Brigitte Sy

Acting

Brigitte Sy

Born

1956-01-26 (70)

Place of birth

Paris, France

Known for

Acting

Credits

47 titles

Brigitte Sy (born 26 January 1956) is a French actress and filmmaker. Her directorial film debut, Les Mains libres, was released in 2010 to critical acclaim in France. She is the mother of the actors Louis Garrel and Esther Garrel whom she had with the director Philippe Garrel. In an Arte short film collection about AIDS awareness, she revealed that she has been HIV-positive since 1990, contracted from a partner who previously had a drug addiction. She also addresses the issue in Les mains libres and L'endroit idéal where the protagonist, Barbara (played by Ronit Elkabetz), is HIV-positive. She opposes the feminist #MeToo movement (#BalanceTonPorc in France) and signed an anti-metoo letter …

Known for

Film credits

2020s · 4 titles

2010s · 13 titles

All That Divides Us poster
5.5

A middle-class house in the middle of nowhere. A council estate in Sète. A mother and daughter. Two childhood friends. A vanishing. Blackmail. A clash between two worlds.

All That Divides Us

2017

Street Flow poster
6.9

Noumouké, from the suburb of Paris, is about to decide which brother's foot steps to follow - the lawyer student Soulaymaan or the gangster Demba.

Street Flow

2019

A Place on Earth poster
5.7

Antoine is a joyful but disenchanted photographer. His only true friend, Mateo, is 7 years old and the son of his neighbor, who is often absent. One day, he hears a piano sonata coming from the building across the courtyard. Mesmerized by the music, he becomes obsessed by Elena, the beautiful but mysterious pianist, and starts to photograph her at every opportunity. An intense relationship develops between fragile and idealistic Elena and Antoine, who is transformed by this encounter.

A Place on Earth

2013

Declaration of War poster
7.0

Roméo and Juliette are two young actors. They fall in love at first sight, move in together and make a baby. A love story and the founding of a home like millions of others. Except that their little boy, Adam, behaves abnormally. The young parents try hard to persuade themselves that everything is okay but, with the passing of time, they cannot delude themselves anymore: their son has a problem. From now on, war is declared. A war against illness. A war against Death. A war against despair.

Declaration of War

2011

The Invisibles poster
7.0

Following a city councils decision, a women's shelter will soon be closed and social workers have only three months to accommodate the residents.

The Invisibles

2019

A Better Life poster
6.3

Yann, a cook, and Nadia, a waitress and mother of 9-year-old child, decide to risk everything on the purchase of a restaurant. With plenty of talent, energy, love and dreams, but no finance of their own, they find themselves forced into a jungle of financing and bank loans that quickly overwhelms them. To bail them out, Nadia has to take a job in Canada, while Yann is forced to stay behind to save the restaurant. Together, he and the child confront a relentless avalanche of creditors, an uncaring system and the daily grind from which there is no respite… Yann finally understands that his only chance of salvation lies in joining his lover – as well as reuniting mother and child – by following Nadia to Canada and a better life.

A Better Life

2011

Wild Life poster
6.4

The new film by French director Cédric Kahn focusses on Philippe Fournier, a man who lives with his 2 sons, having decided not to give them back to their mother after she won custody of the children. The children Okyesa and Tsali must grow up in the shadow, hunted by the police but always free and on the move.

Wild Life

2014

Closed Circuit poster
6.0

Hired to oversee the security of a superstore, Pierre soon discovers a dark secret and becomes a threat to the system he helped create.

Closed Circuit

2013

Online Billie poster
NR

The story of a wannabe actor who falls in love with a camgirl.

Online Billie

2019

Unexpected Love poster
5.8

Jeanne Dorwa, 57, faces early retirement when she falls head-over-heels in love with 35-year-old Pascal, throwing her life and everyone around her into turmoil.

Unexpected Love

2015

Nuts poster
4.9

François has everything he could ever want, until he is kicked out of the house by his wife after his umpteenth slip up; after moving back in with his parents, he vows to win her back.

Nuts

2013

Vandal poster
6.7

15-year-old Chérif feels like a million bucks behind the wheel of a stolen car. Placed under the guardianship of his Aunt and Uncle, he has to return to his apprenticeship as a mason. It's his last chance. But every night graffiti artists descend upon the city's walls. And with this, a whole new world opens up before him...

Vandal

2013

The Last Screening poster
6.1

Sylvain, a young man, devotes his life to small, local movie theater destined to be shut down. He lives in the theater's basement and is the theater programer, projectionist, and ticket seller. Each night, after the last screening, he leaves the building to carry out a ritual killing.

The Last Screening

2011

2000s · 7 titles

Fear(s) of the Dark poster
6.2

Several scary black-and-white animated segments in different styles appeal to our fear(s) of the dark.

Fear(s) of the Dark

2007

Regular Lovers poster
6.9

1968 and 1969 in Paris: during and after the student and trade union revolt. François is 20, a poet, dodging military service. He takes to the barricades, but won't throw a Molotov cocktail at the police. He smokes opium and talks about revolution with his friend, Antoine, who has an inheritance and a flat where François can stay. François meets Lilie, a sculptor who works at a foundry to support herself. They fall in love. A year passes; François continues to write, talk, smoke, and be with Lilie. Opportunities come to Lilie: what will she and François do?

