Didier Sauvegrain

Kings & Queen

Shortly before her wedding, art gallery director Nora travels from Paris to Grenoble to visit her preteen son, Elias, who is spending time with her aging professor father, Louis, recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. During her stay, she reaches out to her former lover, Ismaël, a viola player and father figure to Elias who has been committed against his will to a mental hospital. Ismaël, however, has his own problems to sort out.

Les Sacrifiés

In 1955, a year after the birth of the National Liberation Front (FLN), Mahmoud was expelled from Algeria by the colonial authorities who feared his revolutionary speeches. At the age of 27, he arrived in the Algerian slum of Nanterre. Roughly questioned by FLN activists, in disagreement with the Algerian Nationalist Movement (MNA) who wanted to recognize theirs, he was then accepted as the local hairdresser and shoemaker. Subsequently, he became a driver during anti-MNA expeditions. Accepting increasingly dangerous missions, he is imprisoned by the French police and once again undergoes interrogations and special treatment by the police which will definitively undermine his sanity. One day, he no longer recognized his companions, and when joy broke out among the FLN militants, at the announcement of the signing of the Evian Accords, Mahmoud remained alone, frozen in an attitude of refusal, walled in his madness. Algeria has just won its independence.

Dossier 51

A French diplomat is surveilled by a secret service to find a weakness for political control, his private life becoming 'File No. 51'.

Safe Conduct

During the Nazi occupation of France as two filmmakers attempt to navigate their careers without compromising their ideals. Facing pressure from the Vichy government, assistant director Jean Devaivre uses his position at the German-controlled studio Continental Films as a cover for his resistance activities, while screenwriter Jean Aurenche uses his wits to keep from being involved in the creation of any collaborationist propaganda.

Le Beauf

Gilbert, assigned to incinerate old banknotes at the Bank of France, lives with his wife, Gisèle, and his young son, Thomas. A few years earlier, he had formed a rock band with Serge and Gisèle's brother, Marc. The latter, abusing his naivety, make him believe that he has been robbed of a briefcase containing a million dollars and that, because of his fault, Marc is in danger of dying. The objective is to force Gilbert to put his incinerator out of order to facilitate the bank robbery. Gilbert refuses at first, then gives in. But he discovers that he has been cheated. To get revenge, he tells the police the date and time of the robbery.

Le commissaire Perdrix ne fait pas le voyage pour rien

Paul Anselmini is a former mobster and businessman. A romantic character, a barbouze with no morals, no scruples, no values other than himself. Alone, yes, but free and once powerful. But this freedom is precisely what Commissaire Perdrix and Lieutenant Webb have come to take, two cops lost in a country and a time that are not their own.

Autumn

Jean-Pierre is a hit man in Paris. He wants to stop; an incentive is reconnecting to Michelle, a childhood friend. He's ready to commit himself to her, but she has her own secrets: she sells bomb components to thugs. He hears rumors of a missing briefcase, which he finds in Michelle's flat. He asks no questions, and soon both of them are in trouble with Jean-Pierre's ex-employer and with her bomb buyers. Two other characters complicate the maneuvering: Jean-Pierre's best friend, who's always losing money on the ponies, and the ex-employer's new contract killer, a seemingly fragile woman. Is there any way that Jean-Pierre can protect Michelle and escape with his life? Written by

Le Cri de la soie

An illiterate seamstress has a powerful fetish for silk which gets her into trouble. The psychiatrist sent to help her becomes fascinated by her case and when he returns to France from World War One they fall in love, an affair that can only end in tragedy.

Joan the Maid II: The Prisons

Jeanne d'Arc has succeeded in lifting the siege on Orléans and Charles VII has been ordained King of France. However, she is injured in her failed attempt to take Paris, weakening her position at court. When she is finally captured and put on trial, she finds both her life and the sanctity of her body at stake.

The Shoe

The directorial debut of French cultural provocateur André Saraiva is a collaboration with luxury footwear brand J.M. Weston, featuring his actress girlfriend Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Leo Fitzpatrick and model Poppy Delevingne.

