French films about dysfunctional families

Lu and Feng are a devoted couple forced to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner during the Cultural Revolution. He finally returns home only to find that his beloved wife no longer remembers him.

In a village on the Hungarian border, two young brothers grow up during war time with their cruel grandmother and must learn every trick of evil to survive in the absurd world of adults.

An awkward office drone becomes increasingly unhinged after a charismatic and confident look-alike takes a job at his workplace and seduces the woman he desires.

When Michèle, the CEO of a gaming software company, is attacked in her home by an unknown assailant, she refuses to let it alter her precisely ordered life. She manages crises involving family, all the while becoming engaged in a game of cat and mouse with her stalker.

The story of a destiny. Suzanne's and her family's. The ties that bind them, keep them together, and the love she pursues... to the point of leaving everything behind.

Laura is still waiting for Prince Charming at the age of 24. So when Sandro appears at a party, exactly like her Prince would in her dreams, she thinks she's found the right one. But then again, when she meets Maxime, Laura starts to wonder if some Princes could be more charming than others? Of course Sandro has problems of his own : his father, Pierre, just bumped into Madam Irma at his father's funeral and this reminded him of the date of his own death which Madame Irma had predicted ages ago. Now Pierre is unable to make any plans, not with his new partner Eleonore, nor with Sandro. And Maxime has his own problems, and so does Eleonore, Marianne, Jacqueline and many others. But don't worry, in the end, they'll all live happily ever after.

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.

Marie and Boris decide to get a divorce after 15 years of marriage. Tensions rise when cash-strapped Boris must continue to live with Marie and the two children while trying to figure out how to divide the assets.

The professional and emotional cross-currents between two romantically entwined theater actors played by the director’s son Louis and Anna Mouglalis.

Mathias Gold is a down-on-his-luck New Yorker who inherits a Parisian apartment from his estranged father. But when he arrives in France to sell the vast domicile, he's shocked to discover a live-in tenant who is not prepared to budge. His apartment is a viager—an ancient French real estate system with complex rules pertaining to its resale—and the feisty Englishwoman Mathilde Girard, who has lived in the apartment with her daughter Chloé for many years, can by contract collect monthly payments from Mathias until her death.

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?

After the death of her mother, a woman returns home to care for her sister.

Louis, a terminally ill writer, returns home after a long absence to tell his family that he is dying.

Bored and restless, Alice spends much of her time lusting after Jim, a local sawmill worker. When not lusting after him, Alice fills the hours with such pursuits as writing her name on a mirror with vaginal secretions and wandering the fields with her underwear around her ankles. And, in true teenaged tradition, she spends a lot of time writing in her diary.

A 12-year-old cartographer secretly leaves his family's ranch in Montana where he lives with his cowboy father and scientist mother and travels across the country on board a freight train to receive an award at the Smithsonian Institute.

In forgotten towns along the American border, a young mother drifts from one motel to the next with her intoxicating boyfriend and her 8-year-old son. The makeshift family scrapes by, living one hustle at a time, until the discovery of a mobile home community offers an alternative life.

Gerard is tired of being taken for a good apple by his beautiful family. He leaves everything and starts a garage in a village nestled at the bottom of the Gâtinais ... In front of the garage, there is a lovely inn, run by Barbara: a beautiful woman, disconcerting, mysterious, unpredictable. Their encounter will spark ...

For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

Retired Englishman George Hall's hypochondria worsens and takes its toll on his family.

Marion and Mingus both come from failed relationships but, by bringing their children together, they've managed to form a small yet happy family. Tensions in their household soon begin to spike when Marion's jovial father shows up on their doorstep with his randy daughter and her peculiar boyfriend in tow. As the motor-mouthed houseguests shatter every taboo imaginable, the happy couple begin to question their commitment.

Christmas, family, and infidelity. Yvette's husband has died, and her grown daughters join her at the grave: Sonia, wealthy, bourgeois, and generous; Louba, living with their dad Stanislas, singing at a Russian restaurant, penniless, the mistress for the past 12 years of a man who will never leave his wife; Milla, the youngest, acerbic, lonesome. Christmas was when they learned their parents were divorcing 25 years ago. Over the next few days, yuletide depression, Louba's pregnancy, Sonia's crumbling marriage, Stanislas's overtures to Yvette, and Milla's attraction to the man who's her father's rent-free lodger lead each one to re-examine self, family, and hopes. Is renewal possible?

In the summer, 27 year-old Sam drives towards the south of France in his Ford. He meets Matthieu and his sister Léa and takes them along in his apparently aimless journey. Matthieu has a crush on Sam and tries to seduce him. Léa is a beautiful, young, provocative girl who likes men so much that she got pregnant. She soon brings along Jérémie with them. Throughout the trip, they learn to know, fight and love each other. In spite of a blooming relationship with Matthieu, Sam isolates himself because of his secret: he is headed for Spain to find his long-lost mother.

Jean left his hometown ten years ago. When his father falls ill, he comes back and reunites with his sister Juliette and his brother Jérémie. As seasons go by around their vineyard, they'll have to trust each other again.

An outer suburb of Paris, 1972. Gilles and Christine, both sixteen, are classmates and lovers who have become frustrated with the aloofness of their families and the general monotony of their lives. When the pair are caught shoplifting, Christine's father ships her off to a home for emotionally disturbed children, temporarily putting space between her and Gilles. Luckily for them, though, she escapes and the couple contemplate running away together.

When Baldwin and Inga's next door neighbours complain that a tree in their backyard casts a shadow over their sundeck, what starts off as a typical spat between neighbours in the suburbs unexpectedly and violently spirals out of control.

A young girl living in the French countryside suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man.

