French films about dreamers

A man entranced by his dreams and imagination is lovestruck with a French woman and feels he can show her his world.

Jean-Marc is a man without qualities living in times that are out of joint. His wife and children ignore him; he's a mid-level government functionary in Montreal doing his job without care. He has an active imagination of sexual conquest, but his only real feelings come when he visits his aged mother, whose health is failing. When his wife leaves abruptly to work in Toronto, Jean-Marc sets out to reorder things with his daughters, his social life, and at work. In a world that at best is a farce, does he stand a chance?

Diagnosed with an incurable illness, Charles, a rugby tycoon who has made a fortune in New Zealand prints an ad in his hometown looking for his sister that he's not seen in fifty years. A notary clerk, believing that Charles has a terminal illness responds to Charles' search for heirs claiming to be his sister. Charles finds that he was misdiagnosed and returns to France to meet his long lost sister.

Michel, who's crazy about jazz, has just found a rare album that he dreams of quietly listening to in his living room. But the world seems to have conspired against him: his wife chooses this moment to divulge an ill-timed revelation, his adult son makes a surprise visit, one of his friends knocks on the door, while his mother keeps calling him on his smartphone. Not to mention that today the residents in his apartment building are holding their annual House Party. Manipulative and a liar, Michel is ready to do anything to have a moment of peace and quiet. Is it still possible, in this day and age, to just have one hour of peace?

At 40, Stephanie loses her job and is forced to move back in with her mother. She is welcomed with open arms to the joys of overheated apartment, Francis Cabrel playing on loop, Scrabble games and precious motherly advice on how to behave at the table and live her life.

Michel, a fifty year old man, graphic designer, decides to change the urban lifestyle and go on an adventure. Fascinated by airmail, he dreams at Jean Mermoz when he's on scooter. One day, Michel sees a picture of a kayak.

Asterix crosses the channel to help second-cousin Anticlimax face down Julius Caesar and invading Romans.

The ambiguous suicide of a local beauty, weathergirl, cheese model, and Marilyn Monroe look-a-like finds an eager sleuth in David Rousseau, best-selling crime novelist. When Rousseau visits a remote Alps village for the reading of his friend's will he unwittingly, but irresistibly, gets caught in the tangled web of murder and small town politics in this off-beat mystery.

Sacha is a real seducer, a man with no ties or emotional or professional. Charlotte is a modern and independent woman, but barely has time to care for their three children. While Sacha and Charlotte are, at first glance, two incompatible beings, when they meet soon discover that they are quite complementary and need each other.

A couple’s verbal sparring intensifies with shoving, punching and wrestling, escalating to the point where their frequent fighting sessions become real love battles…

Bright days ahead? Caroline has retired, at last. A new life lies before her: time to take care of her children, her husband, and, most of all, herself. However, she soon comes to realize that this new freedom is synonymous with boredom and idleness. Especially when she receives a membership to her neighborhood’s senior club as a birthday present… Reluctant at first, she nevertheless decides to take the plunge. Oddly enough, she meets great people there, starting with the young computer science teacher, who is far from insensitive to her charms. Caroline gradually takes control of her life again and lives a second youth: taking a new lover, living new experiences, breaking the rules, not doing what’s expected of her… Who said that retirement was the beginning of the end and not a new beginning?

15-year-old Tom (Simon Royer) is going to spend another calm summer with his parents and younger sister at their summer house. But by fate, another family comes to spend some time with them, with their 17-year-old son Félix (Marin Lafitte). In the unforgettable summer, Félix will introduce Tom to new things...

Orson Welles' unfinished masterpiece, restored and assembled based on Welles' own notes. During the last 15 years of his life, Welles, who died in 1985, worked obsessively on the film, which chronicles a temperamental film director—much like him—who is battling with the Hollywood establishment to finish an iconoclastic work.

Jorge de Sena was forced to leave his country. First he moved to Brazil, and later to the USA. He never returned to Portugal. During his 20-year-long exile, he kept an epistolary correspondence with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. These letters are a testimony of the profound friendship between the two poets, letters of longing and of desire to “fill years of distance with hours of conversation”. Through excerpts and verses, a dialog is established, revealing their divergent opinions but mostly their strong bond, and their efforts to preserve it until their last breaths.

There is a plot under way to change the course of history. Four kids are chosen to be the Freedom Force—a gang of unlikely heroes who travel through time to change the outcome of sacred stories.