Regular Lovers

2005

Nice poster
10.0

Martial, seventeen year-old, has ran away to Nice, to see his mother, singer with a chaotic life. Near her house, he meets three women : an employee of the Organization managing unemployment, a former classmate, and owner of the place. Three educational and sentimental fragments. Three secrets. Three songs.

Nice

2009

Rien dans les poches poster
4.3

25 years of the life of Marie, a Parisian party girl, first teenager leaving her mother at 17, then short star of the song, and finally mother of a teenage girl, Esther, who flees as she fled her mother.

Rien dans les poches

2008

Choosing Love poster
7.1

In Paris, a university student attempts to lead a double life - in love with her French boyfriend Pascal, and staying true to her Algerian family, particular her strict, traditional father. In Algiers, her cousin Yacine leads a parallel life, preparing to leave his girlfriend to move to Paris.

Choosing Love

2008

Versailles poster
6.0

A young mother Nina and her son Enzo find themselves sleeping on the streets of Paris. Eventually there lifestyle leads them to Versailles.

Versailles

2008

Déluge poster
8.0

I am there. I say nothing. In the lounge, the boxes still opened from our moving in. My father. My mother. Come to comfort me. Her father. Her mother. Incapable to say the words. To put into words what has happened. And outside, the rain. Diluvian. Improbable.

Déluge

2006

1990s · 4 titles

I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar poster
7.1

For those who were young, living under the delusions of love and soft drugs in Paris, May 1968 - even if the guitar is still playing, they can't hear it any longer.

I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar

1991

Crack 6T poster
5.8

Outwardly a chilling portrait of the aimless lives of unemployed inner city youths living on society's fringe, the underlying message of this volatile drama seems to call for violence to rectify social injustices. The film centers on two teenaged gangs who basically terrorize their neighborhoods with their anarchic behavior. There are few limits to their unpleasant philosophy of "desire equals acquisition." The loosely structured tale reaches its climax at a concert where the two rival groups collide.

Crack 6T

1997

Genealogies of a Crime poster
6.5

An attorney defends a young man on trial for killing his aunt — a psychiatrist who took him in to study possible homicidal tendencies.

Genealogies of a Crime

1997

Melody for a Hustler poster
3.2

French novelist Vincent Ravalec made his directorial debut with this French drama about small-time crook Gaston (Yvan Attal) who poses as a millionaire after he picks up hitchhiking 16-year-old Marie-Pierre (Virginie Lanoue). Actually living in a seedy apartment, Gaston deals in stolen goods, but he soon climbs to bigger heists, including car thefts. Concealing his illegal activities, Gaston operates his company, Extramill, out of upscale, posh offices, while he and Marie-Pierre move into a sedate upper-middle-class neighborhood. Life is sweet, but the onset of paranoia, kinky sex activities, and police probes eventually culminate in violence.

Melody for a Hustler

1998

1980s · 5 titles

1970s · 2 titles

Series credits

Behind the camera

Astragal poster
5.5

On a night of April 1957, Albertine, a brillant and rebel 19-year-old girl, jumps from the wall of the prison where she’s serving a sentence for a holdup. In her fall, a bone from her ankle breaks: the astragal. She is rescued by Julien, a justice fugitive, and so is born a burning passion between them. He takes her to Paris and hides her. But while he leads his gangster life here and there, the young woman struggles for her freedom and against the wounds inflicted by Julien’s absence, and writes poetry.

Astragal

2015

Astragal poster
5.5

On a night of April 1957, Albertine, a brillant and rebel 19-year-old girl, jumps from the wall of the prison where she’s serving a sentence for a holdup. In her fall, a bone from her ankle breaks: the astragal. She is rescued by Julien, a justice fugitive, and so is born a burning passion between them. He takes her to Paris and hides her. But while he leads his gangster life here and there, the young woman struggles for her freedom and against the wounds inflicted by Julien’s absence, and writes poetry.

Astragal

2015

Le bonheur est pour demain poster
5.7

Anna, stuck in a relationship with an authoritarian and violent man, falls in love with Claude who is planning a robbery. The robbery goes wrong and Claude ends up in prison.

Le bonheur est pour demain

2024

Le bonheur est pour demain poster
5.7

Anna, stuck in a relationship with an authoritarian and violent man, falls in love with Claude who is planning a robbery. The robbery goes wrong and Claude ends up in prison.

Le bonheur est pour demain

2024

Free Hands poster
5.5

Barbara is a filmmaker who has been working in the prison environment for a few years now. She is preparing a film written and directed by long-term inmates in a prison in the projects around Paris. Twice a week, Barbara goes to the prison where she shoots interviews with the inmates which will serve as a basis for the writing of their screenplay.

Free Hands

2010

Ogres poster
6.5

There's drama aplenty for the travelling theatre company Chekhov Cabaret. The actors share the good times and the bad as a nomadic tribe where work and private life always mingle. They don’t mince words, these obstreperous actors with a sardonic sense of humour. Theatre always comes first.

Ogres

2016