The King's Daughters

Viva Varda!

A pioneering post-war female film director, an instigator of the New Wave who was honored by Hollywood in her own lifetime, Agnès Varda has become a source of inspiration for a whole new generation of young filmmakers. With movies like Cléo de 5 à 7, Le Bonheur, Sans toit ni loi, Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse, she created a quirky, open to the world, sensitive to the disenfranchised, often silly body of work. Always one finger on the pulse, she shook everything up, including cinema itself which she refused to constrict to pure fiction or long-form films.

Vagabond

Mona Bergeron is dead, her frozen body found in a ditch in the French countryside. From this, the film flashes back to the weeks leading up to her death. Through these flashbacks, Mona gradually declines as she travels from place to place, taking odd jobs and staying with whomever will offer her a place to sleep. Mona is fiercely independent, craving freedom over comfort, but it is this desire to be free that will eventually lead to her demise.

La Finale

A low-income housing estate in the south of France, at the time of the soccer World Cup. The daughter of the leader of an extreme right-wing party sets out to discover the world of the fans.

Des taureaux et des vaches

Cattle breeding leaves less and less room for chance or empiricism. While focusing on the relationship between the farmer and his cows, Patricia Mazuy takes us on the great merry-go-round of animal selection and the quest for performance. With precision and humor, this masterful film introduces us to genetics, testing, artificial insemination, "in vitro" fertilization, cloning and other embryo transfers in the French cattle breeding world.

The Competition

An all-access tour behind the scenes at France’s premiere film school, La Fémis. Showing us how successful candidates get to follow in the footsteps of such luminaries as Louis Malle, François Ozon and Alain Resnais, all of whom attended this prestigious institution. Stumbling over their words, the often-nervous candidates seem vulnerable when confronted with the veterans of the industry, who have the difficult task of discovering true talent among all these eager young people.

Wundkanal

An old man is kidnapped. His interrogation uncovers the biography of a mass murderer: The 80 years old man was a SS leader and responsible for the killing of thousands of people in the Soviet Union. He also "invented" an evil technique of eliminating political prisoners: the manipulated suicide. Thomas Harlan reconstructs the history of a bureaucratic murderer, he also develops a direct connection between the Nationalsocialism and the treatment of prisoners of the RAF terrorists in the Stuttgart isolation prison. Robert Kramer filmed the shooting of Harlan's Wundkanal: Notre Nazi documents a social experiment in which the children of Nazis and of victims meet a real culprit. The reality seems to be stronger that the fiction in Harlan's film. (Edition Filmmuseum)

Thick Skinned

Two brothers set fire to a barn while drunk, inadvertently causing the death of a sleeping wanderer. One of them takes all the blame for the incident and spends ten years in prison.

A Room in Town

Set against the backdrop of an increasingly violent strike, a worker falls in love with the middle-class daughter of his landlady.

Basse Normandie

Basse Normandie is based on actual events. Protagonists Simon Reggiani and Patricia Mazuy are also husband and wife in real life. They filmed the creation of one of Simon’s plays, and then reenacted some of the events surrounding it. Simon prepares for a one-man show that he will perform largely on horseback, including dressage. The local government of the region hopes to use the play to improve its image; with government’s support, it’s decided that Simon will perform the play before an audience of over 1,700 farmers during an agricultural congress in Paris. The director of a large stud farm provides Simon with rehearsal space. What follows is the path that Reggiani had to take in order to create his performance — a path filled with obstacles ranging from uncooperative stable staff and a grumpy horse to vocal problems. An intriguing and occasionally absurd mixture of filmed theater, a making-of documentary, mockumentary and dressage lesson.

Visiting Hours

Alma, alone in her big townhouse, and Mina, a single mother from a housing project in another city, have organized their lives around the prison visits they make to their respective partners. When the two women meet in the room outside the visiting area, an unlikely friendship begins...

Saturn Bowling

In a family-owned bowling alley, tension arises between two brothers following their father's death. Meanwhile one of them, a cop, is investigating a series of disturbing murders. Both brothers soon find themselves trapped in a looming darkness.

Of Women and Horses

This microcosm of power and money has no time for Gracieuse, whose only assets are her talent, her fiercely stubborn character, and, most particularly, her determination to succeed. A high tension wire who's ready to stand up to Franz Mann and to face any obstacle, even if it means stepping outside the law, she pursues her sole obsession: to have a horse to call her own that she will take to the top.

Miss Impossible

They’re all nuts. Her parents, who want to send her off to boarding school. Her new teacher, who expects her to read impossibly old books. Her fellow band members, who make her sing ridiculous lyrics and dress her up in a frilly white dress for their first show. Everyone seems to know what she should do and how she should act. And it’s not like 13-year-old Aurore has any fundamental problem with changing herself either. Who would want to be like this: unhappy, ugly and emotionally withdrawn? But the others don’t seem all that much happier to her either. She definitely doesn’t ever want to be as old, rundown and lonely as her mother. And so she prefers to stay the way she is, to observe and make her biting comments on whatever comes her way.

Paul Sanchez Is Back!

The reappearance of notorious criminal Paul Sanchez becomes an obsession for a young police officer who will do anything to catch him.

Travolta and Me

In the late 1970s, a French teenage girl is obsessed with the then popular American movie heartthrob John Travolta.

Two Rémi, Two

Thirty years old, a nothing job, a timid love affair: Rémi is a little at sea in his life. Until the day when he must share it with his double, another him, invasive and not so nice. Which one will be the true Rémi?

Sherrybaby

After serving time in prison, former drug addict Sherry Swanson returns home to reclaim her young daughter from family members who have been raising the child. Sherry's family, especially her sister-in-law, doubt Sherry's ability to be a good mother, and Sherry finds her resolve to stay clean slowly weakening.

Sunshine Cleaning

A single mother and her slacker sister find an unexpected way to turn their lives around in this off-beat dramatic comedy. In order to raise the tuition to send her young son to private school the mom starts an unusual business – a biohazard removal/crime scene clean-up service.

Take the Lead

A former professional dancer volunteers to teach dance in the New York public school system and, while his background first clashes with his students' tastes, together they create a completely new style of dance. Based on the story of ballroom dancer, Pierre Dulane.

The Duchess

A chronicle of the life of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who was reviled for her extravagant political and personal life.