Iranian Iradj Azimi directed this French historical drama re-creating events depicted in the famous 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa by Jean Louis Andre Theodore Gericault (1791-1824). The ill-fated voyage of the frigate Medusa begins when it departs Rochefort for Senegal in 1816. After striking a sandbar off the African coast, 150 civilians row safely to shore, but Captain Chaumareys (Jean Yanne) orders 140 soldiers and sailors onto a raft (minus supplies) and has it cut loose. Only 14 survive from the 140, creating a scandal back in France. Gericault (Laurent Terzieff) later talks to three of the survivors while researching his painting. Work on this film began in 1987, but sets destroyed by Hurricane Hugo caused delays, so the film was not completed until 1990. However, it then remained undistributed until an incident in which writer-director Azimi slashed his wrists in front of French Ministry of Culture officials.
The epic story of Moses, who led the Israelites out of slavery, parted the Red Sea and received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. This is the edited-down version for theatrical release.
This short film by Jacques Demy was based on his memories of growing up in Nantes, France. While it was initially made for the omnibus film THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS (as the segment on "Lust"), it has also been distributed and exhibited separately.
Vincent Vivant agrees to Stephan the spy's proposal: he is to cross the border with a mysterious suitcase.
Hedda and Tesman have just returned from their honeymoon and the relationship is already in trouble. Trapped but determined, Hedda tries to control those around her, only to see her own world unravel.
After getting painfully separated from the woman he loves, Julien leaves his apartment. He goes in search of his old friends but no one is to be found and the city is silent.
The Beresfords investigate mysterious deaths at an old people's home.
Told in four vignettes, this existential comedy relates the exploits of four aspiring criminals who hope to improve their lot, but find that they might not have what it takes for a life of crime.
Based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.
Two men, part tramp, part pilgrim, are on their way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. On their way they meet a whole assortment of people—some truculent, some violent, and some bizarre; they experience many adventures—some mysterious, some erotic, some even supernatural.
An American ballerina arrives in Hungary to enroll in a ballet school and it soon becomes apparent that things are not what they seem.
Bob Letellier, a good looking rich kid who studies science, makes the acquaintance of Alain, a cynical and immoral young man. The latter introduces him to the existentialist circles of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Bob is invited to a party and becomes Clo's lover, a rich heiress.
Determined to survive at any price, Edith, a young Jewish woman deported to an extermination camp, manages to survive by accepting the role of kapo, a privileged prisoner whose mission is to ruthlessly guard other prisoners.
A 4-year-old child is the element from and around which the action develops, and brings sentiments and emotions to light.
La Guerre Dans le Haut Pays is a period piece set in the winter of 1797-98, during the six days leading up to the fall of Bern and the victory of Napoleon's army, when the Bern government is faced with mixed loyalties from its subjects. The population of the lower valley is divided, but the upper region remains loyal, since they have been given special autonomy and a favorable system of taxation. David, a postman, works between the two regions. His father, who is a hard-line conservative, does not approve of his relationship with Julie, who is from the lower part of the valley. Julie's father, on the other hand, is more open to the new ideas of liberation. As a result of his work, David is exposed to new ideas and becomes a believer in equality and justice.
A semi-fictional account on the fatidic September 11, 1973, when the military commanded by General Pinochet took over the power from socialist president Salvador Allende, initiating a dictatorship that lasted until 1988 causing the deaths and disappearances of many people.
The exploits of three young Roman criminals are chronicled in this socially conscious drama. The young men commit petty crimes all day, beginning with arms theft, leading to an encounter with three streetwalkers. After their pleasure, the boys try to cheat the hookers, but the ladies are smarter than that and have stolen their cash ahead of time. It's back to the city for the boys, where they continue their destructive games...
Gallery director Stanislas bolsters the development of modern art with his collection of surprising works. His newest acquisition is a sculpture by Gilbert, whose wife Josée is captivated by Stanislas. But unbeknownst to her, Stanislas is amassing photographs of a very perverse, disturbed nature.
Emile Chenal and his wife, Françoise, leaned on boxing manager Jim Fox Warner to cough up the considerable sum of money that he owes them, with both the police and the mob circling the situation. In the same hotel, Inspector Neveu looks into a murder that took place years before, and his storyline overlaps with the arc of the Chenals.
A grief-stricken man who just lost his mother has a one night stand with a maid. What he doesn't know is that she's a virgin. He returns to his sad world of perfume business while she, unable to forget her first lover, follows him.
Story of a woman torn between her love for two different men.
Propelled to the head of the W Group after the death of his adoptive father, Largo Winch decides, to everyone's surprise, to sell it, and use the proceeds to create an ambitious humanitarian foundation. But on the very same day, he finds himself accused of crimes against humanity by a mysterious witness. To prove his innocence, Largo will have to retrace the steps of his past life, in the heart of the Burmese jungle.
"Araya" is an old natural salt mine located in a peninsula in northeastern Venezuela which was still, by 1959, being exploited manually five hundred years after its discovery by the Spanish. In images, the life of the "salineros" and their archaic methods of work before their definite disappearance with the arrival of the industrial exploitation.