Empire of the Wolves

When the young detective Paul Nerteaux finds the third slashed female corpse of illegal Turkish immigrants, he decides to ask for support to the experienced dark retired detective Jean-Louis Schiffer to chase the serial killer. Together, they infiltrate in the Turkish mafia trying to find the answer to the crimes. Meanwhile, the worker Anna Heymes is being submitted to a brain treatment and has severe headaches and glimpses of memories and visions. When these two parallel events collide, disclose that the Turkish organization "The Wolves" is behind them.

The Syringe

Good dope is becoming rare in the North of Paris. Drugstores are being raided by junkies and gangs are nervous, fighting each others: the 'Viets', the 'Blackies', the 'Arabs', the neo-nazis 'Justiciers' and some mean gays. Vincent (Daniel Auteuil) is the good cop coming from Marseilles where he was a gangster. He's a soft method guy but also kicks assses hard and throw lethal dialog lines when needed. With the precious help of 'l'Arbalète'* (Marisa Berenson**), a tox' prostitute ex-member of Vincent's former gang, he will try to put order in that mess. There's also a violent and racist cop (Marcel Bozzuffi), Algeria veteran with hard methods, whose role could be more than to protect and to serve.

Surprise Sock

Following a car accident, four men find themselves in the hospital, where they sow discord. Meanwhile, their wives take full advantage of their newfound freedom.

Déluge

I am there. I say nothing. In the lounge, the boxes still opened from our moving in. My father. My mother. Come to comfort me. Her father. Her mother. Incapable to say the words. To put into words what has happened. And outside, the rain. Diluvian. Improbable.

The Education in Love of Valentin

This sex comedy concerns the efforts of Julien to get his timid, "backward" 20-year-old son to take an interest in sex and get married. After a series of adventures with women (arranged by papa), Valentin finally gets married to a woman who appears to be as shy as he is. Things get complicated when his father begins an affair with her.

La Flambeuse

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.

Victor Schœlcher, l'abolition

The struggle of Victor Schœlcher for the abolition of slavery in the French colonies.

The $2 Haircut

The furniture factory in which all the young guys in this film work is also full of older workers who make fun of their long hair, which for them is a badge of their independence. The boss, particularly, thinks long hair on men is dirty. When they refuse to cut their hair, he finds an excuse to fire them. The meaning of long hair is felt particularly deeply for one fellow, a painter, who, when he succumbs to his fathers' pleas that he cut his hair, turns his paintings to the wall and burns himself to death.

Sarraounia

On 2 January 1899, starting from the French Sudan, a French column under the command of the captains Voulet and Chanoine is sent against the black Sultan Rabah in what is now the Cameroon. Those captains and their African mercenary troops destroy and kill everything they find on their path. The French authorities try to stop them sending orders and a second troop but the captains kill the emissaries who reach them. Sarraounia, queen of the Aznas, have heard about the exactions. Clever in war tactics and in witchcraft, she decides to resist and stop those mad men.

Royal Vacation

Informative but not dramatically charged, this fictional documentary looks at an incident in 1976 when a group of dissidents were forcibly exiled to an island hotel in order to keep them silenced during the visit of King Carlos of Spain to France. This pseudo-documentary features a Canadian filmmaker who is looking into the group of dissidents. He interviews them to get the story of what happened recorded for posterity. Among the group was another man of Spanish ancestry who suddenly arrived on the island but managed to find a way out. His future exploits are brought into question since there are certain terrorist connotations to his character.

Alexandre

Three years ago Ariane left Antoine, sending him a postcard announcing her departure for the mountains with a certain Alexandre. After a long journey abroad, Antoine returns to the site of his former relationship, where he meets Alfred, recently abandoned by Ariane.

The Royal Exchange

After many years of confrontation, the treasures of Spain and France are empty. In 1721, the regent of France draws up an ambitious plan to inaugurate an era of peace and prosperity that will heal the economies of both nations: his intention is to build a solid network of marriage alliances that will involve four children of very different ages who know nothing of betrayals and power games…

L'homme fragile

A middle class leftist man of the Seventies decade, starting to show signs of aging and a loss of identity, runs away from his commitments.

Lady Bar 2

The sequel of Lady Bar follows Jean and Pat opening a match-making resort on a beautiful Thai island while Jean's friend Polo finds himself soul-searching in a buddhist monastry.

I... For Icarus

Following the assassination of President Marc Jarry, a member of the investigation committee refuses to sign off on the committee's final findings.

