2010
Guests:
Sylvie Testud - Actress & Writer in Gamines, Léa Fazer - Director in Ensemble c'est trop, Guillaume Malandrin - Co-Director in Où est la main de l'homme sans tête, Stéphane Malandrin - Co-Director in Où est la main de l'homme sans tête
Films:
J'ai tué ma mère I killed my Mother
Director: Xavier Dolan
Screenplay: Xavier Dolan
Starring: Xavier Dolan, Anne Dorval
Running time: 1hr 40min
Distributor: Mililifilms/Rezo Films (France)
Synopsis:
In this semi-autobiographical story, Montreal filmmaker and star Xavier Dolan (who was 19 when he directed this film) focuses on the difficult love/hate relationship between a sixteen-year old boy and his mother (Dorval) and shrewdly narrates the complex vicissitudes of adolescence.
Gamines Sisters
Director: Eleonore Faucher
Screenplay: Eleonore Faucher, Sylvie Testud (novel)
Starring: Amira Casar, Sylvie Testud, Jean-Pierre Martins, Zoé Duthion
Running time: 1hr 47min
Distributor: Ex Nihilo
Synopsis:
Sibylle, Corinne, and Georgette are sisters growing up in Lyon in the early 1970’s, raised by their single Italian mother (Casar). Sibylle (Duthion) is the only blonde in her family, a physical trait she owes to the father who abandoned them. Struggling with an increasing sense of estrangement, she yearns for the day when she might meet her French father. Cutting back and forth between Adult Sybille’s (Testud) present-day and the years of her childhood, the film narrates delicately her difficult process of coming to terms with parental abandonment.
Le vilain The Villain
Director: Albert Dupontel
Screenplay: Diane Clavier (scenario consultant), Albert Dupontel writer/dialogue), Simon Moutairou (scenario consultant)
Starring: Albert Dupontel, Catherine Frot, Bouli Lanners
Running time: 1hr 26min
Distributor: ADCB Films
Synopsis:
Fleeing gun-toting rivals, a bank robber (Dupontel) seeks refuge in his quiet childhood neighborhood where his mother, Maniette (Frot), still lives leading a valiant resistance against an unscrupulous property developer, much to her son’s dismay. Discovering her son’s Machiavellian nature, Maniette engages in a pitiless and often hilarious battle with him in order to set him on the right path.
L’empreinte de l'ange The Mark of an Angel
Director: Safy Nebbou
Screenplay: Cyril Gomez-Mathieu and Safy Nebbou
Starring: Catherine Frot, Sandrine Bonnaire, Wladimir Yordanoff
Running time: 1hr 35min
Distributor: Diaphana Films
Synopsis:
Catherine Frot and Sandrine Bonnaire co-star brilliantly in this chilling thriller directed by Safy Nebbou. Frot plays Elsa, a troubled woman who becomes increasingly convinced that the young daughter of a wealthy family friend, Claire (Bonnaire), is in fact the child she lost in a hospital fire seven years ago. Elsa descends dangerously into obsession and the film offers a character study of her psychological disintegration as well as something of a sociological observation of French upper-middle class attitudes.
Où est la main de l'homme sans tête
Director: Stéphane and Guillaume Malandrin
Screenplay: Stéphane and Guillaume Malandrin
Starring: Cécile de France, Ulrich Tukul, Bouli Lanners
Running time: 1hr 44min
Distributor: La [Parti] Productions
Synopsis:
After spending fifteen days in a coma after a diving accident, Olympic diving champion Eva (Cécile de France) must defy her father’s (Ulrich Tukul) overbearing determination and his intent on putting the accident behind her and resuming life as it used to be. For in fact, Eva begins to realize that nothing is as it used to be.
Versailles
Director: Pierre Schoeller
Screenplay: Pierre Schoeller
Starring: Guillaume Depardieu, Max Baissette de Malglaive, Judith Chemla, Aure Atika, Patrick Descamps, Brigitte Sy
Running time: 1hr 53min
Distributor: Les Films Pelléas
Synopsis:
A young homeless mother Nina (Chemla) and her son Enzo (Max Baissette de Malglaive) encounter a man named Damien (Depardieu) who lives reclusively in the forest of Versailles. After taking refuge with him overnight, the next morning Nina appears to have disappeared. As seasons pass, Damien and Enzo grow more deeply attached to one another and Damien begins to search for a safer way to provide for them.
