2007
Films:
Bon Voyage
Director : Jean-Paul Rappeneau
Screenplay : Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Patrick Modiano, with Jérôme Tonnerre, Gilles Marchand, Julien Rappeneau
Cast : Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu, Virginie Ledoyen, Yvan Attal, Grégori Derangère, Peter Coyote
Running time: 1h 56 min
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classic
Synopsis:
Sophisticated farce
At the start of World War II, the fate of the free world hangs in the balance at the posh Hotel Splendide in Bordeaux. Cabinet members, journalists, physicists, and spies of all persuasions gather in order to escape the Nazi occupation of Paris. High society socialites hobnob with jailbirds. Murderous intrigues, scientific secrets and love affairs flourish.
In Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s BON VOYAGE, elaborate personal schemes and political plots escalate, intersect and fly off in all directions, as a young man (Grégori Derangère) must choose between a beautiful diva (Isabelle Adjani) and an impassioned student (Virginie Ledoyen), between politicians and hoodlums, between carefree youth and adulthood.
Viva Laldjérie
Director : Nadir Moknèche
Screenplay : Nadir Moknèche
Cast : Lubna Azabal, Biyouna , Nadia Kaci, Jalil Naciri, Abbes Zahmani, Florence Giorgetti, Lounès Tazairt
Running time: 1h 53 min
Distributor: Film Movement
Synopsis:
Highlighting issues from generation gaps and love to the growing conflict of civil war , Viva L ald jérie follows the lives of three women, living in the middle of a terrorist infested city, who struggle to survive despite the limitations on their lives. The film deals with conflict between mother and daughter as well as the tensions between traditional and modern society.
Beautiful Goucem works at the counter of a local Algiers photo shop. Goucem and her extravagantly bold widowed mother, Mrs. Sandjak, a former exotic dancer, have been living together in a low-rent residential hotel, hiding out from terrorists who are set on killing Sandjak ( known at “Papicha” to her many adoring fans). Fifi, the women’s neighbor at the hotel, is an energetic prostitute who keeps herself busy with men twenty-four hours a day.
Encouraged to re-enter the realm of performance, despite the threats to her life, Papicha decides to go back out into the community to perform. Her actions are inspired by the young daughter of the concierge, Tiziri, who looks up to Papicha. When the two discover that a coveted cabaret is being closed to make room for a new mosque, Papicha decides she can no longer sit idly by.
Goucem has been leading a double life between traditional and modern society, in constant conflict with her mother’s worries of her finding a husband. Goucem becomes interested in a local married doctor, Annis, expecting him to leave his wife for her. But when Annis announces he is going to be out of town, tending to the victims of terrorism, Goucem lets loose in the city—partying all night and taking home many different men.
Le Héros de la Famille
Director : Thierry Klifa
Screenplay : Christopher Thompson & Thierry Klifa
Cast : Gérard Lanvin, Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Béart, Miou-Miou, Géraldine Pailhas, Michaël Cohen, Claude Brasseur, Valérie Lemercier
Running time: 1h 43min
Synopsis:
In Nice, in the present, the members of a fragmented family reunite despite themselves to deal with an inheritance whose stakes are the Blue Parrot, a cabaret of magical nights.
Among the family member are Nicky, a magician on stage and a looser in life, his children: thirty-something accountant Nino Bensalem and journalist Marianne Bensalem, Marianne's mother Simone, who co-starred with Nicky on a children's TV show decades ago, and Nino's mother Alice, the freest spirit in this dour, grief-stricken crowd. She and Nicky are not on friendly terms, and Alice and Simone seem to cordially detest each other.
It is the moment of truth, of settling of scores, of confessions, of unusual alliances and secret drawers which will be opened without anyone realizing that a little hidden history will be discovered there… In this world of glamour and mystery, appearances and hidden doors, where it is sometimes easier to invent a character for oneself than face who we are, do we ever really know our parents, old loves, children or friends?
Un dimanche à Kigali
Director : Robert Favreau
Screenplay : Robert Favreau, based on the novel by Gil Courtemanche
Cast: Luc Picard, Fatou N'Diaye, Céline Bonnier, Luck Mervil, Maka Kotto, Louise Laparé
Running time: 1h 58 min
Distributor: Seville Pictures
Synopsis:
Spring 1994. Kigali, Rwanda's capital city, deep in the heart of Africa. Bernard Valcourt is a man divided between hope and disillusionment. In Africa to shoot a documentary on the devastation wreaked by AIDS, Valcourt watches on as tensions rapidly escalate between Tutsis and Hutus. At the Hôtel Des Milles Collines, home to expatriates, Valcourt falls madly in love with Gentille, a beautiful Rwandan waitress. Though she feels the same way, their romance grows in fits and starts; she is so young and he - he is so white...
