Alex Descas

Alma Lancaster, 18, appears to lead a perfect life within a wealthy family who believes she is studying law. In secret, she pursues her true dream: filmmaking. On campus, she meets Vadim Arcadi, 20, a magnetic and solitary rebel with a troubled past. Forced to collaborate on a student film, they clash, grow closer and fall in love — despite themselves. But someone is watching them, determined to tear them apart and expose secrets that could destroy both Alma and Vadim.

A head nurse defies hospital rules to let a mother stay with her malnourished son. As they navigate a complex crisis, the nurse's empathy proves just as vital to the boy's healing as medicine.

Father Cyril Nouvel has mysteriously disappeared. Yet it is at his initiative that his brother, Gendarme Louis Nouvel, and his mentor, Abbé Gomis, find themselves gathered at the site of an abandoned old fort. As they set out to search for him in this vast and oppressive place, tension rises between the two men. Even if they cannot admit it to themselves, each knows deep down that he holds a part of the truth.

After long years spent in exile in Paris, Lyubov, a strange and elusive woman, returns to her ancestral estate, about to be sold to pay off the family’s debts. As the centre around which the play revolves, forever oscillating between tragedy and comedy, this maternal figure, this mater dolorosa, played by Isabelle Huppert, returns to a family unsettled by the future of the estate, and more largely, by that of this world she left behind. Modern society, with its social changes, is right around the corner, noisily announcing its arrival.

Forest dwellers pound drums upholding rituals while urbanites cry "Progress!" More plunder the land's riches but newly defiant ones shout back.

Frantz Fanon alone embodies all the issues of French colonial history. Martinican resistance fighter, he enlisted, like millions of colonial soldiers, in the Free Army out of loyalty to France and the idea of freedom that it embodies for him. A writer, he participated in the bubbling life of Saint-Germain with Césaire, Senghor and Sartre, debating tirelessly on the destiny of colonized peoples. As a doctor, he revolutionized the practice of psychiatry, seeking in the relations of domination of colonial societies the foundations of the pathologies of his patients in Blida. Activist, he brings together through his action and his history of him, the anger of peoples crushed by centuries of colonial oppression. But beyond this exceptional journey which makes sensitive the permanence of French colonialism in the Lesser Antilles at the gates of the Algerian desert, he leaves an incomparable body of work which has made him today one of the most studied French authors across the Atlantic.

Chocolat the clown, the first black stage performer in France, goes from anonymity to fame after forming an unprecedented duo with fellow performer Footit in the very popular in Belle Epoque Paris. But easy money, gambling, and discrimination take their toll on their friendship and Chocolat's career.

Isabelle, Parisian artist, divorced mother, is looking for love, true love, at last.

Marco returns to Paris after his brother-in-law's suicide, where he targets the man his sister believes caused the tragedy – though he is ill-prepared for her secrets as they quickly muddy the waters.

After 30-year-old French war reporter Gabriel Dahan is taken hostage in Syria, he heads to India following months in captivity.

Rebecca is a cop in the Juvenile Division. One day, Mathieu Francoeur comes to the station, saying his son, Joachim, has been kidnapped by his mother Christelle, with whom he's separated. However Rebecca had seven years earlier witnessed the man being extremely abusive to his ex-wife and child...

In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, a middle-aged Port-au-Prince couple come face to face with the stark contradictions of Haitian society when they are forced to rent out their villa to a foreign aid worker and his enterprising local girlfriend.

The story revolves around 22-year-old Laure, who is trying to find her feet. After performing brilliantly in her literature studies, she enrols as a communications officer in the Naval Fusiliers. She will quickly have to adapt to and assimilate the rules that apply within the institution. But Laure is a determined woman, and she has a thirst for knowledge – still. A thirst to learn to get to know and be comfortable with herself, and to find her place.

After scuttling her career as a singer, Jewell Stone lives in Paris a job as a waitress. Marie, her grandmother and only family, who lives in Vermont, USA, arrives overnight to see her. But how to welcome her when Jewell tells her so long about her life, her work and her loves? From one letter to another, she has invented a career that works, a life with Paul, and even a girl, Ruby. But as an Italian proverb says, lies have short legs.

A companion to the director's Le Dos Rouge/Portrait of the Artist. A famous filmmaker works on his next film, which will focus on monstrosity. He is obsessed by the idea of finding a painting that will be central to the film and will crystallize all the power and beauty of monsters.

Newlyweds Shane and June arrive in Paris for their honeymoon. In the process of trying to find a cure for his strange, bloodthirsty disease, Shane stumbles upon the story of a doctor and his flesh eating wife.

An anthology of eleven vignettes featuring star-studded casts of extremely unique individuals who all share the common activities of conversing while drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.

A mysterious stranger works outside the law and keeps his objectives hidden, trusting no one. While his demeanor is paradoxically focused and dreamlike all at once, he embarks on a journey that not only takes him across Spain, but also through his own consciousness.