Une robe noire pour un tueur

The "black robe" in the title of this suspense film belongs to a female lawyer, Florence Nat who has just lost a case in which she defended Simon Risler, a man wrongly accused of murder. Risler escapes before he can be put in prison, and seeks help from attorney Nat in finding the real killer, partly by going after the police inspector who framed him in the first place. A retired surgeon, in the process of setting up a drug rehab clinic gets involved in solving Risler's case, and soon the solution seems to be pointing to high-ranking figures with every desire and ample means to keep the truth well-hidden.

Umbrella Coup

Grégoire Lecomte, the unlucky actor anxious to find a "real job", goes to take a screen test for a role of a killer, but gets to mafiosi by mistake. He takes their don for a producer, and they mistake him for a hitman with whom they had an appointment. Deluded Lecomte signs contract with them. He is supposed to kill gun dealer Otto Krampe at his birthday party in Saint-Tropez by piercing him with a cap of the umbrella with a built-in syringe with potassium cyanide. Lecomte is not aware that it has to be a real murder.

Roads to the South

France, 1975. Jean, an exiled Spanish Communist, is a successful screenwriter who, after a tragic event, struggles with his political commitment, his love for his country, under the boot of General Franco, whose death he and his comrades have waited for years, and his complicated relationship with his son. (A sequel to “The War Is Over,” 1966.)

Les mélancolies de Sade

During the last years of his life, the Marquis de Sade was imprisoned. Alone in his wanderings, this man of letters wrote almost every day. We discover a man of exquisite complexity: his painful introspection reveals a man in love, a visionary, but also a fragile and terribly human being... this story flies in the face of presuppositions about Sade.

The Outsider

Philippe Jordan is a policeman prone to advancing the cause of justice by any means necessary. On his agenda is a powerful drug cartel working out of Paris and Marseilles, with a drug lord who is essentially inaccessible -- but not immortal.

Regular Lovers

1968 and 1969 in Paris: during and after the student and trade union revolt. François is 20, a poet, dodging military service. He takes to the barricades, but won't throw a Molotov cocktail at the police. He smokes opium and talks about revolution with his friend, Antoine, who has an inheritance and a flat where François can stay. François meets Lilie, a sculptor who works at a foundry to support herself. They fall in love. A year passes; François continues to write, talk, smoke, and be with Lilie. Opportunities come to Lilie: what will she and François do?

Joan the Maid I: The Battles

Convinced that only she can lead France to victory against the invading English, Jeanne d'Arc leaves her childhood home to plead Charles, heir to the French throne, to allow her to guide his troops on the battlefield.

Eugénie Grandet

Felix Grandet reigns supreme in his modest house in Saumur where his wife and daughter Eugenie lead a distraction-free existence. Extremely avaricious, he does not take a favorable view of the beautiful parties who rush to ask for his daughter's hand. Nothing should damage the colossal fortune he hides from everyone. The sudden arrival of Grandet's nephew, an orphaned and ruined Parisian dandy, turns the young girl's life upside down.

Enigma

Five highly-trained KGB agents are sent to the west to assassinate several Soviet dissidents. In order to stop the diabolical plot, an American agent must infiltrate Soviet intelligence and obtain information from a Russian computer.

Et avec les oreilles qu'est-ce que vous faites?

Two friends, Arthur and Jérôme, want to make a film. After much hesitation, they give up their primary aspirations and opt for a trendy theme: eroticism! Benefiting from a tidy sum of money, all they have to do is find the ideal cast. But the tandem is far from imagining that this somewhat crazy project will completely change their existence.

Replay

When François' wife Cecile was leaving him because of his affairs with other women, she had an auto accident. In this drama, he makes uses of her amnesia to try to win her back and misleads her at every turn in her quest to recover her memories.

There Were Days... and Moons

How can moon and time affect human mood and fate? In the manner of a Greek tragedy , this movie shows how the chaos of life ineluctably propels its characters towards violence and alienation.

A Crime of Our Times

Gabriel Axel's penetrating study of the aftermath of a crime. Bernard and Catherine lead a quiet life in retirement, enjoying their occasional sorties to the theatre or the cinema. One night, coming home on the Metro, they are jostled and jeered by a group of young hooligans who follow them out on to the street. Catherine dies. And Bernard, left alone, begins to question all the values he had previously taken for granted.