French films about illegitimate children

A gripping family drama and entrepreneurial fable, set in a post-war Paris fashion house. It exposes the grit behind the glamour of a rising business, spearheaded by two clashing brothers.

Summertime. A cruising spot for men, tucked away on the shores of a lake. Franck falls in love with Michel, an attractive, potent and lethally dangerous man. Franck knows this, but wants to live out his passion anyway.

In the midst of a divorce, Miriam Besson decides to ask for exclusive custody of her son, in order to protect him from a father that she is accusing of violence. The judge-in-charge of the file grants a shared custody to the father whom it considers abused. Taken as a hostage between his parents, Julien Besson will do everything to prevent the worst from happening.

Neïla Salah grew up in Créteil, a tower block suburb on the outskirts of Paris, and dreams of becoming a lawyer. She has been accepted into a major university in Paris and on her first day there she is confronted by Pierre Mazard, a professor known for his provocative behavior and blunders. To make amends for an incident, he accepts to help Neïla prepare for a prestigious competition in courtroom eloquence. Both cynical and demanding, Pierre could become the mentor who she needs... But first both must overcome their prejudices.

Born out of wedlock early in the last century, Violette Leduc meets Simone de Beauvoir in postwar Saint-Germain-des-Près. An intense lifelong relationship develops between the two women authors, based on Violette's quest for freedom through writing and on Simone's conviction that she holds in her hands the destiny of an extraordinary writer.

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.

In Paris during WWII, an Algerian immigrant is inspired to join the resistance by his unexpected friendship with a Jewish man. Based on not very known facts about the Muslim community in Paris during WWII, when the Paris Mosque and its dynamic leader played a pivotal role in supporting the resistance and rescuing Jews.

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?

Franck and Simon are both good cops. They work as partners. But their lives take a tailspin when Simon, driving drunk, causes a tragic car wreck. A few years later, out of the police, he is forced to take matters into his own hands when his family is in danger.

The Art of Love is composed of several chapters, which follows several Parisian couples.

A young woman makes a surprising discovery about the husband of her late best friend.

Alain, a successful Parisian publisher struggling to adapt to the digital revolution, has major doubts about the new manuscript of Léonard, one of his long-time authors - another work of auto-fiction recycling his love affair with a minor celebrity. Selena, Alain’s wife, a famous stage actress, is of the opposite opinion.

The misadventures of a young clumsy Fox and a feisty little red Hen. The Fox, both a little stupid and naïve, tries daily to devour the little Hen, without success. Tired of the repeated humiliation, the Fox is persuaded to steal the Hen’s eggs to raise and then eat. This plan seems perfect, until the moment the chicks hatch…

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

A heartbroken literary critic turns his despair into creativity following a bitter divorce, only to encounter an enchanting beauty who poses a major challenge to his newfound cynicism. Marc Marronnier thought his marriage was going well until his wife deemed him immature, and left him for a high-profile writer. Devastated, he began filtering all of his heartache into a misanthropic manuscript decrying the virtues of true love. But later, when Marc falls hard for his cousin's radiant and gorgeous wife, his entire life is turned upside down. Louise Bourgoin and Gaspard Proust star in a film by actor and author-turned-director Frederic Beigbeder.

After the death of his mother, Elisa (Claire Borotra) is responsible for custody of her sister Audrey (Penelope Leveque), a troubled teen and something he hardly knows. Following the last will of her mother, both go to Mont Saint Michel, where the two grew up, to spread his ashes. The second night of stay, and after a flood, Audrey disappears while the mayor's daughter, which suggests a voluntary escape, but Elisa does not think so, so it will not stop until its trace sister.

Three generations of a French family open up about their sexual experiences and desires after young Romain is caught masturbating in his biology class.

Justine, struggles with commitment, listens to old David Bowie covers, and uses her employer’s private MRI machines to make “X-Ray Art” After a trail of boyfriends, Justine thinks she has found The One, a hunky shoe salesman, but her temporary happiness is thrown when her neurotic 60-year-old Jewish father (Michel Blanc) suffers a delayed midlife crisis and announces that his young second wife is expecting a baby. Justine and her half-sister Dom, who is trying to adopt, are rather annoyed at the news. Coupled with resentment about her father’s absence when she was growing up, causes her to spiral into self-doubt. Overflowing with French charm, Justine gets by with the help of her family, friends, and newly discovered muse.

