Woods and Waters

Recounts the epic of Vincennes Experimental University Center, from its creation after the events of May 68 until its demolition in the summer of 1980. To talk about Vincennes is to relive unique ten years of intense intellectual and political extravaganza, educational and artistic inventiveness, utopias, hopes, and betrayals that marked the history in a unique place, the forest with the eponymous name.

The film takes place in a Parisian suburb and brings us into the closest possible contact with the people who live here and takes us into the privacy of their lives. A series of personal accounts and shots of the decorated interiors of apartments and houses with no hint as to where we are, no names. No stigma attached, no label given. For these are not the subject of the film, which seeks instead to give a face and a voice – a sort of private landscape – to a space that has come to represent all that is standardized and anonymous.

Emma and Anaïs are best friends and yet everything in their life seems to set them apart, their social backgrounds but also their personalities. From the age of thirteen to eighteen, Adolescentes follows the two teenagers during these years where radical transformations and first times punctuate daily life. Through their personal stories, the film offers a rare portrait of France and its recent history.

As Russian writer Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) thinks it is impossible that his novel Doctor Zhivago is published in the Soviet Union, because it supposedly shows a critical view of the October Revolution, he decides to smuggle several copies of the manuscript out of the country. It is first published in 1957 in Italia and the author receives the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, which has consequences.

Several elderly homosexual men and women speak frankly about their pioneering lives, their fearless decision to live openly in France at a time when society rejected them.

Initially, there's that moment of happiness: an African-American celebrating in Harlem cheers "We're free!" as if Barack Obama's victory meant the ultimate end of slavery. AMERICAN PASSAGES is an associative journey through the United States: a disillusioned Iraq veteran, gay adoptive fathers, black judges, white party animals and a pimp at a casino table in Las Vegas. The extreme contrasts of black and white, rich and poor, winners and losers are often as surprising as the meaning of the constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness in these times of crisis. An epic panorama of America.

May 6, 2012. Cable news reporter Laetitia is covering the French presidential elections, while Vincent, her ex-husband, demands to see their two young daughters. It's a manic Sunday in Paris: two agitated girls, a frazzled babysitter, a needy new boyfriend, a grumpy lawyer and France cut in half!

The end of summer. Five young thieves wander through the city. Among them Stefan attempts to read French.

A companion to the director's Le Dos Rouge/Portrait of the Artist. A famous filmmaker works on his next film, which will focus on monstrosity. He is obsessed by the idea of finding a painting that will be central to the film and will crystallize all the power and beauty of monsters.

Jin is a young illegal Chinese immigrant in Paris. He works in a fraudulent taxi scheme for the Triads. The only memory of his past as a DJ in Beijing is the inspiring sophisticated electro music he plays in his car when he drives. One night, Naomi, a troubling and stunning escort and stripper, gets in his car. Intrigued by the young driver, falling for his music, she decides to make him her exclusive driver. But as they grow closer, Jin will have to betray dangerous people.

Amidst a period of unprecedented world events, an eighteen-year-old girl’s life is placed on hold. Isolated in her bedroom, she falls under the spell of the mysterious vlogger Patricia Coma. As time carries on, the lines between her dreams, fears, hopes, and reality begin to blur into one another.

A famous filmmaker works on his next film, which will focus on monstrosity. He is obsessed by the idea of finding a painting that will be central to the film and will crystallize all the power and beauty of monsters. But what he doesn't show to anyone, not even his wife, is the mark on his back that keeps getting bigger. This red mark worries him, upsets him, and seems to want to tell him something...

Amel is a young photographer. When she loses her husband, her life changes. Encouraged by her father-in-law, she takes a taste of life by photographing street boys. Without fear of being scandalous, she makes the choice to look at men as men look at women.

A car trip will be an opportunity for a son to at last tell his father everything that is weighing on his heart.

Rudolf, a bookshop salesman, Gabriel, an actor, and Nicolas, a bar waiter, share more than one common point: the three of them are thirty-something, gay and... neurotic! So what a shock when following a sentimental break-up, Rudolf decides to leave Paris (and his two friends at the same time). What he wants is to put order in his life and it seems to him the best thing to do is to move back to the village of his birth, somewhere in the Austrian mountains, far from the chaos of Parisian life. After a moment of panic, Gabriel and Nicolas decide to follow Rudolf to Styria. Little do they know how eventful their trip will be...

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