Nikola’s children are taken away from him after social services decide that he is too poor to provide them with a decent living environment. He sets off on foot to lodge a complaint in Belgrade.

François, a young thirty-year-old Asian, has not been back in his family for 10 years after a violent dispute with his father Meng. Since then, he has always tried to avoid questions about his origins, until he lies to believe that he has been adopted. But when he learns that he is going to be a father, he realizes that he will have to reconnect with his past and his origins. Pushed by his companion Sophie, he decides to reconnect with his family and returns to his XIIIth native district to announce the good news, accompanied by his best friend Bruno. François is welcomed with open arms by his family, with the exception of his father and his younger brother. The return to his community is not going to be so simple .

Eka and Natia leave their childhood behind and ignore societal customs to escape from their turbulent family lives.

A young man travels to an isolated farm for his lover's funeral where he's quickly drawn into a twisted, sexually charged game by his lover's aggressive brother.

Kat Connors is 17 years old when her perfect homemaker mother, Eve, disappears. Having lived for so long in an emotionally repressed household, she barely registers her mother's absence and certainly doesn't blame her doormat of a father, Brock, for the loss. But as time passes, Kat begins to come to grips with how deeply Eve's disappearance has affected her. Returning home on a break from college, she finds herself confronted with the truth about her mother's departure, and her own denial about the events surrounding it...

In a Turkish village, five orphaned sisters live under strict rule while members of their family prepare their arranged marriages.

When their regal matriarch falls ill, the troubled Vuillard family come together for a hesitant Christmastime reunion. Among them is rebellious ne'er-do-well Henri and the uptight Elizabeth. Together under the same roof for the first time in many years, their intricate, long denied resentments and yearnings emerge again.

The story of an adult and a teenage couple during a brief summer holiday by the sea. While Nic's parents remain trapped in a precarious mutual dependency despite repeated attempts at reconciliation, their 12-year-old son tries to come to terms with his father's traumatizing violent outbursts in games with other children. He tries to teach Marie, who is of his age and suffers from her own relationship with her father, to feel nothing. In fact, both of them are transformed by their experience of the joys and pains of first love.

Antoine Rey looks for a special gift for his sister Melanie on her 40th birthday. He decides to surprise her with a trip to the French Island of Noirmoutier, where they spent many summers as children until their mother's death. On the drive back to Paris, Melanie is seriously injured in a car accident...

A story set in the former Yugoslavia and centered on a guy who returns to Herzegovina from Germany with plenty of cash and hopes for a good new life.

Zhenya and Boris are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations. Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page – even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha. Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears...

After four years apart, Ahmad returns to his wife Marie in Paris in order to progress their divorce. During his brief stay, he cannot help noticing the strained relationship between Marie and her daughter Lucie. As he attempts to improve matters between mother and daughter Ahmad unwittingly lifts the lid on a long buried secret...

Mila and Javier, both renowned surgeons and both passionate about their work, have been madly in love for the past 10 years. They have always taken great care to preserve their extraordinary love for each other and refuse to succumb to the routine of everyday living. But Mila’s unexpected pregnancy, combined with increasing pressure from work at the hospital, drives Javier to drink more heavily and he ends up being suspended. Faced with his demons, Javier drifts further and further away from Mila. Yet, when their relationship is under serious threat, Javier is ready to do whatever it takes to win Mila back.

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.

Greg founded a company called Alibi.com that creates any type of alibi. With his associate, Augustin, and Medhi his new employee, they devise unstoppable stratagems and stagings to cover their clients. But meeting Flo, a pretty blonde who hates men who lie, will complicate Greg's life, which begins by hiding the true nature of his activity. During the presentation to parents, Greg understands that Gérard, the father of Flo, is also one of their clients.

Fabienne is a star; a star of French cinema. She reigns amongst men who love and admire her. When she publishes her memoirs, her daughter Lumir returns from New York to Paris with her husband and young child. The reunion between mother and daughter will quickly turn to confrontation: truths will be told, accounts settled, loves and resentments confessed.

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.

Amanda believes men are too complicated and has lost faith finding the perfect one. Her friend and a psychoanalyst have a plan how to make her fall in love.

Young Violetta and her mother Hannah are a peculiar couple. Ten-year-old Violetta lives a quiet life with her grandmother, while her mother Hannah is an unpredictable photographer who lives off of the generosity of others. When Hannah forces her daughter to pose as a model, Violetta finds her life with her loving grandmother turned upside down.The resulting pictures quickly become a sensation for the trendy 70's Paris art scene, and Violetta finds herself caught in between her new stature as an art muse and her dull childhood.

A man remembers holidays at his uncle in a little village in the French countryside when he was something like 10. He feels so bored until he finds a pond and starts discovering the life in it.

Buddy is an abandoned young cocker spaniel waiting dejectedly in his cage for a kind, new owner to adopt him. Suddenly, Billy, a little boy whose hair is as red as Buddy's, appears. It's love at first sight and the beginning of a great friendship. But for Billy's parents, this is where the trouble begins.

In a small quiet village in the Ardennes, a sixteen-year-old girl disappears into the forest after calling her teacher in the middle of the night. Captain Gaspard Deker, a former soldier and newly arrived single father is conducting the investigation with Virginie Musso, the local cop. Also helping is the teacher, Eve Mendel, a solitary young woman with a mysterious past: she was found as a child by the villiage doctor wandering silently in the same forest.

On his 50th birthday, a man who's been watching his weight, health and temper all his life suffers a heart attack. He's been doing everything he was told he should do and it still didn't help. He decides to turn the page and let loose.

In the short break between performances in Calais, stage actress Alix makes a quick escape to Paris. On the train she meets a mysterious English stranger and, for the most fleeting of afternoons, imagines what the future could hold down a different road.