A mysterious former secret service agent must urgently return to France when his estranged son is falsely accused of arms and drug trafficking by the government, following a blunder by an overzealous bureaucrat and a mafia operation.

Nine translators have been picked by a ruthless publisher and locked in a luxury bunker to translate the highly anticipated book of a famous author in record time. Although the translators are confined to prevent any kind of leak because of the high financial stakes, a crisis erupts when someone posts the first 10 pages of the novel online and blackmails the publisher to pay 5 million euros. A hunt for the culprit inside the bunker unfolds.

A man and a woman, secretly in love, alone in a room. They desire each other, want each other, and even bite each other. In the afterglow, they share a few sweet nothings. At least the man seemed to believe they were nothing. Now under investigation by the police and the courts, what is he accused of?

A struggling writer finds a shortcut to fame, but a blackmailer threatens to ruin his perfect life.

In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating.

From Paris in the 1960s to London in the first decade of the third millennium, Madeleine and her daughter Véra flit from one amorous adventure to the next, living for the moment and taking all the opportunities that life offers. But not every love affair is without its consequences, its upsets and its disappointments. As time goes by and gnaws away at one’s deepest feelings, love becomes a harder game to play.

During the 1970s a student named Gilles gets entangled in contemporary political turmoils although he would rather just be a creative artist. While torn between his solidarity to his friends and his personal ambitions he falls in love with Christine.

"Marius" takes place in Marseilles' Old Port, at the La Marine Bar, owned by César and his son Marius. Marius' biggest dream is to embark on one of the boats passing by his dad's bar and to set off to a faraway land. Fanny, a young and pretty seafood peddler, has secretly been in love with Marius since her childhood; Marius, never admitting it, has always loved Fanny. One day, a sailor drops by La Marine and offers him a job on an exploratory ship. Trying to hold him off and to make him jealous, Fanny confesses his love to him and provokes a fight between Marius and one of César's old friends, Panisse, a boat merchant, who despite his old age, has been courting Fanny for a while. Torn between the call of the sea and his love for her, Marius abandons his dream to be with Fanny who gives herself to him. As César and Honorine, Fanny's mother, are getting ready for the wedding, Marius changes his mind, drawn back to the call of the sea.

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.

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.

40-year-old Bertrand has been suffering from depression for the last two years and is barely able to keep his head above water. Despite the medication he gulps down all day, every day, and his wife's encouragement, he is unable to find any meaning in his life. Curiously, he will end up finding this sense of purpose at the swimming pool, by joining an all-male synchronised swimming team.

Paris 1930. Paul has only ever had one and the same horizon: the high walls of the orphanage, an austere building in the Parisian working class suburbs. Entrusted to a joyful country woman, Célestine, and her husband, Borel, the rather stiff gamekeeper of a vast estate in Sologne, the city child, recalcitrant and stubborn, arrives in a mysterious and disturbing world, that of a soverign and wild region. The huge forest, misty ponds, heaths, and fields all belong to the Count de la Fresnaye, an elderly taciturn man who lives alone in his manor.

DNA revolves around a woman with close ties to a beloved Algerian grandfather who protected her from a toxic home life as a child. When he dies, it triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.

October 1941. Eighteen months into France’s occupation by German troops, young Communist members of the Resistance shoot dead an officer of the German Army. In retaliation, Hitler demands the deaths of 150 Frenchmen, as 'retribution'. The targets are to be mostly young men believed to share the assassins’ political convictions. Most of these men are taken from an internment camp for opponents of the occupation; a 35-year-old French rural administrator is ordered to select the victims. Although the parish priest appeals to their conscience and moral sensibilities, both the German military and their French helpers slavishly follow their orders.

When a romance between a widow and a notorious libertine takes an unexpected turn, Mademoiselle de Joncquières becomes instrumental to one lover’s plans for revenge.

An enigmatic actress (Emmanuelle Seigner) may have a hidden agenda when she auditions for a part in a misogynistic writer's (Mathieu Amalric) play.

Armand and Leila, students at Science Po, are a young couple. They plan to go to New York to do their internship at the United Nations. But when Mahmoud, Leila's big brother, returns from a long stay in Yemen, which radically transformed him, he is opposed to his sister's love relationship and decides to remove him at any cost from Armand. To enter Mahmoud and see again Leila, Armand has no choice: he must slip the integral veil! The next day, a certain Scheherazade with a veiled face rings at the door of Leila, and she will not leave Mahmoud indifferent ...