Peur[s] du noir Fear[s] of the Dark
Director: Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre di Sciullo, Richard McGuire
Screenplay: Blutch, Charles Burns
With the voices of : Aure Atika, Arthur H. , François Creton , Guillaume Depardieu, Nicole Garcia
Running time: 1hr 25min
Distributor: Diaphana Films
Synposis:
Six different graphic artists, six different drawings and animation styles : six visionary tales of fear.
“Think of it as the history of fear.” (Rotten Tomatoes)
La première étoile Meet the Elisabethz
Director: Lucien Jean-Baptiste
Screenplay: Lucien Jean Baptiste, Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar
Starring: Lucien Jean-Baptiste, Anne Consigny, Firmine Richard
Running time: 1hr 30min
Distributor: Vendredi Film
Synopsis:
Jean-Gabriel (Lucien Jean-Baptiste) is married and the father of three children, but can’t seem to hold a job and instead spends most of his time and money gambling. After over hastily promising his daughter to take the whole family on a skiing holiday, his wife (Anne Consigny) threatens to leave him unless, this time, he follows through on his promise.
Le hérisson The Hedgehog
Director: Mona Achache
Screenplay: Mona Achache, Muriel Barbery (novel)
Starring: Josiane Balasko, Garance Le Guillermic, Togo Igawa, Anne Brochet, Ariane Ascaride, Vladimir Yordanoff
Running time: 1hr 40min
Distributor: Les Films des Tournelles
Synopsis:
Paloma (Le Guillermic) is a precociously smart, if darkly brooding 11-year old who intends to kill herself on her twelfth birthday. But as the fated appointment nears, Paloma encounters kindred spirits in her building's frumpy and disillusioned concierge (Balasko) and her new mysterious neighbor (Igawa), both of whom inspire her to reevaluate her cynical existential outlook.
Sexe, gombo et beurre salé Sex, Okra and Salted Butter
Director: Mahamat Saleh Haroun
Starring: Marius Yelolo, Mata Gabin, Lorella Cravotta, Aïssa Maïga
Running time: 1hr 21min
Synopsis:
Hortense, a forty year old nurse of African origins leaves Bordeaux and her family to live with her lover Jean-Paul, an oyster farmer in the bassin of Arcachon. For Malik, her husband, the choc is overwhelming. He must henceforth raise his two sons alone. A few days later, his life is once again thrown upside down as he discovers his eldest's son's homosexuality.
Ensemble c'est trop
Director: Léa Fazer
Screenplay: Léa Fazer
Starring: Nathalie Baye, Pierre Arditi, Jocelyn Quivrin, Aïsai Maïga, Jacques Weber, Eric Cantona
Running time: 1hr 36min
Distributor: ChezWham/Studio Canal
Synopsis:
Clémentine (Maïga) and Sébastien (the late Jocelyn Quivrin) are young parents who can barely keep it together between raising their children and the demands of their careers. When Sébastien’s mother, Marie-France (Baye) moves in with them after uncovering her husband’s (Arditi) affair with a younger woman and learns of his mistress’ pregnancy, she upsets the young couple’s fragile equilibrium. The birth of Sébastien’s half brother and his parents’ increasing regression into juvenile behavior complicate relationships further in this family comedy where generational roles are blurred leaving everyone clueless in the wake of modern pressures.
Rapt
Director: Lucas Belvaux
Screenplay: Lucas Belvaux, Leenda Mamosa (script)
Starring: Yvan Attal, Anne Consigny, André Marcon, Françoise Fabian
Running time: 2hr 05min
Distributor: Diaphana Films
Synopsis:
Inspired by a 1978 kidnapping, Rapt tells the story of a French industry captain (Attal) who is held hostage for ransom and suffers the torture of his abductors but especially, on the outside, the tortures of an equally merciless corporate world and unforgiving press. An incisive investigation of the value we place on human life when fortune and reputation are at stake.