Determined to assert his paternal rights, Quentin leaves his small village on the Swiss border to go to Lyon to look for his daughter, now a hairdresser, who, busy with her work, hasn't been back to the village for two years. In a few days, it will be Denise's birthday, the youngest of his daughters, and, urged on by his wife, he sets off, determined to bring the prodigal son back to the family celebration. But Denise is now living off her charms.
A documentary on the making of Pier Paolo Pasolini's MEDEA (1969) features rare behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the cast and crew.
Two anarchistic brothers live by petty thievery and try to recover from their Catholic upbringing. Bandiera and Rabbino were children when they pushed their drunk of a father out of a window for killing their pet sheep. When a girl is raped by her father, she is brought by young "rescuers" to the home of the two brothers who then watch their friends take advantage of her sexually. The brothers take her in, and the three live happy and celibate if not uneventful lives until the brother's are sent to jail for stealing.
A man who lives by himself becomes increasingly concerned that he is not alone. Based on the short story by Guy de Maupassant.
A prostitute, released from prison, tries to change her life, but a murderous slave organization, the Consortium, is determined to bring her back to the fold or kill her, which forces her to seek help from Liberty, an anti-Consortium group.
Antoine Rossi, a recidivist prisoner of war in Germany, manages to escape with the cowardly Fendard. Fendard does everything in his power to help him even though he is wounded, but Antoine tries to get rid of him as he boards the train to freedom.
Seven directors each dramatize one of the seven deadly sins in a short film. In "Anger," a domestic argument over a fly in the Sunday soup escalates into nuclear war. In "Sloth," a movie star would rather pay someone to tie his shoe than bend over to do it himself, and he can't be bothered to accept a starlet's sexual favors. In "Gluttony," a peasant family on its way to the funeral of a relative who died from indigestion stops regularly to eat and drink en route, arriving in time to eat some more. In "Greed," a high-class prostitute refunds the price of a cadet's lottery ticket. In "Pride," an unfaithful wife finds reason to reform. And so on through lust and envy.
1952, Paris. Nadia, a Red Diaper baby, has a sister, Polish parents, and at 15 is an active Communist. When cops beat her during an anti-American demonstration, she's rescued by a "Match" photographer. As the friendship becomes a love affair and her slogans are tested by new knowledge and emotion, some of the Red youth want to expel her. When she goes with Stéphane to a seaside photo shoot, her father goes to the police. Stéphane faces charges, so leaving to cover the war in Indochina looks appealing. In a parallel story, Nadia's mother meets again her prewar lover, released from Siberia, who challenges the French Reds with very real scars and word of Stalin's anti-Semitism.
Dedicated “to the exiled, proscribed, expelled, banned,” this montage of documentary images codirected and written by Jean Cayrol—a former deportee who wrote the commentary for Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog —makes the Spanish Civil War a synecdoche for all forms of brutal exclusion.
Three criminals escape from a French prison and hide in a coastal village where they have to wait for 12 hours until the boat that is supposed to take them to freedom arrives.
In a small village in southern Morocco, Amrouch cannot, because of his social position, marry the daughter of a wealthy farmer from the nearby village. Based on Federico Garica Lorca’s novel.
A Jekyll-and-Hyde colonel toughens up a 17-year-old aristocrat for the Spanish Civil War.
This film depicts the life of Saint John Bosco, who dedicated his life to rescuing abandoned and exploited street children in Turin.
A biographical feature on the Italian literary giant, Gabriele D'Annunzio. Set in late 19th century Italy and France when the artistic style, Decadentismo, was beginning to take shape, the film focuses on D'Annunzio's life when he was already an established poet and journalist in Rome. A staunch opponent of democracy and commoners, he searches for passion and pleasure among the wealthy and noble. One such noblewoman Elvira Fraternali Leoni, serves as the muse for his first novel - The Pleasure (Il Piacere).
It's mid 19th century, north of France. The story of a coal miner's town. They are exploited by the mine's owner. One day the decide to go on strike, and then the authorities repress them.
At the end of World War II, a French pacifist is arrested for refusing to fight. In prison, he befriends a German priest arrested for murder of a French Resistance fighter. They discuss morality, obedience, and religion.
1943, Christmas Eve in occupied Brittany. Charles, a member of the Resistance, is parachuted into the house of his mother, Madame Parisot, where he meets Herta, a young German woman who has come to accompany her officer husband. Despite the situation, the two young people fall in love and protect each other, but their love is short-lived, interrupted at dawn by a deadly English bomb.
Business tycoon dies in plane crash. Suspected, Georg, his main partner, Alain, a young Turkish finance, and Anna Maria, the group's proxy, are all seeking his succession.
Garrel convinced Jean Seberg, in the midst of a long struggle with mental illness, alcohol and drug, to “star” in this silent document of her daily life. Consisting mostly of meditative B&W close-ups of Seberg and her friends, as her torments and inner life flicker across her eerily beautiful face.
