
Directing
Paul Vecchiali
Born — Died
1930-04-28 — 2023-01-18
Place of birth
Ajaccio, Corse-du-Sud, France
Known for
Directing
Credits
68 titles
Paul Vecchiali (April 28, 1930 - January 18, 2023) was a French filmmaker and author.
Known for
7.4Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse, young husband and father François finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnès Varda's most provocative films, 'Le bonheur' examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world.
Happiness
1965
7.4A lonely young widow lives with her son following an immutable order: while the boy is in school, she cares for their apartment, does chores, and receives clients in the afternoon.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
1976
5.3A radiant young sex worker thrives amidst the clients of Paris’s Les Halles under the protectiveness of her pimp. Her carefully balanced existence unravels when she meets a working‑class man and falls in love, forcing her to confront the emotional and social consequences of pursuing a different path.
Rosa la rose, fille publique
1986
5.2Louis is a family man, with a wife and young daughter, who discovers in mid-life that he is gay.
Once More
1988
4.0Nine short films about love.
Archipelago of Love
1983
4.3Different aspects of homosexual romance are explored in this compendium of ten short vignettes encompassing a broad look at AIDS and range for the tale of a lesbian teen trying to come out to her parents, to a gay man who shocks his lover by claiming to be pregnant, to another man's reminiscence of a brief affair with an HIV-positive man.
Love Reinvented
1997
Film credits
2020s · 3 titles
5.8A theater actress leaves her show to retire with her sick son to her childhood city.
Un soupçon d'amour
2020
NRFrom 2016 to 2021, Laurent Achard directed four portraits of filmmakers: Vecchiali, Brisseau, Stévenin, and Mazuy. The fifth (Carax), begun in 2023 at the Villa Medici, remained unfinished. He nicknamed it “The Chairs.” “When we consider how familiar death is, and how complete our ignorance is, and that there has never beenany escape, we must admit that the secret is well kept!” (Jankelevitch)
My Own Way
2026
NRWhen his train stops at Draguignan station, Jean-Luc suddenly decides to get off and pay an impromptu visit to his father, who he hasn’t seen in over six years. An answer to "Adieu au langage" by Godard.
Bonjour la langue
2025
2010s · 15 titles
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Jean Aurenche, écrivain de cinéma
2010
5.0"Train de vies" crosses a series of characters who, in pairs, confess to each other their innermost desires and their most secret memories.
Train de vies
2018
NRA documentary about the French film director Paul Vecchiali.
Qui êtes-vous Paul Vecchiali?
2012
NRA film in which the house is itself a fundamental element and in which Vecchiali assumes the role of a recurring character, who responds by diverse names. It is the film of Vecchiali in which the representation of the ghosts is literal, in the bodies and spirits of the director and Edit Scob.
Retour à Mayerling
2011
NRAn exchange, between Palermo and Paris, between a director who signs an autograph and his recipient who receives it, while listening to an extract from his favorite film.
L'autographe
2013
5.8Laurent is seeking a path in life after living his childhood and teenage years in laziness. He has a conflictual relationship with Rodolphe, his father, and both are too emotional to express their mutual affection. Despite the women of his life hanging around him , Rodolphe has but one obsession: meeting Marguerite again, the first love of his life.
The Dunce
2016
7.0Laurent Achard set up his camera on the set of Paul Vecchiali’s film Le Cancre to capture the director’s creative power. Although Vecchiali’s precision is impressive, Achard also shows moments where his collaborators’ input is essential. Under the director’s eye, the stars are becoming actors again, and Achard revives the heritage of Vecchiali’s '70s and '80s production studio Diagonale.
Un, parfois deux
2016
6.9Danielle Darrieux - icon and actress of the century: as a 16-year-old, the French actress perfectly embodied what we would call an "It Girl" today. She conquered Hollywood at a young age with elegance and charm. She defied the taboos of patriarchal society. The documentary takes a look back at Darrieux's 80-year career.
Danielle Darrieux : Il est poli d'être gai !
2019
5.9A man walks every night along the jetty. There he meets a young woman who is waiting for the man of her life. Over four nights, they discuss life and he gradually falls in love with her.