A beautiful woman, Sandra, seduces a wealthy businessman, Miles Rennburg. Little does he realise that she has been sent to kill him at the behest of her boyfriend/crime partner, Lester. Controlling all this is Sue, Lester's wife.

An emotionally cold man leaves the safety of his Alpine home to seek a heart transplant and an estranged son.

Ninth is a promising young rapper whose reputation does not exceed even the few streets of his neighborhood. With his band and supported by Keuj, hairdresser apprentice producer, he tries to attend concerts and trying to break into the music, to the chagrin of his mother, who would see him in a more conventional career at the post office...

Alphonse Brown, who firmly believes he is the bastard son of James Brown, meets up with his best friend Scotch after Brown gets out of jail. On their way to Paris to begin careers as recording artists, the pair stumbles across a potent type of marijuana that was engineered by the Nazis. Their decision to begin selling the stuff leads to a variety of people chasing after them.

A solitary man and his partner share a tense love/hate relationship. Their lives are disrupted when a stranger enters, gradually insinuating himself into their world. The stranger’s persistence creates strain, leaving the man with lingering questions about his motivations and the impact on his life.

Based on the legend of Tiresias, it tells of a transgender woman who is kidnapped by a man and left to die in the woods. She is then saved by a family and receives the gift of telling the future.

The true story of the rise to power and brutal assassination of the formerly vilified and later redeemed leader of the independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Using newly discovered historical evidence, Haitian-born and later Congo-raised writer and director Raoul Peck renders an emotional and tautly woven account of the mail clerk and beer salesman with a flair for oratory and an uncompromising belief in the capacity of his homeland to build a prosperous nation independent of its former Belgian overlords. Lumumba emerges here as the heroic sacrificial lamb dubiously portrayed by the international media and led to slaughter by commercial and political interests in Belgium, the United States, the international community, and Lumumba's own administration; a true story of political intrigue and murder where political entities, captains of commerce, and the military dovetail in their quest for economic and political hegemony.

Collection of short films the summaries of which include; a foreign man moving to Italy, getting married and having a child; a four split scene short involving plot-less images of old people with television sets for heads, a beautiful woman having sex, and overall confusion; and an old man reminiscing over his youth.

In 1988, after much cunning political maneuvering, Loïk Le Floch-Prigent and Alfred Sirven become the chief executives at Elf. They discover a company that runs on kickbacks: in exchange for the oil rights, Elf makes handsome but discreet payoffs to the leaders of African nations. With the tacit complicity of President Mitterrand, and with eventual political and personal interests in mind, the new management takes charge of the slush fund. Within months, Sirven, Le Floch-Prigent and his wife Fatima Belaïd fill their pockets with more than they could ever have imagined.

A widower and his daughter witness the retirement of a colleague of his and the closing of her department at her university.

"Tag!" - About the American malaria researcher Nkruma who arrives with a family to Gothenburg for a lecture at Sahlgrenska Hospital. Nkruma ends up in a strange prank. The adults play tag in the streets. Nkruma refuses to participate in the game. This will be fatal for him and his family.

A train conversation between an immigrant French woman and novelist Jean-Luc Nancy centering on the idea of intrusion within every foreigner (a more philosophical precursor to L'Intrus). A social commentary on the inherent fallacy - particularly in nations with a strong national identity like the U.S. and France - of the social notion that assimilation and integration embrace cultural differences; rather, it erases them.

Two childhood friends, Joshua and Flint, are adrift in boredom in their area of Sainte-Rose, Guadeloupe. They're involved in petty theft and ordinary System D, until the arrival of Marcus. Caught in a spiral, the difficult choices has to be done...

Portrait of Nord-Plage, a small neighborhood in the north of Martinique, which is slowly dying, and its last inhabitants, who have put aside their hopes and dreams.

Albert Renaud, a young French Canadian dreams of becoming a movie star and take the train to Hollywood. His trip is filled with adventures.

Following their mother's suicide, three children are the subject of a dispute between their gay half-brother and his infertile sister, who are fighting for custody.

It is the story of a prohibited and perverted identification: how an eight-year-old boy, entrusted to the care of his mother since the separation of the parents, meets and looks at his father, all day long.

A rich industrialist is brutally kidnapped. While he physically and mentally degenerates in imprisonment, the kidnappers, police and the board of the company of which he is director negotiate about the ransom of 50 million euro.

In 1988, supported by François Mitterrand, Loïk Le Floch-Prigent ran for the presidency of Elf. Alfred Sirven, through Christine Deviers-Joncour, introduced him to Roland Dumas. A year later, Le Floch-Prigent was appointed CEO of Elf Aquitaine. Sirven becomes Director of General Affairs at Elf...

