Jean-Michel Carré

Directing

Jean-Michel Carré

Born 1948-07-26 · Paris, France

Jean-Michel Carré, born July 26, 1948, in Paris, is a French film director, documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, film producer, and screenwriter. Coming from a modest background, he first studied medicine before turning to filmmaking, a passion he cultivated since his adolescence. He attended IDHEC (now La Fémis), where he earned degrees in filmmaking and directing. From the very beginning, Carré was committed to militant and activist filmmaking. In 1968, he made a documentary on Cuba, which was banned from broadcast, marking the beginning of his commitment to denouncing social and political injustices. In 1974, he co-founded the first censored film festival, affirming his desire to bring about social change through his works. He founded the production company Les Films Grain de Sable, dedicated to criticizing social institutions and systems. His filmography is rich and varied, including documentaries and fiction films that address themes such as working conditions, human rights, and social struggles. Among his notable works are The Putin System (2007), I (Have a Very Bad Day at Work) (2007), and Sex Workers (2010). Carré is also known for his immersive approach to documentaries. For example, for Burning Coals (2000), he spent a year with miners in Wales to capture their reality with authenticity. His work has received numerous awards, including the FIGRA Grand Jury Prize for Kursk: A Submarine in Troubled Waters (2004). His commitment is not limited to cinema, as he has also explored international issues such as apartheid, conflicts in the Middle East, and transformations in China. In 2013, he spoke of his libertarian Maoist past, a contradiction he accepts to explain his interest in complex and nuanced subjects.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Drôle de genre poster
5.3

Dominique Bazin is a 40-year-old woman, business manager, married to Camille, English teacher. They have three children, including an infant. Dominique, a modern day superwoman, divides her time between her lover Maxime, her work meetings and her family life. Camille is a perfect housekeeper and a caring father, who unknowingly suffers from his routine lifestyle.

Drôle de genre

2003

Lest We Forget poster
7.0

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.

Lest We Forget

1991

J'ai (très) mal au travail poster
NR

Stress, harassment, violence, depression and suicide are the themes the media evoke with increasing frequency when it comes to the world of work. Jean-Michel Carré spent over a year conducting a basic investigation into how the French relate to work and the way it is organized by new management methods. The film seeks to gauge the cost in pain or pleasure when an employee manufactures, resists, creates, finds fulfilment or breaks down.

J'ai (très) mal au travail

2007

Inside Tibet poster
10.0

For around fifteen years, no Western camera has been able to get to the heart of Tibet. In this challenging and revelatory doc, Director Jean-Michel Carré gains authorisation over several months to film the human, economic and political realities of the region – one that exists outside time, but which is still in constant evolution towards a modernity imposed by China. With contributions from residents and regional experts, the film generates a new perspective on this region, which has become, despite existing under China’s control, a nexus of global geopolitical influence.

Inside Tibet

2023

Inside Tibet poster
10.0

For around fifteen years, no Western camera has been able to get to the heart of Tibet. In this challenging and revelatory doc, Director Jean-Michel Carré gains authorisation over several months to film the human, economic and political realities of the region – one that exists outside time, but which is still in constant evolution towards a modernity imposed by China. With contributions from residents and regional experts, the film generates a new perspective on this region, which has become, despite existing under China’s control, a nexus of global geopolitical influence.

Inside Tibet

2023

No artwork available
9.0

A César nominated short drama looking at the impact of prison life on an incarcerated nine year old boy.

L'enfant prisonnier

1976

No artwork available
9.0

A César nominated short drama looking at the impact of prison life on an incarcerated nine year old boy.

L'enfant prisonnier

1976

Burning Coal poster
10.0

In 1994, an economist decision by British Coal to close "Tower Colliery" in Aberdare (South Wales), convinced its miners boasting a generationally long history of political activism, that what they had was worth fighting for. In unanimous vote to buy out the company, every miner pledged 8,000£, many relinquishing severance pay. Then union leaders, Tyrone O'Sullivan and a few other miners, decided to become businessmen.

Burning Coal

2000

Visiblement je vous aime poster
4.7

A misanthropic Parisian street punk learns some difficult lessons after being captured for assaulting and robbing a man in this interesting French drama. This has not been the first time young Denis Lavant has been in trouble, and this time the judge sentences him to the Coral, an experimental open community founded in 1975 by Claude Sigala, in the wilderness of the Camargue. There he encounters a group of inmates just as neurotic and messed up as he is.