White Nights on the Pier
2014
4.2Odile suspects her husband, Jean, is cheating. Thus she decides to give him a taste of his own medicine. Fate gets her in touch with an actor, Daniel, who she will use for her revenge. The actor, living with a former serviceman, Albert, will make love with her. But there will be unexpected consequences: Odile and Daniel will be bound forever by an irrepressible love.
It's Love
2016
NRAfter moving to Provence, Vecchiali started shooting a series of films that have Villa Mayerling as their main focus. Esotericism and intrigues bath the film around the character of Alain, a shady summer worker.
Les gens d'en-bas
2010
NRDocumentary about the the film critic and filmmaker Jean-Claude Biette.
Biette
2013
1.0In the fall of 2010, Bozon and co-conspirator Pascale Bodet commandeered the first floor of Paris’s famed Centre Pompidou for 10 days of screenings, lectures and performances that amounted to a counter-canonical history of French cinema. During the ensuing merriment (entitled Beaubourg, la dernière Major !) audience members were invited to observe the daily making of this film, directed by Bozon and written by Axelle Ropert, about an inexperienced young journalist (Laure Marsac) sent to the Pompidou to interview a maverick artistic impresario (Thomas Chabrol). The result is an unexpected love story that is also a record of this landmark exhibition, featuring cameos by Raul Ruiz, Paul Vecchiali, Luc Moullet and more !
L'Imprésario
2010
2.0A young man (hypothesis 1) and a young woman (hypothesis 2) refuse any dinner or other invitations so as to give themselves over to an evening ritual.
The Ceremony
2014
1.0After the death of his partner, a man discovers on the Internet that the latter had virtual relations with another man.
Wrong Harmonies
2014
2000s · 3 titles
5.5French independent director Paul Vecchiali playfully bites the hand that periodically feeds him (and many of the nation's other creative filmmakers) in this dark comedy. Writer and director Vecchiali stars as a moviemaker named Paul Vecchiali, who is trying to complete his latest project, a dramatic love story about a young couple whose relationship is complicated by the man's addiction to drugs. Short on funds, Vecchiali approaches the National Cinema Center, who offer loans and grants to independent filmmakers whom they believe are deserving. The NCC is less than impressed with Vecchiali's latest script, and they turn him down, just as they have done a number of times in the past. Angry and determined that the NCC will never break the spirit of another director, Vecchiali and his crew block out a plan to assassinate the nine members of the funding board, though the press and public seem more bemused than outraged by the sudden rash of killings.
À vot' bon cœur
2005
5.6A cinephile meets his favourite film maker on a beach in Ramatuelle. He proposes a film project to the director based on the painful adventures that he has just experienced. The two men work on the scenes, each in its own way. The film maker keeps pushing the project, arguing that the shooting is not good. But perhaps there's another reason not to leave the good adventure.
Bareback ou la Guerre des sens
2006
NRA documentary on the professional and personal affordances of the influential sound engineer Antoine Bonfanti.
Antoine Bonfanti, sonic traces of an engaged listening
2002
1970s · 2 titles
7.018 years after his father died of cancer a man discovers the diary of his illness.
Maladie
1978
5.3Pierre Lentier murders an 8-year-old in horrendous circumstances. This 30-something solitary factory worker who lives on the edge of society is sentenced to death. A damning indictment of the death penalty and the manipulative behaviour of the media.
La Machine
1977
1960s · 2 titles
7.4Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse, young husband and father François finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnès Varda's most provocative films, 'Le bonheur' examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world.
Happiness
1965
4.3Unfinished film by Jean Eustache . A couple kisses. A group of friends talk inside a room. One of them reads from a paper.
The Evening
1961
Behind the camera
7.4A lonely young widow lives with her son following an immutable order: while the boy is in school, she cares for their apartment, does chores, and receives clients in the afternoon.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
1976
5.3A radiant young sex worker thrives amidst the clients of Paris’s Les Halles under the protectiveness of her pimp. Her carefully balanced existence unravels when she meets a working‑class man and falls in love, forcing her to confront the emotional and social consequences of pursuing a different path.
