Production
François Margolin
Born 1957-03-29 · Paris, France
François Margolin, born on the 29th of March 1957, alumnus from FEMIS (French National Film School), combines the hats of writer, director and producer. He directed Mensonge in 1994, with Nathalie Baye, The Opium of the Talibans in 2001 and Les Petits Soldats (about Child Soldiers in Liberia) in 2005. His first short movie, Elle et Lui, won the famous Jean Vigo Prize. His work as a producer won him to work with prestigious directors like Raoul Ruiz (Nucingen House, Dias de Campo), Hou Hsiao-Hsien (The Flight of the Red Balloon), Raymond Depardon (Empty Quarter, une Femme en Afrique), Olivier Assayas (Boarding Gate) or Costa Gavras and Abbas Kiarostami for the omnibus documentary À propos de Nice, la suite. In 1986 he created the production company of Médecins Sans Frontières in Paris and worked as a journalist during the eighties for Liberation and L’Express, in Africa and Afghanistan. He published a successful book about the Black Jews of Ethiopia, We were the only Jews in the World, in 2008.
Acting credits
5.5In one of his very last projects, Raul Ruiz celebrates the films of his historical predecessor Jean Painlevé, a documentary innovator whose work always blended science with surrealism. Ruiz and friends further perfect the art of mystification. Why it is so difficult to count fish in an aquarium? Ruiz, his loyal actor Melvil Poupaud and his producer François Margolin come up with a wide range of hypotheses. With their bone-dry wit, they keep up the tradition of the French pataphysics: the science of imaginary solutions. (IFFR)
Ballet aquatique
2012
6.3Surreal gothic comedy about a gambler who wins a strange Chilean mansion and takes his frail wife there.
Nucingen House
2009
Behind the camera
NRIn October of 2016 the battle for Mosul, the Islamic State's self-proclaimed capital in northern Iraq, began. With unprecedented access, Bernard-Henri Lévy and his team follow the Kurdish units and the Iraqi special Golden Division. From street to street, they fight together to regain this city of two million inhabitants. Though successful, the hopes of the Kurdish fighters might not always align with those of their allies.
The Battle of Mosul
2017
5.7From July to December 2015, with a camera team in tow, Bernard-Henri Lévy journeyed 1,000 km along the frontline separating Iraqi Kurdistan from Islamic State troops. The journey resulted in an illustrated logbook offering a special insight into an unfinished war with a global impact. Alongside the Peshmergas – Kurdish fighters imbued with a spirit of unfailing determination in their fight against obscurantism and jihadism, the film takes us from the heights of Mosul to the heart of the Sinjar mountains, passing the last Christian monasteries threatened with destruction along the way. A tale peopled by real characters, men and women whose faces are rarely seen...
Peshmerga
2016
5.0A 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.
Boarding Gate
2007
6.9One year after the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy takes us to the heart of the combat through this war diary made during the second half of 2022. From Kharkiv and Bakhmut to Kherson, in the aftermath of the city’s liberation, this documentary bears witness to the ravages of war through the testimonies of soldiers, chronicles of the front and portraits of civilians, and shares with us the struggle of the Ukrainian people.
Slava Ukraini
2023
6.4A deminer in the war against Daesh, a Kurdish fighter loses his hand in an accident. He became a taxi driver but, not having a driving license for the disabled, the police seized his vehicle. Under pressure from his wife who wants him to go to Europe, the man is ready for anything...
Dirty Lands
2021
4.9Napalm is the story of the breathtaking and brief encounter, in 1958, between a French member of the first Western European delegation officially invited to North Korea after the devastating Korean war and a nurse working for the Korean Red Cross hospital, in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Napalm
2017
4.5After long decades of exile, a leftist former activist returns to Chile to settle accounts with his conscience, related to the death of a colleague and political hero . The task of Atalibar is to reveal his secret. But his view clashes with the current country, godless, far from the old ideologies and where all his old colleagues have changed.
Secrets
2008
6.3The first part in a new series of films produced by Musée d'Orsay, 'Flight of the Red Balloon' tells the story of a French family as seen through the eyes of a Chinese student. The film was shot in August and September 2006 on location in Paris. This is Hou Hsiao-Hsien's first Western film. It is based on the classic French short The Red Balloon directed by Albert Lamorisse.