In spite of their differences, Gentille and Valcourt throw caution to the wind and marry. And then war breaks out. Amidst the ensuing chaos the lovers are brutally separated. Valcourt searches desperately for his wife, but because of his status as a foreigner, is forced to leave the country.
Months later, Rwanda is stained with the blood of close to a million Tutsis but order has been restored. Valcourt returns to Kigali in search of his wife. But with many survivors displaced from their homes and some living in refugee camps across borders, his task is a difficult one. Amidst this chaos, will Valcourt find Gentille? And if he does, will they recapture their love or will the scars of Africa's most brutal war run too deep?
A beautiful love story set against the horror of genocide, A Sunday in Kigali paints, with clarity and compassion, a picture of the horror and the hope that reside in the human heart.
La Femme de Gilles
Director : Frédéric Fonteyne
Screenplay : Philippe Blasband, Frédéric Fonteyne & Marion Hänsel, based on the novel by Madeleine Bourdouxhe
Cast : Emmanuelle Devos, Clovis Cornillac, Laura Smet
Running time: 1h 43min
Distributor: The Cinema Guild
Synopsis:
In a working-class district in rural France in the 30’s, Elisa - Gilles’ wife - takes care of their children, and spends each day waiting for her husband to return home. Gilles works in the blast furnaces - sometimes by day, sometimes at night. The furnaces never shut down. Elisa’s younger sister Victorine often visits, to play with the children and to help out around the house. Elisa is pregnant. She’s troubled by strange suspicions: Gilles and Victorine, Victorine and Gilles...
Je m’appelle Elisabeth
Director : Jean-Pierre Améris
Screenplay : Guillaume Laurant, based on the novel by Anne Wyazemsky
Cast : Alba-Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi, Stéphane Freiss, Yolande Moreau, Maria de Medeiros, Benjamin Ramon, Lauriane Sire, Olivier Cruveiller, Virgile Leclaire
Running time: 1h 30 min
Distributor: Pyramide International
Synopsis:
Family film
Ten year-old Betty is afraid of ghosts and dark corners. When her sister Agnès leaves to go to high school, Betty is left by herself, between her parents, Régis and Mado in the middle of a marriage crisis, and Rose, the almost dumb maid. That’s when Yvon steps over the wall between the garden of the family house and the asylum that Régis manages. Moved by his frailty, Betty hides Yvon for several days inside the cottage where the bicycles are stored. Betty tells him her fears and joys and slowly Yvon becomes her best friend and confident, even though Yvon does not speak much. However, little by little, they grow closer...
L'Audition
Director: Luc Picard
Screenplay:Luc Picard
Cast: Luc Picard, Suzanne Clément, Alexis Martin Marco, Denis Bernard, Julie McClemens, Marie-France Lambert , Robert Lepage
Running time: 1h 51 min
Distributor: Cité-Amérique
Synopsis:
Louis, 40 years old, works as a frightener, a man hired to intimidate people with “bad credit” and has always dreamed of becoming an actor. His life is turned upside down when he learns that, not only is he going to become a father but that the opportunity for his dream to come true is knocking at his door. Louis will have to dig deep within himself to prepare for the upcoming roles of his life.
Life is a mystery, and only grown -ups forget that.
L’Audition is an ode to the child that hides within each of us.
Fair Play
Director : Lionel Bailliu
Screenplay : Lionel Bailliu
Cast : Benoît Magimel, Marion Cotillard, Jérémie Rénier, Éric Savin, Mélanie Doutey, Jean-Pierre Cassel
Running time: 1h 39 min
Distributor: TFM International
Synopsis:
The competitive nature of office politics is given an innovative twist: colleagues express their jealousy, insecurity and success through rowing, jogging, playing squash, canoeing in this brilliantly crafted and cynical tale that takes place entirely outside the office.