Sarah's life is in pieces after the brutal death of her 18 year-old son. One night, her car accidentally hits Arthur, a young man the same age as her boy who is running from a burglar. Sarah sympathizes with him and takes him in, only to be tracked down by the burglar whose murderous rage towards Arthur forces her to take action.

Formerly successful television producer Joachim Zand returns from America to his native France, where he previously has left everything behind, including friends, enemies and his own children. In his company is a burlesque striptease troupe whom he has promised a grand performance in Paris. Together they tour the French port cities, staying at cheap hotels and making success along the way. Old conflicts are however reignated upon the return to the French capital. Joachim is betrayed by people from his past, making him lose the venue where they were to perform, and the Paris finale comes to nothing.

Willy and Tony have a brilliant idea for getting out of it financially: stealing a dog from the brigade des stups. But everything does not go as planned and the two accomplices will have to rely on the most corrupt of the cops.

Four separate episodes deal with stereotypical ideas about Jews: their alleged influence on politics, the stereotype of Jewish business-mindedness, the Mossad, the Jewish world conspiracy and the memory of the Holocaust.

Ariane Felder is pregnant! This is surprising with her being a young hardened judge with strict morals. But what is more surprising is that, according to paternity testing, the child's father is none other than Bob, a criminal from the prosecution charged with an atrocious attack! Ariane doesn't remember any of what has happened, so she has no idea what to expect...

They are the perfect French haute bourgeois couple: Paul is a respected surgeon and Lucie cooks and gardens exquisitely. But now, in the autumn of his life, Paul can’t resist the lure of an ambiguous and dangerous relationship with a mysterious young woman. Might there be something sinister behind the roses delivered to his office and the “chance” meetings?

In the hospital where she works in Brest, France, a lung specialist discovers a direct link between suspicious deaths and state-approved medicine. She fights single-handedly for the truth to come out.

Serge Tanneur (Fabrice Luchini) is at the pinnacle of his acting career when he decides to turn his back on show business and become a hermit living off of France’s Atlantic coast. Three years later, Gauthier Valence (Lambert Wilson), a beloved TV actor, shows up on the island to offer Serge a role in his directorial debut – a rendition of Molière’s classic play, “The Misanthrope”. Serge refuses at first, but then suggests that they rehearse the first scene and after five days he’ll decide if he wants to dothe play or not. What ensues is a battle of brawn and wits and peculiar encounters with a hotel maid who longs to be a pornstar and an Italian divorcée.

Two unlikely friends — a supply teacher and a lonely young boy suspended between two estranged parents — embark on a weekend motorcycle voyage full of surprises and unforeseen consequences in this surprisingly tough, unsentimental drama.

Twenty year old Antoine has made enemies of a gang of young thugs, to whom he owes money. Fed up with his scams and petty crimes, his mother and older brother decide to send Antoine to his father's place in Saint-Etienne. The two men haven't seen each other for several years.

An Iranian family survives the shah and the ayatollah and moves to France. This story follows the family through it all. Despite the politics, revolution, prison, beatings, assassinations and suicides this is a comedy.

Martin, an ex-Parisian well-heeled hipster passionate about Gustave Flaubert who settled into a Norman village as a baker, sees an English couple moving into a small farm nearby. Not only are the names of the new arrivals Gemma and Charles Bovery, but their behavior also seems to be inspired by Flaubert's heroes.

He’s lived for too long off his parents. It’s time for 40-year-old slacker Jacques to get by on his own. One-time gigolo and a borderline bum, he knows what he wants – to become rich and famous. He even has a business plan: tourism combined with cheap plastic surgery. Jacques moves in with his older sister, Monique, who manages an Emmaus village in the south west of France. And before long, the smooth-talking chancer has convinced a group of workers to pool their meagre funds and set out on a trip to a clinic in Bulgaria, where all their dreams of a brighter and more beautiful future will all come true. If only…

In the sterile setting of a powerful multinational, two young women compete ... Isabelle is working under the orders of Christine, a woman of power she admires unreservedly.

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Ombline, a 20-year-old woman, is sent to prison for three years after committing a violent assault on a police officer. Just when she has lost all hope for the future, she discovers that she is pregnant. The law allows her to rear her newborn for the first 18 months of its life, after which time the child must be given up and placed into state care. Ombline has no intention of surrendering her beloved little boy and is prepared to do anything to convince the authorities that she is capable of rearing the child after she has left prison. As her maternal instincts assert themselves, the young woman finds she has a cause worth fighting for, and an opportunity to rebuild her shattered life…

While James More is held captive by terrorists in Somalia, thousands of miles away on the Greenland Sea, his lover Danny Flinders prepares to dive herself in a submersible into the deep bottom of the ocean, tormented by the memories of their brief encounter in France and her inability to know his whereabouts.

