred mission: harvesting citrons. Here Elio, the farm owner, meets Esther, the rabbi’s daughter, who is tired of the constraints imposed by her religion. Through this relationship, Esther will understand the importance of freedom and find her path, and, in the same way, Elio will find the peace he had lost for a long time.

Paul reflects on the summer he met Angèle and Frédéric as he watches his friend being laid to rest.

Axèle is a photographer, Camille is a writer. They have been awarded an arts residency at the Villa Medicis in Rome. Camille is accompanied by her husband, the famous writer Marc Landré. When a strange rivalry takes shape between them, Camille bonds with Axèle. But who is Axèle really ? A total artist, who never compromises and confuses herself with her oeuvre ? Or a ghost ? This year at the Villa Medici, where bodies and souls free themselves, no one will come out unscathed.

Three female friends recall their misadventures (more sexual than cinematical) attending the Locarno Film Festival.

Tired of being a banal architectural ornamental, a sculpture runs from the Louvre to confront real life on the streets of Paris.