Vanina Vanini, a bored, spoiled Roman countess, falls in love with a dedicated young patriot who is in Rome to assassinate a traitor to the brotherhood of the Carboneria.
Nico is an ethereal poet haunting the gaps between scenes of Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Bulle Ogier, Laurent Terzieff, and Garrel’s father, Maurice, discussing the filmmaker’s staple topics: love, psychoanalysis, and the failures of May ’68.
A woman on the brink of middle age becomes bored and takes up playing cards. She becomes hooked on gambling and begins to neglect her husband and children.
On this beautiful May 1st, Thérèse is about to give birth. Their presence at home is undesirable, so Jean, her husband, decides to take François, their little boy, to a soccer match. Their plans change when they meet a former factory mate who seems to have made a success of his life. This man, Blanchot, decides to return to Jean a sum of money he had once borrowed. Trusted, Jean is drawn into a clandestine circle, where his apparent luck delivers him without ulterior motive to Blanchot, who is one of the ringleaders. The police interrupt the dangerous game, putting Jean, who has no identity papers, in an awkward situation.
Reduced to poverty, a young man is taken in by a rich lady who asks him for some dangerous services in exchange.
In the psychiatric clinic Rhien, residents and caregivers maintain unique and funny relationships.
Anna is a coach and a stripper at night.
An honest and idealistic archaeologist, to find the legendary burial of an Etruscan king, collides with the interests of a group of "grave robbers". Larth is a passionate archaeologist of the Etruscan civilization, on the trail of a famous royal tomb. Vasco is a hotelier in the area which is enriched by plundering the graves and selling their treasures. Tania is the beautiful, thirteen year old, niece of Vasco (played by 18 yr old Brigitta Boccoli ) that disturbs the mature scholar Larth by attempting to seduce his wife Leonora. There is treasure, thievery, murder and seduction. Oh, and a red car.
Documentary featuring interviews with several of legendary Spanish director Luis Buñuel’s close friends and collaborators.
Love between Georges and Hypolyte has faded. George confides in Catherine that he is still obsessed with Hypolyte. He wishes that she was a virgin but since she is not, he wishes that she was dead.
A police drama set in an unidentified and oppressed South American country among a group of conspirators. The main characters are two sisters Soledad and Tita.
Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.
Michel Jussieu, a film producer, returns one morning to the cabaret where he forgot his sweater. He discovers the corpse of an extreme right-wing journalist, but immediately he is knocked out. He wakes up in the police station ...
Two women, Karen (theatre director) and Lena, visit an island, a Swedish resort, where Lena's ex-husband, Martin (choreographer), lives in comparative seclusion with a mentally disturbed ballet dancer named Carl. Carl is brother by guilt rather than blood, for Martin is somehow responsible for his breakdown.
A teenager who suffers from his mother's escapades imagines the life of his father in San Francisco.
Film based on the meditations of Christian philosophers Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Laurent Terzieff was more than a good actor, after having been a real "star" in the cinema, through his professional choices, he gradually became a real "conscience of the theater", so much had he thought about his art. He received six Molière awards and was always unanimously praised by his peers. “THE GHOST OF LAURENT TERZIEFF” is a daring portrait, as it explores in depth “the secrets of a soul” and the atypical journey of the actor.
The film tells the birth of a love story and its evolution between the vicissitudes, the frenzies and the complications between the two young protagonists.
Evocation of the Algerian War based on a poem by Franck Venaille recited by Laurent Terzieff.
Part of a 6-film collection called “Grands Détectives” about famous fictional private detectives.
A solitary, disappointed, proud and educated old man meets and becomes the teacher of an intelligent, clumsy, middle-class, young would-be writer.
This music-themed drama is set in Barcelona of the mid-'80s. When famed composer Lluis Doria visits a transvestite club, he learns his lifelong friend Albert Rossell is the house pianist. A flashback takes the tale four decades into the past, where the younger Rossell rejoins Teresa after having spent years in prison for helping anti-Franco anarchists. The story continues into Paris of the '30s, the period when Doria and Rossell first met, sharing a mutual interest in music and Teresa, before civil war sent them in different directions.
Feeling complicit in a heinous act of her husband, a woman sinks into decay, then recovers and becomes a nun
A village in 1942. The arrival of a German officer disrupts the lives of the inhabitants. Gradually, however, they are seduced by the soldier's good humor, who then proposes a game: Russian roulette. The priest warns the inhabitants against this devilry. But the game of killing has only just begun...
A TV film of the play by Edward Albee. Mild-mannered, complacent Peter is startled when an aggressive stranger, Jerry, starts haranguing him as he sits quietly on a park bench.
Adaptation of the Racine play. Titus, Roman Emperor, is torn between his love for the captive Queen Bérénice and his duty to marry a Roman.
Documentary showing Laurent Terzieff's theatre company preparing a production of Murder in the Cathedral, featuring interviews with Terzieff, his partner and collaborator Pascale de Boysson, and other actors.
Documentary reconstructing Laurent Terzieff's career on the basis of INA archive footage, from his early stardom to his complete devotion to the theatre.