Everyone knows that Ruben is Jewish, gay, half-French, half-Finnish, an ungrateful son and disappointing lover, a thief who can’t help himself, and possibly a murderer to boot. The only person who doesn't know who Ruben is is Ruben himself. When he comes to a major turning point in his life, Ruben cannot make up his mind which way to go. Should he follow his people or his heart?

Arnaud Mustier, lawyer and brilliant philosopher, arouses the annoyance of his younger brother Jules, age sixteen. One day, Arnaud is a victim of a late adolescent crisis. Helped by Jules, he is going to catch up this phase of the life which he did not live.

Octave Parango, the former concept creator/editor of 99 francs has become a model scout in Moscow. This cynical hedonist leads a very pleasant life in the arms of young Russian models and in the private jets of his oligarch friends... until the day that he is contacted by The Ideal, the world's leading cosmetic's firm, embroiled in a huge media scandal. Our antihero has seven days to find a new muse by traveling through the confines of post-Communist Russia, under the orders of Valentine Winfield, a hard and authoritarian visual director.

Five brothers similar yet different, raised by a mother widowed too early. One of them had left the family when he returns, pursued by a gang of smugglers, he find shelter in his family while reveling them a dark secret. The five brothers, together, will find the energy to defend themself and the means to avenge the memory of their murdered father...

Set in London's world of high class call girls, Amoureux Solitaires tells the story of London based French escort Virginie, and Rupert, a man who rescues trafficked girls.

A middle-aged writer is looking for a quiet retreat; a slightly younger female estate agent gives him details of a house a close to Venice.

A strange and deadly mist envelops Paris. A group of survivors finds refuge on the upper floors of apartment blocks and on the roofs of the capital. With no information, electricity, food or water, a couple attempts to survive this disaster and save their daughter... But as the hours go by, one thing becomes quite clear: there is no help on the way, and if they want to make it through this catastrophe alive, they will have to try their luck in the mist…

Mr Guy aussi populaire que loufoque est un animateur à succès d'une émission de télé-achat. Et comme la nature fait quelques fois bien les choses, Mr Guy se trouve malencontreusement et pour son plus grand plaisir embarqué dans une sombre histoire mêlant les services secrets de la république à un réseau de dangereux trafiquants venus de l'Est.

Stuck in the corridors of time, Godefroy de Montmirail and his faithful servant Jacquouille are projected to a time of profound political and social upheavals: the French Revolution... specifically, The Terror, time of great dangers, during which the descendants of Godefroy and Jacquouille had their castle and all their property confiscated by arrogant aristocrats, fleeing and lifes hanging by a thread.

Two mismatched cops team up to investigate the murder of a business mogul's wife.

Stockholm Syndrome. Feelings arise between a young kidnapper and his victim, a woman surgeon. He seeks revenge for a medical accident that prevents him from living peacefully and decides to kidnapp the woman he holds responsible. When the latter manage to escape, she can't stop to meet her kidnapper again, for reasons of love and of vengeance.

On a business trip to the Cannes Film Festival, Manhee is accused of being dishonest and fired. A teacher named Claire goes around taking photos with a Polaroid camera. She gets to know Manhee and sympathizes with her. Through taking photos, Claire has acquired the ability to look slowly at things and to transform objects.

From the moment they meet, brooding Chris and the beautiful Aurore fall instantly and passionately in love but it's not long before their intense connection is consumed by Chris's dark obsession with gay men. Before long, the pair embarks on a violent and sexual journey filled with seduction and destruction of young gay hustlers.

A Buddhist monk walks barefoot and incredibly slowly through Marseille – so slowly, that his progress is barely perceptible and he becomes a calming influence in the midst of the town’s goings-on.

A man leaves prison after a 15-year sentence and returns to his home district to find that it has changed completely, almost beyond recognition. He will find it hard to adjust to a world that is governed by a totally different set of rules...

Nono, a Dutch kid lacking two days being thirteen, runs away from problems at home and, disguised as a girl, takes up with the world's cleverest thief, who unbeknownst to Nono, may hold the bizarre key to his true identity.

A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his French teacher. Faced with this gifted and unusual pupil, the teacher rediscovers his enthusiasm for his work, but the boy’s intrusion will unleash a series of uncontrollable events.

A recent college graduate flees to Paris after a break-up, where his involvement with a prostitute begins to reveal a potentially dark recent past.