On the eve of the fall of the Ottoman Empire: in the harem of Sultan Abdulhamit II, the odalisque of Italian origin Safiyè dreams of becoming the sultan's first mistress. To achieve her goal, the girl, aided by the eunuch Nadir, is even willing to kill. But when her dream is finally about to come true, her entire world suddenly collapses: the sultan is exiled, the harem is closed, and the odalisques and eunuchs are abandoned to their fate.

A has-been French filmmaker wants a Hong Kong actress to be the heroine in a rendering of Les Vampires.

Ninon is a spirited hotel-manager who teaches self-defense classes to her terrified eldery neighbors. Daiga, an aspiring Lithuanian actress newly arrived to Paris, becomes fascinated with the life of a mysteriously beautiful drag performer.

Teenage siblings Nenette and Boni were raised apart as a result of their parents' divorce. Their mother, who doted on her son Boni, has died. He works for an interesting couple as a pizza baker, and is surprised and enraged when his younger sister, having run away from boarding school, suddenly turns up. There's a problem that they must confront.

A book editor juggles relationships with two women while coping with his best friend's terminal illness.

A young woman visiting Paris misses the last bus home and finds herself stranded on the outskirts of Paris. Entering a local club, she meets a troubled drug addict.

Four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler -- journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.

After much hesitation, a gigolo decides to take a shot of a radical remedy to save his failing virility.

A moving world of spirits and ghosts, condemned to brush against one another without really meeting since they have all emerged from a single perpetual dream: that of a young man who no longer wants to wake up, immersed as he is in this world of fascinating spectres.

No synopsis available yet.

A compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.

Dah and Jocelyn come from former French colonies to coach their rooster, "S'en fout la mort", for an illicit cock-fight in the basement of a restaurant.

One of a series of short films inspired by paintings. In this video, Jacques de Loustal's Le Contemplatif or "Duo".

This drama focuses upon the psychological adjustment problems of a young boy whose family moves him from Africa to Paris, France. Moctar, a boy whose first 11 years were spent in a small village in Mali, is having difficulty adjusting to his new life in Paris. After several years in Paris, Moctar suddenly sees a terrible hyena in the street. When Moctar tries to explain his vision, he becomes the laughingstock of his peers and a patient for the school psychologist. No one believes Moctar, not even his parents, until he is befriended by Paulo who helps Moctar understand.

Images of the Port Dauphine subway terminus are accompanied by a text read aloud about masturbation (branler is slang for jacking off) in this short subject.

A series of six dramatic shorts, each from a different African country and all on the broad theme of "love in Africa."

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), the mission doctor, theologian and philosopher who founded a hospital in the rainforests of Gabon, achieved sainthood in his lifetime, at least in the popular imagination. The critical assessment of his life and works in recent years, however, has been slightly more ambivalent. Ba Kobhio Bassek is the first director to examine this medical missionary from a purely African point-of-view.

In the nightclub where she works, Carole is dreaming. She has always dreamed of leaving her rainy Roubaix, her heavy guys and her lousy prospects. She is dreaming of Goa, India, where she thinks she will soon move with her friend Nora... She is dreaming about this, when Nora wakes her up with a catastrophic face... Nora, her best friend, who also works at the Emergency, and not at the night emergency room as her parents believe... Nora is sure she is pregnant. From Olivier, a rich son of a local family who had promised her marriage and a mansion.... In fact of promises, he is quick to back out, and only Carole's presence of mind allows them to get money from him, price of his cowardice. A little money moreover, that brings closer to Goa...

The humanitarian aid expedition "Angeles Azules" (Blue Angels), comprising twelve Europeans and six trucks loaded with provisions to alleviate hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa, advances across the continent. As a result of the difficulties the team encounters, disorganization gradually takes over the convoy. Each of the members of the group, little by little, yield to their petty, selfish impulses: violence, power, nostalgia - The breakdown of one of the trucks forces Michele and Nadia to wait at an oasis for the arrival of spare parts. But a starving local tribe settles threateningly near them. The chief of the tribe makes a speech they don't understand, which is followed by a macabre purification ceremony.

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.

The meeting of Manuel, a lady's dancer, Petrus, an unfortunate gambler, and Corinne, a fast-food waitress. The drifting of three drop-outs, three solitary dreamers, adventurous waverers.

As two long-lost blood brothers grow closer, seduced by the idea of their shared history finally making sense, they must confront the uncomfortable truths at the heart of their family, and the impossible decision that their parents made thirty years ago.

After surviving a mass shooting, Madame P., an internationally renowned opera singer, retreats into a world where dreams and reality blur freely. Walls come alive, figures dance in fireplace flames, tiny people need rescuing from dumplings, and an armadillo — her unlikely companion since the tragedy — follows her everywhere. A close friend and companion helps her navigate daily life. Her everyday life in a medieval mansion is interrupted by two American outsiders who arrive full of good intentions.