French films about personal growth

On the rocky path to sobriety after a life-changing accident, John Callahan discovers the healing power of art, willing his injured hands into drawing hilarious, often controversial cartoons, which bring him a new lease on life.

Because of his wavering health, Monsieur Henri can no longer live alone in his Paris appartment. Particularly grumpy, he ends up nonetheless accepting his son Paul's suggestion that he let one of his rooms out to a young female student. Far from falling for her charms, Henri uses her to orchestrate utter family chaos...

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.

"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.

Transport Minister Bertrand Saint-Jean is awoken in the middle of the night by his head of staff. A bus has gone off the road into a gully. He has no choice but to go to the scene of the accident. Thus begins the odyssey of a politician in a world that is increasingly more complex and hostile.

The story of a father, his 23-year-old daughter who goes back home one day because she has just been dumped, and his new girlfriend, who is also 23 and lives with him.

Set in 1958, Populaire focuses on Rose Pamphyle, who lives with her widowed father and is destined to marry a son of the local mechanic. Rose travels out of town and applies for a secretarial job with an insurance agency run by Louis Échard. Louis learns that Rose can type with extraordinary speed -- using only two fingers -- and he tells her to compete in a speed-typing competition if she wants the job.

Maltazard, the Evil M, is now 7 feet tall and evolving among the humans, causing terror wherever he goes. His goal is simple: forming an army of giant henchmen and ruling over the universe. Meanwhile, Arthur is still a Minimoy, and thus in a state where he's unable to fend him off. With the help of Selenia and Betameche, he hatches a plan to regain his usual size: all they must do is infiltrate Arthur's house through the pipeworks, catch an electric train from his bedroom to his grandfather's study and find an elixir that will make him grow back to his human size. Sounds simple enough, if it weren't for Darkos, Maltazard's own son, hot on their tails.

In an attempt to flee Nazi-occupied France, Georg assumes the identity of a dead author but soon finds himself stuck in Marseilles, where he falls in love with Maria, a young woman searching for her missing husband.

Short videos showing typical funny moments in French life, depicting way of life, being, laughing, habits, and using slang vocabulary. Specially recommended for Parisians and / or people who lived there.

A passionate love story set against a backdrop of sexual freedom, loosely based on the relationship between 19th century authors Pierre Louÿs and Marie de Régnier

In order to wipe out the Gaulish village by any means necessary, Caesar plans to absorb the villagers into Roman culture by having an estate built next to the village to start a new Roman colony.

Aurora's life suddenly gets complicated after her seven grandkids arrive to her house for vacation.

A look at French president Nicolas Sarkozy's rise to power.

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.

Paris, December. A conductor of a choir is found mysteriously murdered, with burst eardrums. Lionel Kasdan, a police inspertor the verge of retirement, and Frank Salek, an official of Interpol, embark together on a hunt for the killer, and also to a secret organization specializing in kidnapping children.

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.

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.

Marco returns to Paris after his brother-in-law's suicide, where he targets the man his sister believes caused the tragedy - though he is ill-prepared for her secrets as they quickly muddy the waters.

Claire, a 50-year-old divorced teacher, creates a fake Facebook profile of a 24-year-old woman. She finds a photo of a pretty young brunette and uses it. She has created an entirely fictional character, but why?

At last, Josephine has found her perfect non-smoker-cat-loving-amazing-cook-perfect-man-soulmate. They’ve been in love for two years and everything is peachy. Until she realizes she’s… pregnant. Time for Josephine to transform her life, mature into a responsible adult, not become like her mother, get a job, hold on to her man, refrain from falling out with her friends, and tell her sister, who's been crashing at her place, that she's got to move out. A bunch of overwhelming challenges that Josephine will have to face in her own, special way.

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.

A journalist tries to balance the duties of marriage and motherhood while researching a piece on college women who work as prostitutes to pay their tuition.

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.

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.

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.

Haiti, 1962: A man is brought back from the dead only to be sent to the living hell of the sugarcane fields. In Paris, 55 years later, at the prestigious Légion d’honneur boarding school, a Haitian girl confesses an old family secret to a group of new friends - never imagining that this strange tale will convince a heartbroken classmate to do the unthinkable.

On the last day of summer, Louise, an old woman realizes that the last train has departed without her. She finds herself alone in a small seaside resort town, abandoned by everyone. The weather quickly turns for the worse followed by the seasonal tides. Fragile and coquettish, not nearly as well-prepared as a would-be Robinson Crusoe, Louise isn’t likely to make it through the winter. Yet, Louise takes her abandonment as a challenge. She’s going to survive, confronting the elements as well as her memories, which have found the perfect occasion to join in the adventure…

Benjamin is meant to be a great doctor, he’s certain of it. But his first experience as a junior doctor in the hospital ward where his father works doesn’t turn out the way he hoped it would. Responsibility is overwhelming, his father is all but present, and his co-junior partner, a foreign doctor, is far more experimented than he is. This internship will force Benjamin to confront his limits… and start his way to adulthood.