Visiblement je vous aime

1995

Visiblement je vous aime poster
4.7

A misanthropic Parisian street punk learns some difficult lessons after being captured for assaulting and robbing a man in this interesting French drama. This has not been the first time young Denis Lavant has been in trouble, and this time the judge sentences him to the Coral, an experimental open community founded in 1975 by Claude Sigala, in the wilderness of the Camargue. There he encounters a group of inmates just as neurotic and messed up as he is.

Visiblement je vous aime

1995

Putin: The New Empire poster
7.4

Since Russia was brought to its knees in the 1990s by crippling debt and the grip of the oligarchs following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin has made it his mission to return superpower status to Russia. While not partisan to Putin's wrongs, this insightful doc examines the logic and motivations of Putin's vilified regime, and why he is so loved in his homeland.

Putin: The New Empire

2016

The Putin System poster
7.4

The Putin System is a documentary chronicling Putin’s rise to power in Russia along with the implications for ordinary Russian people. Russia is once again flexing its muscles. This time its weapons are not the Red Army or its nuclear arsenal, but the huge energy resources lying under the Siberian tundra. Vladimir Putin is the man responsible for the reemergence of Russia as a global power, but how much is really known about him and his ascendance? This film explores his journey to the highest echelons of the Kremlin and contextualizes his rise against a newly belligerent Russia nostalgic for the past glories of the Soviet empire. This investigative documentary covers 30 years in the history of Russia through the personal history of Vladimir Putin: a man who has single-mindedly played all the rules of the game to reach the throne of power.

The Putin System

2007

Les Travailleu(r)ses du Sexe poster
5.5

No synopsis available yet.

Les Travailleu(r)ses du Sexe

2010

Kursk: A Submarine in Troubled Waters poster
6.2

No synopsis available yet.

Kursk: A Submarine in Troubled Waters

2004

Le Ghetto Expérimental poster
NR

First film about the University of Vincennes Paris VIII. After May 68, anyone could come to take classes there, without a baccalaureate or diploma. This film does not aim to take stock of the activities of Vincennes, nor to justify Vincennes, but rather to be a document on the political significance of Vincennes and the University in general.

Le Ghetto Expérimental

1975

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Trottoirs de Paris

1997

Galères de femmes poster
NR

This documentary follows a number of French women prisoners during the time of their imprisonment and after their release. Many of them are "in" for minor drug and prostitution-related offenses, and at least half of them are HIV positive. One woman promises she will kill herself before her beauty fades from the AIDS syndrome: two years later the filmmaker captures her, wan and wasted, but out of prison. Most of these women have grave difficulties finding work or housing when they are released, and are forced to resort to the same desperate measures that got them incarcerated in the first place.

Galères de femmes

1993

Votre enfant m'intéresse poster
8.0

"Your Child Interests Me" - analyzes the ideologies, the stages and the political choices which led to the contemporary and dominant concept of education.

Votre enfant m'intéresse

1981

Alertez les bébés poster
7.0

No synopsis available yet.

Alertez les bébés

1978

Tower Opera poster
NR

The idea of the current project was born during the making of the long documentary “Charbons Ardents” which dealt with the present-day struggle of a group of coal miners who had bought out their mine and become its sole owners. These miners accepted an offer put to them by the director Brendan Wheatley, to create an opera from the start of their adventure. The film will follow the creation of this new type of opera where two worlds, that of miners and artists come together to recreate the battle for Tower Colliery.

Tower Opera

2002

Prostituées et cœur de mères (Les enfants des prostituées) poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Prostituées et cœur de mères (Les enfants des prostituées)

1994

China, One Million Artists poster
NR

Documentary charting the rise of Chinese art following the death of Mao, and how some artists embraced Western styles while other critiqued it by hijacking communist propaganda.

China, One Million Artists

2018

Lisa Alisa poster
3.7

An elderly foreign diplomat working in Moscow meets a Russian girl Alice. The temporary absence of his wife and daughter, the same age as Alice, favor the beginning of a stormy romance. For her it is a feeling and passion, for him it is an unexpected gift of fate. But the relations that have arisen with the return of the diplomat's family should be interrupted, because they will harm his family life and career. The girl cannot accept that what happened is only an episode in her life, and in revenge she kidnaps his daughter...

Lisa Alisa

2001

China New Empire : China Awakens poster
NR

Home to a fifth of the world's population, the newly-minted superpower will soon be the largest economy on earth. Yet it remains little understood in the West. This three-part documentary offers a bold step towards overturning that ignorance. With the most sumptuous production values possible, it skilfully glides from historical enquiry to current analysis in a deep yet accessible tour de force. Timely, comprehensive, and magisterial.

China New Empire : China Awakens

2013