Flight of the Red Balloon
2007
6.3The first part in a new series of films produced by Musée d'Orsay, 'Flight of the Red Balloon' tells the story of a French family as seen through the eyes of a Chinese student. The film was shot in August and September 2006 on location in Paris. This is Hou Hsiao-Hsien's first Western film. It is based on the classic French short The Red Balloon directed by Albert Lamorisse.
Flight of the Red Balloon
2007
6.3Surreal gothic comedy about a gambler who wins a strange Chilean mansion and takes his frail wife there.
Nucingen House
2009
4.0Emma has been happily married to Charles, a hardworking journalist, for over ten years. They have a son, and are considering having another child when she learns that she is both pregnant and HIV-positive at a time when Charles is away. As Emma has never used drugs or slept around, and has never had a blood transfusion, there can only be one source for her infection: her absent husband. Shocked to the core by this turn of events, she goes through his things and finds an address book with the names of many women in it. Determined to discover what has been going on, she begins contacting every name in the book. She continues her investigations even after her husband, whom she confronts over this, returns.
Mensonge
1993
7.6In a bar in Santiago, two old men talk over their past. This is a strange discussion. In fact, they talk of themselves as if they were dead. We don't know what is true or false, what is dream or reality.
Days in the Country
2004
6.2Sarajevo on 28 of June, 2014. At the Hotel Europa, the best hotel in town, the manager Omer prepares to welcome a delegation of diplomatic VIPs. On the centenary of the assassination that is considered to have led to World War I, an appeal for peace and understanding is supposed to start from here. But the hotel staff have other worries: having not been paid for months, they are planning to go on strike. Hatidza from the hotel laundry is elected strike leader even though her daughter Lamija, who works in reception, is firmly against industrial action. Meanwhile, in the sealed-off presidential suite, a guest from France rehearses a speech. Elsewhere, a television reporter conducts interviews about war and its consequences. Was Gavrilo Princip, the 1914 assassin, a criminal or a national hero? What long shadow does his deed cast into the present?
Death in Sarajevo
2016
4.0The frustrated loves of Jean Cocteau and Raymond Radiguet at the beginning of the 1920s. The death of Radiguet that sank Cocteau into opium. A story under the influence of drugs. A narrative in the spirit of Cocteau. And all this in a musical.
Opium
2013
3.6A young woman is searching, today, in Paris, the collection of paintings stolen from her Jewish family during WWII.
The Art Dealer
2015
3.6A young woman is searching, today, in Paris, the collection of paintings stolen from her Jewish family during WWII.
The Art Dealer
2015
3.6A young woman is searching, today, in Paris, the collection of paintings stolen from her Jewish family during WWII.
The Art Dealer
2015
7.7A documentary that takes us to the heart of jihadism in Mali
Jihadists
2016
6.0"Sons of Cain" is set in a small village in northern Albania. In this place time is suspended and the severe rules of an old code (Kanun) still dictate the life and death of the inhabitants. A group of seven children obliged to live under this code meet and discuss the story of Cain and Abel. Creating their own dream space, partially consciously and partially not, they create an analogy between their own stories and Bible stories. Stuck on the fine line between reality and forgetfulness, this is one of the few chances they have to come to grips with their traumas and emotions.
Sons of Cain
2021
4.2"Don Juan woman", according to the expression of Balzac. A princess, a great seductress. Of a diabolical intelligence. This woman, who has had many lovers— almost all the male characters of the "Comédie Humaine“— will finally find love. The real one. The great one.
Les secrets de la princesse de Cadignan
2023
Petr studies law in Prague, Jakub studies philosophy there. They are the best of friends until their holiday trip to Slovakia is crossed by a Romani young man named Imro. Imro is in love with Eržika, who is guilty of breaking an ancient tradition by breaking her vow of loyalty. The vow is the law. In a fit of jealousy, Imro kills his beloved. Two punishments await him. One from the majority "white" society, the other from his own Roma community. Petr and Jakub watch Imro's tragic fate from close proximity and their views on the matter of justice and punishment begin to diverge diametrically. The academic controversy eventually escalates into a fundamental conflict of life attitudes that almost destroys their friendship. Whose side is the truth on?
The Pilgrimage of Students and Jacob
2000
5.6Anthology of short films about the French city of Nice, by various directors. A homage to Jean Vigo and his "À propos de Nice" from 1930.
Concerning Nice
1995
9.0No synopsis available yet.
Les petits soldats
2004
9.0No synopsis available yet.
Les petits soldats
2004