Diane is a well-known lawyer, divorced for three years. She loses her mobile telephone and receives a call from the person who finds it. That person is Alexandre, a charming man and the perfect gentleman. They make a connection over the phone and agree to meet up the following day. But when Alexandre arrives, there's a surprise in store when Diane discovers he is only 4' 6" tall. From that moment on, Diane tries to overcome the prejudices of society and her own fears to experience the best time of her life...

Julien Monnier has a serious problem. Though he's a brilliant couples counselor, he can't keep a woman in his life for more than two weeks. Indeed, ever since his childhood, Julien jinxes every woman who falls in love with him. But it's not just any small jinx. It's the kind that sends you to the hospital several times a week, that destroys your professional life or that turns your friends into enemies. Julien is strictly speaking a true black cat for women. Joanna Sorini will soon learn this at her expense the day she meets him. A career that's just taking off, a love life that finally seems to be taking a good turn, all that may just change.

One night to change everything. One night to save a theater, one night to change one's perspective about life. Luigi will push and pull Faeza with him everywhere around Paris an entire night to save his theater.

When 43-year-old hairdresser Suze Trappet finds out that she's seriously ill, she decides to go looking for a child she was forced to abandon when she was only 15. On her madcap bureaucratic quest she crosses paths with JB, a 50-year-old man in the middle of a burnout, and Mr. Blin, a blind archivist prone to overenthusiasm. The unlikely trio set off on a hilarious and poignant helterskelter journey across the city in search of Suze's long-lost child.

It all began when camcorders replaced cameras. Making TV programs then became within everyone's reach. Jean-Lou, Yasmina, Victor, Clara, Adonis, and the others didn't only want to create their own television channel, they above all wanted to make a revolution. Thus Télé Gaucho was born, as anarchic and provocative as the main channels were conformist and reactionary. Five years of mayhem, brutal pirate TV demonstrations, drunken parties, and thwarted love.. And that was my idyllic interlude.

Ben, who dreamed of himself as a comic in New York, is back in Paris, his professional and emotional life in complete disarray. He encounters Alex, the star host of the Breakfast Club, a popular morning radio show. With Cyril, a forty-something who'd prefer not to be, and Arnold, the charismatic leader of the gang, they call the shots on Blast FM. In next to no time Ben is hired to write for them. He's barely joined the team when a tidal wave hits the station: Breakfast Club listenership is in free fall. They set out on a bus to travel to every corner of France to meet and win over their public once again. For these arrogant Parisians, a real journey of initiation arises from this radio-phonic road trip, shaking up all their certainties.

Fatima, an Algerian-born woman who now lives in France with her two teenage daughters, with whom she is barely able to communicate.

An overstressed American businessman and a French chambermaid make a connection at an airport hotel in Paris.

In occupied France, Maurice and Joseph, two young Jewish brothers left to their own devices demonstrate an incredible amount of cleverness, courage, and ingenuity to escape the enemy invasion and to try to reunite their family once again.

During the elimination of the Belgian/French border in the 90s, a Belgian customs officer is forced to team up with one of his French counterparts.

An alcoholic writer is visited by an incarnation of his cancer.

They loved each other with the ardor of thirteen-year-old boys. Rebellion and curiosity, hopes and doubts, girls and dreams of glory – they shared it all. Paul was rich, Emile poor. They went skinny-dipping, drank absinthe, starved, only to overeat. Sketched models by day, caressed them by night... Now, Paul is a painter and Emile a writer. Glory has passed Paul by. But Emile has it all: fame, money, the perfect wife, whom Paul once loved. They judge each other, admire each other, confront each other. They lose touch, meet up again, like a couple who cannot stop loving each other.

Seyolo Zantoko is a doctor from Congo who wants to get away from dictatorship and he is hired by the mayor of a small village in the north of France. The locals fear Seyolo and his family as they have never seen African people before, and Seyolo and his family struggle to adapt to this new life. But Seyolo is determined to succeed and to win the trust of the villagers.

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.

Fifteen-year-old Céline knows more about life than is appropriate for her age. She wanders the streets, surviving, with the help of her boyfriend Romain, thanks to her defiance and ruthless practicality. She secretly sleeps in the garden house of a luxury villa, where one evening she is discovered by the owner, Judge Henri van Eyck. Despite his wife Nathalie's reticence, he takes the girl in and Céline gradually gains their goodwill and affection. The fragile balance of their mutual trust, however, comes in serious jeopardy when the web of lies the girl has told her protectors begins to unravel, revealing her real motives.