La Petite Jérusalem
Director : Karin Albou
Screenplay : Karin Albou
Cast : Fanny Valette, Elsa Zylberstein, Bruno Todeschini, Hedi Tillette de Clermont-Tonnerre, Sonia Tahar, Michaël Cohen, Aurore Clément, François Marthouret
Running time: 1h36min
Distributor: Kino International
Synopsis:
Set in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, “La Petite Jerusalem” is the nickname of a low-income, concrete housing neighbourhood with a substantial number of Jewish - and Jewish immigrant - residents. Among the thousands of men, women and children living there, one small household shelters a Tunisian-Jewish family of eight:, a French born, 18-year-old philosophy student, her older sister Mathilde, their Tunisian mother, Mathilde's husband Ariel and the couple's four young kids. Struggling to find her own voice inside a crowded house, Laura refuses Ariel's orthodox ethical codes and renounces her mother's superstitious background. Instead, the young woman embraces her studies in Kantian philosophy and decides to close her heart to strangers.
Although fully committed to her intellectual and philosophical life, Laura eventually runs into a classic disruption: an ex-journalist, Algerian-Muslim émigré named Djamel, who also works as a custodian in the local high school. Deeply attracted to his background and persona, Laura is forced to rethink her postulation that all romantic love is, in actuality, a harmful illusion.
J’invente rien
Director : Michel Leclerc
Screenplay : Michel Leclerc
Cast : Kad Merad, Elsa Zylberstein, Claude Brasseur, Patrick Chesnais, Guillaume Toucas, Sara Martins, Liliane Rovère
Running time : 1h 28min
Distributor: Pyramide International
Synopsis:
Mathilde is an impulsive and passionate painter. Paul, a boyish, lovably neurotic slacker, is highly educated but joyfully refuses to work. Five years down the road, Mathilde is growing tired of Paul’s role as the jobless iconoclast, so he invents a gadget that is sure to win him instant wealth and the respect of his wife. When Paul becomes obsessively absorbed in his work, Mathilde’s eyes wander to a handsome butcher who is enamored of her. Finally on the verge of the success he thought would make her happy, Paul may end up losing Mathilde forever.
Un Ticket pour l’Espace
Director : Eric Lartigau
Screenplay : Kadour Merad, Olivier Barroux, Julien Rappeneau
Cast : Kad Merad, Olivier Barroux, Marina Foïs, Guillaume Canet, André Dussollier, Pierre-François Martin-Laval, Frédéric Proust, Thierry Frémont
Running time: 1h29min
Synopsis:
Sci-fi comedy - Teenager film
To gain public support for its outrageously expensive space research, the government launches an enormous publicity campaign in the form of a national lottery game with two very attractive scratch-and-win prizes: the right to board the next space shuttle! A handsome young man with a dark secret and a loveable loser who dreams of movie stardom are the two winners, and after the required tests are taken, they blast off into space. Things are fine until the crew is taken hostage by one of the passengers, a gruesome monster is discovered on board and everything spirals out of control.
This wonderfully silly, good-hearted comedy spoofs every space movie ever made, from Alien to Apollo 13 by way of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek and Armageddon. A Ticket to Space expresses genuine affection toward everyone it parodies while simultaneously celebrating and mocking the stereotypes of the Star Trek universe.
L'Enfant
Director : Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Screenplay : Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Cast : Jérémie Renier, Déborah François, Jérémie Segard, Fabrizio Rongione, Olivier Gourmet, Stéphane Bissot, Mireille Bailly
Running time: 1h 40 min
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classic
Synopsis:
Dispossessed twenty-year old Bruno (Jérémie Renier) lives with his eighteen-year-old girlfriend Sonia (Déborah François) in Seraing, an eastern Belgian steel town. They live off Sonia’s unemployment benefits and the panhandling and petty theft committed by Bruno and his gang. Their lives change forever when Sonia gives birth to their child, Jimmy. She returns home after Jimmy’s birth to find that Bruno has sublet their apartment to total strangers. After Bruno’s initial and promising change of heart about becoming a father and changing his ways, Jimmy becomes little more to Bruno than a new source of wealth. Desperate for money and unable to face his parental responsibilities, Bruno sells Jimmy to a black market connection, who promises to find the child an adoptive home. Realizing the error in his actions Bruno sets out to try and undo his callous deed, leading him to a powerful personal transformation.
Guests:
Lionel Bailliu - Director Fair Play, Claude Brasseur - Actor in Le Héros de la Famille, Michel Leclerc - Director of J'invente rien, Luc Picard - Director of L'Audition