Daniel Toscan du Plantier

Successful writer/director Bernard Rougerie is at a creative dead end and decides to isolate himself from his wife in order to complete the script for his next film. Bernard moves into an apartment building whose tenants are in the midst of a revolt against their abusive landlord. Reluctant at first, he joins their cause and then becomes involved in an affair with young, unemployed resident Anne.

We thought we'd seen, read, and heard everything there was to see about the Cannes Film Festival, from the glitz and gossip to the scandals and censorship. And yet, Emmanuel Barnault's "Morceaux de Cannes" (Pieces of Cannes), by this leading expert on Italian and French cinema, convinces us otherwise. The third largest event in the world (after the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup) reveals its secrets only sparingly, as this film attests. The result of passionate research in the INA archives, these 52 minutes, without interviews or voice-over narration, string together rare and sometimes previously unseen footage. Taken together, they tell a surprising, original, and heartwarming story of the Festival. On the beach, on a street corner, in a restaurant, or in the privacy of a hotel room, these forgotten archives summon the greatest filmmakers, actors, and actresses of the last seventy years, from Jean Cocteau to David Lynch, for an anthology of the Festival's history.

A second-class horror movie has to be shown at Cannes Film Festival, but, before each screening, the projectionist is killed by a mysterious fellow, with hammer and sickle, just as it happens in the film to be shown.

Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made.

In WWII France, poor and illiterate Henri Fortin is introduced to Victor Hugo's classic novel Les Misérables and begins to see parallels between the book and his own life.

Olivia, Irina and Masha are improving their acting skills. They no longer believe in Prince Charming, and their career is waning. Olivia works at the front desk at the airport and offers a wonderful plan: he would do so that friends will be aboard the Paris - New York plane and will sit next to wealthy men. Their task is to seduce the rich and pull them out of money. But the fraudsters do not suspect that Comissaire Bayard and his young assistant are closely watching them...

A look at Fellini's creative process. In extensive interviews, Fellini talks a bit about his background and then discusses how he works and how he creates. Several actors, a producer, a writer, and a production manager talk about working with Fellini. Archive footage of Fellini and others on the set plus clips from his films provide commentary and illustration for the points interviewees make. Fellini is fully in charge; actors call themselves puppets. He dismisses improvisation and calls for "availability." His sets and his films create images that look like reality but are not; we see the differences and the results.

Documentary showing one day of work of over 90 actors and filmmakers from French cinema on the same day. On 27 March 2002, 27 teams filmed actors, directors, producers and technicians at work, from Hawaii to Paris and from New York to Lisbon.

Noël Godin and his supporters throw a pie with cream into the face of Daniel Toscan du Plantier in the Palace of the Film Festival of Cannes 1996.

Two men, fifty years young, seduce younger women at the Cannes Film Festival and are quite successful as long as there are no youngsters among them.

It is unnecessary to introduce Toscan de Plantier, the famous French film producer. Right from the instant of his death, the idea arose to retain, focus on, and seize the spark that had just disappeared. This would be done by reconstructing, through several hundred interviews over nearly thirty years, the puzzle of this thinker who, under his flamboyant strolling player exterior that celebrated art and life like a party, was extraordinarily true to himself, and from a truly cultural background with which he irrigated the field of action of cinema. His energy, enthusiasm and implacable conviction should excite, move, enlighten, surprise, and provide food for thought, well beyond the professional context that was his, to an era that sorely needs it.

Portrait of film producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier, shot in Paris (France) on February 11, 1999 at 3:45 PM.

A real estate agent leaves behind his beautiful wife to go to Transylvania to visit the mysterious Count Dracula and formalize the purchase of a property in Wismar.

Behind the scenes of the theater, while the last performance has just ended, the comedian returns to his box.

Her name is Mina, but she is called Bambola (doll). Upon the death of her mother, she and her homosexual brother, Flavio, open a pizzeria. A man named Ugo loans Bambola the money, but is then killed in a fight with another one of her boyfriends, Settimio. While visiting Settimio in jail, she meets a sadistic man named Furio, and they begin a relationship.

Célimène, a beautiful young widow, chooses to keep her many suitors hoping in order to preserve her freedom, even though she is drawn to one of them, Alceste. An idealist, Alceste refuses to play the social game; he seeks to persuade the young woman to abandon her strategy and give herself over to an exclusive love. Theater play "Le misanthrope" played by the "Comédie française" in 2000. Rather than a simple recording of a live theater performance, this version was explicitly structured as a television movie. It blended cinematic camera work with the theatrical script.