Rosa la rose, fille publique
1986
5.3A radiant young sex worker thrives amidst the clients of Paris’s Les Halles under the protectiveness of her pimp. Her carefully balanced existence unravels when she meets a working‑class man and falls in love, forcing her to confront the emotional and social consequences of pursuing a different path.
Rosa la rose, fille publique
1986
5.2Louis is a family man, with a wife and young daughter, who discovers in mid-life that he is gay.
Once More
1988
5.2Louis is a family man, with a wife and young daughter, who discovers in mid-life that he is gay.
Once More
1988
5.2Louis is a family man, with a wife and young daughter, who discovers in mid-life that he is gay.
Once More
1988
4.0Nine short films about love.
Archipelago of Love
1983
4.3Different aspects of homosexual romance are explored in this compendium of ten short vignettes encompassing a broad look at AIDS and range for the tale of a lesbian teen trying to come out to her parents, to a gay man who shocks his lover by claiming to be pregnant, to another man's reminiscence of a brief affair with an HIV-positive man.
Love Reinvented
1997
4.3Different aspects of homosexual romance are explored in this compendium of ten short vignettes encompassing a broad look at AIDS and range for the tale of a lesbian teen trying to come out to her parents, to a gay man who shocks his lover by claiming to be pregnant, to another man's reminiscence of a brief affair with an HIV-positive man.
Love Reinvented
1997
6.0Émile targets women he believes are too depressed to go on living. As multiple victims fall to his suffocating white scarf, an inspector resorts to unorthodox methods to get him with the assistance of a potential victim.
The Strangler
1971
6.0Émile targets women he believes are too depressed to go on living. As multiple victims fall to his suffocating white scarf, an inspector resorts to unorthodox methods to get him with the assistance of a potential victim.
The Strangler
1971
5.8A theater actress leaves her show to retire with her sick son to her childhood city.
Un soupçon d'amour
2020
5.8A theater actress leaves her show to retire with her sick son to her childhood city.
Un soupçon d'amour
2020
5.8A theater actress leaves her show to retire with her sick son to her childhood city.
Un soupçon d'amour
2020
10.0The struggle of Victor Schœlcher for the abolition of slavery in the French colonies.
Victor Schœlcher, l'abolition
1998
NRA man sings next to a young girl playing the piano. A bucolic landscape, smiles, pensive faces. With them stands a woman (their mother?) who listens to them play and sing.
With Feeling
1987
4.3A reluctant boxer is the focus of this unique French romance. Maurice dreams of becoming a violinist. But his father, a former boxing champion crippled by his bouts, has other dreams for his pudgy but strong 18 year old son. He wants Maurice to become the next Champ. Concerned about his son's lack of machismo, the father arranges a tryst between Maurice and Nora, an aging femme fatale. Unfortunately Nora's jealous husband suddenly interrupts their romantic interlude. Maurice accidently kills the husband in the ensuing scuffle. United by the tragedy, Nora and Maurice eventually fall in love. Maurice is then inspired to become a great fighter.
Wonderboy
1994
4.3A reluctant boxer is the focus of this unique French romance. Maurice dreams of becoming a violinist. But his father, a former boxing champion crippled by his bouts, has other dreams for his pudgy but strong 18 year old son. He wants Maurice to become the next Champ. Concerned about his son's lack of machismo, the father arranges a tryst between Maurice and Nora, an aging femme fatale. Unfortunately Nora's jealous husband suddenly interrupts their romantic interlude. Maurice accidently kills the husband in the ensuing scuffle. United by the tragedy, Nora and Maurice eventually fall in love. Maurice is then inspired to become a great fighter.
Wonderboy
1994
5.4Simone, a leather-clad porn theater worker, spends her shifts bantering with her coworker and observing eccentric customers in the cinema’s lobby. Tonight, she clocks out and heads off to meet her girlfriend, a waitress at a lesbian club. Later, she’ll encounter a lonely man on the prowl.
Simone Barbès or Virtue
1980
7.1A night of drinking in a local cafe quickly turns to tragedy for two of its patrons.