Fiona visits Paris for the first time to assist her myopic Aunt Martha. Catastrophes ensue, mainly involving Dom, a homeless man who has yet to have an emotion or thought he was afraid of expressing.

A resort for individuals who want to lose weight is helps several women discover friendships, acceptance with body image and hard truths.

Broke, with nothing but her cat to her name and doors closing in her face, Paula is back in Paris after a long absence. As she meets different people along the way, there is one thing she knows for sure: she's determined to make a new start and she'll do it with style and panache.

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

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.

Happily married with a daughter, Marc is a successful real estate agent in Aix-en-Provence. One day, he has an appointment with a woman to view a traditional country house. A few hours later, Marc finally puts a name to her face. It's Cathy, the girl he was in love with growing up in Oran, Algeria, in the last days of the French colonial regime. Marc hurries to her hotel. They spend the night together. Then she's gone again. And Marc's mother tells him Cathy never left Algeria. She was killed with her father in a bombing just before independence...

A french police unit that try to stop a group of criminals.

Nick and Meg Burrows return to Paris, the city where they honeymooned, to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary and rediscover some romance in their long-lived marriage. The film follows the couple as long-established tensions in their marriage break out in humorous and often painful ways.

It's the end of the school year. The long-awaited moment of the holidays is arrive. The little Nicolas, her parents and Grandma take the road towards the sea, and settle in for some time at the Hotel Beau-Rivage.

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.

In November 1918, a few days before the Armistice, when Lieutenant Pradelle orders a senseless attack, he causes a useless disaster; but his outrageous act also binds the lives of two soldiers who have nothing more in common than the battlefield: Édouard saves Albert, although at a high cost. They become companions in misfortune who will attempt to survive in a changing world. Pradelle, in his own way, does the same.

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.

César Borgnoli, an unsuccessful car salesman from Italy, lives well beyond his means. In order to get out of his financial disaster, he agrees to a deal: he pretends to be the husband of his sister's girlfriend Kim so she can legally adopt a little girl from Thailand. Caesar believes this to be a great idea and is looking forward to his trip to Thailand. After all, he is going to be able to mix business with pleasure--so he thinks. He didn't expect the local police, the Chinese Triads and the director of the orphanage to chip in, who want to make sure that little Mai is going to end up in a nice family.

Paris, France, December 1897. The young playwright Edmond Rostand feels like a failure. Inspiration has abandoned him. Married and father of two children, desperate and penniless, he persuades the great actor Constant Coquelin to perform the main role in his new play. But there is a problem: Coquelin wants to premiere it at Christmas and Edmond has not written a single word.

Louise, a widow with two children, almost crushes a stranger with her car. She takes care of him, even if he's not really wounded. It turns out that he has mental disorders and that they can help each other much more than they thought.

Three characters living in an unfinished painting venture out into the real world in search of their creator to convince him to finish his work.

France, a factory worker, lives with her three daughters in Dunkirk. The factory where she worked has been closed, leaving France and all of her workmates without a job. She decides to go to Paris to look for work. There she finds a cleaning job at the home of a rich man, Steve, whose world is radically different from her own. As their paths keep crossing, she discovers that her employer played a part in closing the factory in Dunkirk...

The film tells the tale of a widowed film director who is in the middle of making a film about an atypical diplomat inspired by his brother. While he has started a new life with Sylvia, he still mourns the death of a former lover, Carlotta, who passed away 20 years earlier; then Carlotta returns from the dead, causing Sylvia to run away.

Mrs. Géquil is an eccentric teacher despised by her colleagues and students. On a stormy night, she is struck by lightning and faints. When she wakes up, she feels different. Will she now be able to keep the powerful and dangerous Mrs. Hyde contained?

After keeping a careful distance for many years, 25-year-old Gaspard must renew contact with his family when his father remarries. Accompanied by Laura, an eccentric young woman who agrees to pretend she's his girlfriend at the wedding, he finally feels ready to set foot in the zoo owned by his parents, where he is reunited with the monkeys and tigers he grew up with... But with a father who is an out-of-control womanizer, a brother who is far too sensible, and a sister who is far too beautiful, he unknowingly sets himself up to experience the last days of his childhood.

After growing up in a poor gypsy camp, Edmond Vidal, aka Momon, has retained a sense of family, unfailing loyalty and pride in his origins. Most of all, he has remained friends with Serge Suttel, with whom he first discovered prison life - for stealing cherries. The two of them inevitably got involved in organized crime. The team they formed, the Ganf Des Lyonnais, made them the most notorious armed robbers of the early 1970s. Their irresistible rise ended in 1974 with a spectacular arrest. Today, as he nears 60, Momon would like to forget that part of his life. He has found peace by retiring from the "business". He tends to his wife Janou, who suffered so in the past, and to his children and grandchildren, all of whom have great respect for this man of simple and universal values, so clear-headed and full of kindness. But then Serge Suttel, who has disowned nothing of his past, comes back into the picture.