As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a stern bishop. The bleak situation gradually grows worse as the bishop becomes more controlling, but dedicated relatives make a valiant attempt to aid Emilie, Fanny and Alexander.

Russian poet Andrei Gorchakov journeys through Italy with his interpreter Eugenia to research the life of an 18th-century Russian composer who once lived abroad. Isolated and consumed by an unrelenting longing for his homeland, Andrei becomes drawn to Domenico, a radical mystic obsessed with spiritual redemption. Through austere imagery and extended temporal rhythms, Tarkovsky examines exile, memory, and the profound melancholy of being unable to belong fully to either place or language.

A forged 500-franc note is passed from person to person and shop to shop, until it falls into the hands of a genuine innocent who doesn't see it for what it is—which will have devastating consequences on his life.

Two segments make up this short film. The first portion called “The French” has two men taste testing some delicious wine, and the other, titled “The Gauls”, is of men playing rugby. This short by Werner Herzog is part of the “The French as Seen By…” series. It was initiated and sponsored by the newspaper Le Figaro, as part of the 1988 celebration of the tenth anniversary of its magazine section.

Fifteen-year-old Suzanne seeks refuge from a disintegrating family in a series of impulsive, promiscuous affairs. Her fulsome sexuality further ratchets up the suppressed passions of her narcissistic brother, insecure mother and brooding, authoritarian father.

Charles drifts through politics, religion and psychoanalysis, rejecting them all. Once he realises the depth of his disgust with the moral and physical decline of the society he lives in, he decides that suicide is the only option...

Carl Herickson, a big American film star, unwillingly upsets a Parisian trio: a newspaper editor, his theater actress wife, and their fiery journalist best friend.

Pomme is a meek and mild French beautician whose life takes a fateful turn during a vacation to Normandy. She becomes the lover of middle-class literature-student François. The relationship sours when François takes her home to meet his parents, thanks in no small part to their differing social backgrounds.

Sylvie, Corinne and Sophie all live in the same accommodation in Paris. The first sells clothes on the steps. The second works in a factory restaurant and the third is divorced, has a child and does odd jobs.

Two distant cousins meet at a wedding banquet for an elderly couple. Over time, a close friendship develops between them, but their spouses begin to think that they are more than just friends.

When a wealthy patriarch falls ill on his 70th birthday, three of his sons rush in from Calcutta, leading to a reunion filled with painful ironies and lingering disillusionment. As the family—including an addled fourth son who lives with the old man—watches and waits, the static occasion brings out simmering tensions in their family dynamics, from the father’s moral rectitude to the business ambition of two sons and the withdrawal of their siblings.

Satan tempts Father Dossignan, who is trying to save the soul of a young girl who killed one of her lovers.

After leaving the asylum, Vincent van Gogh settles in the home of Doctor Gachet, where he keeps painting amidst the torments of his failing mental health. He begins an affair with his host’s daughter, however, she soon realizes that he doesn’t love her and that his heart beats only for art.

A grizzled, hard-of-hearing cowboy, Slim, and his two friends, Dusty and Pete, capture a mysterious, well-dressed Frenchman.

Theater play "Les fourberies de Scapin" played by the "Comédie française" in 1998.

Cio-Cio-San, a young Japanese geisha, seeks to fulfill her dreams through marriage to an American naval officer. Her faith in their future is shattered by his empty vows and the loss she endures touches something deep within us all.

Two actors performing in Strindberg's "Inferno" as God and Lucifer, find themselves competing in real life as well. One of them, Max Monteiro, has spiritual obsession with John Wayne and his way of walking. He and Jean de Dieu, his fellow actor who plays Lucifer and also directs the Strindberg play, engage in a philosophical and spiritual tug-of-war, especially when they meet an author named God, who has plans for another drama to feature both actors.

The story of Polish pedagogue Janusz Korczak and his dedication to protecting Jewish orphans during the war.

A well-off family is paid an unexpected, and rather unwanted, visit by a man claiming to be the woman's long lost uncle. The initial suspicion with which they greet the man slowly dissolves as he regales them with stories of his travels, tales that are at odds with their conventional middle class perspective on the world.

Jacques asks a public writer to compose love letters for a beautiful stranger that he pretends he has just met.