Guys in the Cafe
1989
7.1A night of drinking in a local cafe quickly turns to tragedy for two of its patrons.
Guys in the Cafe
1989
6.0An adaptation of Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa.
The Story of Rebecca
1964
6.0An adaptation of Jan Potocki's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa.
The Story of Rebecca
1964
Old Léon lives an hour outside Paris, in the company of one of his daughters, his son-in-law and his granddaughter. The latter agrees to take him to see his paralyzed cousin Adolphe in a Paris hospice. He takes the opportunity to visit his first wife, trying to get news of his daughter Louise, who is dead but whom he prefers to believe is alive. What remains is the haunting memory of the daffodils he planted for her...
Les jonquilles
1972
Old Léon lives an hour outside Paris, in the company of one of his daughters, his son-in-law and his granddaughter. The latter agrees to take him to see his paralyzed cousin Adolphe in a Paris hospice. He takes the opportunity to visit his first wife, trying to get news of his daughter Louise, who is dead but whom he prefers to believe is alive. What remains is the haunting memory of the daffodils he planted for her...
Les jonquilles
1972
5.0"Train de vies" crosses a series of characters who, in pairs, confess to each other their innermost desires and their most secret memories.
Train de vies
2018
5.0"Train de vies" crosses a series of characters who, in pairs, confess to each other their innermost desires and their most secret memories.
Train de vies
2018
6.2Aloise creates a series of haunting drawings while she is incarcerated in an institution for the insane in turn-of-the-century Switzerland. She endures torments as a musically gifted girl and later as a young woman; her developing madness and the barbaric treatments of the time are shown.
Aloïse
1975
5.0A documentary on Albert Camus.
Albert Camus
1974
7.2A woman returns after twenty years to Toulon where her husband, who collaborated with the nazis, was murdered. Her motives are unclear.
At the Top of the Stairs
1983
7.2A woman returns after twenty years to Toulon where her husband, who collaborated with the nazis, was murdered. Her motives are unclear.
At the Top of the Stairs
1983
4.0No synopsis available yet.
Cœur de hareng
1984
5.8Ginette Chaluzac, who has left Central France for Paris, now works as a seamstress in a modest workshop in the Marais district. Her life is quiet and uneventful until the day when, to her surprise, she receives a letter containing a hundred-franc banknote. The sender, who remains anonymous, renews his gift day after day and Ginette grows accustomed to the situation. Her material situation improves but after a while she starts asking herself questions about the one who sends her the money and his/her intentions. Till obsession. To make it clear in her mind she eventually decides to investigate...
The Devil's Tricks
1966
5.8Ginette Chaluzac, who has left Central France for Paris, now works as a seamstress in a modest workshop in the Marais district. Her life is quiet and uneventful until the day when, to her surprise, she receives a letter containing a hundred-franc banknote. The sender, who remains anonymous, renews his gift day after day and Ginette grows accustomed to the situation. Her material situation improves but after a while she starts asking herself questions about the one who sends her the money and his/her intentions. Till obsession. To make it clear in her mind she eventually decides to investigate...
The Devil's Tricks
1966
One of the last productions for Diagonale, before De sueur et de sang, the feature film with which Vecchiali would close the cycle of the French production company.
Fugue en sol mineur
1992
5.2A bisexual married man meets a gay man whilst bathing in a small deserted creek and they fall in love even though the gay man has AIDS... He describes this sudden passion in simple words. Paul Vecchiali contribution to omnibus film 'L'@mour est à réinventer'.
The Tears of AIDS
1996
3.5In a ruined house, four men and two women find a nun. All these people have deserted an anonymous war.
The Seven Deserters Or The Never Ending War
2017
3.5In a ruined house, four men and two women find a nun. All these people have deserted an anonymous war.
The Seven Deserters Or The Never Ending War
2017
7.018 years after his father died of cancer a man discovers the diary of his illness.
Maladie
1978
4.7Ginette is at phone with the famous Rachah Rangers, who hosts a daily radio program. She talks about her break with Richard, her various relationship problems, her desires, fears and reproaches. Her friend, Simone Barbes, advised her to live, urgently, a new relationship ...
C'est la vie !
1981


