French films about retribution

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.

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.

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.

The film centres on a retired, widowed professor living in Paris who develops a special relationship with a younger French woman.

In 1976 in Nice, Agnes, the daughter of the owner of the Palais de la Méditerranée, falls in love with an older lawyer.

Pensioners Nina and Madeleine have hidden their deep and passionate love for many decades. From everybody’s point of view, including Madeleine’s family, they are simply two neighbors living on the top floor of their building. They come and go between their two apartments, sharing the tender delights of everyday life together. Until the day their relationship is turned upside down by an unexpected event leading Madeleine’s daughter to slowly unveil the truth about them.

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.

Paris, France. Fred and his colleagues, members of the BPM, the Police Child Protection Unit, dedicated to pursuing all sorts of offenses committed against the weakest, must endure the scrutiny of Melissa, a photographer commissioned to graphically document the daily routine of the team.

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.

Pierre has been married for 15 years and has two kids. He still loves his wife and is fulfilled in his role as a father. Overall, he’s a contented man. Until one evening, he meets Elsa. They chat, laugh, and joke around in a way that doesn’t happen every day. Two weeks later, they run into each other again by chance. The same easy mutual attraction they felt for one another is just as strong, and they tell each other as much. A line has been crossed. But Elsa has a golden rule never to get involved with married men, and Pierre wants to remain faithful. They go their separate ways without swapping phone numbers, preferring to let life take its own course. As the line blurs between how they imagine their relationship and what has actually happened, their fantasies start to mingle with reality

Charly Matteï has turned his back on his life as an outlaw. For the last three years, he's led a peaceful life devoting himself to his wife and two children. Then, one winter morning, he's left for dead in the parking garage in Marseille's Old Port, with 22 bullets in his body. Against all the odds, he doesn't die...

France, around 1900. Coming from the vibrancy of Paris, pert Célestine is procured as a chambermaid in Normandy. In the Lanlaire's villa she encounters the lecherous man of the house and his asexual, tyrannical and jealous wife. Célestine is determined to avoid the fate suffered by the cook Marianne who has already secretly killed one child born out of wedlock and now despairingly realises she is pregnant again. The lively maid is intrigued by what the mysterious manservant Joseph is up to: he distributes anti-Semitic leaflets and suggests that she could work for him as a prostitute in Cherbourg…

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.

Polina is a young dancer from a modest family. After years of ballet academy, she is accepted by the Bolshoi; still, she decides to try and audition of a modern dance company in France. She makes it, but her journey will not end there...

Antoine and Laurent, old friends, spend their vacation in Corsica with their respective daughters: seventeen-year-old Louna and eighteen-year-old Marie. One evening at the beach, Louna seduces Laurent. Louna is in love, but for Laurent it was nothing more than a momentary distraction. Without revealing her lover's name, Louna confides in her father, who tries by any means to discover who his daughter's lover is. How long will the secret be able to be kept hidden?

It's the fall of 1985. The intertwining tales of three 5th grade friends, Chris, Joe and Ted, unfold in the suburban paradise of Palo Alto, as the threat of a mountain lion looms over the community.

Dead Shadows tells the terrifying story about a young man, Chris, whose parents were brutally killed 11 years ago, on the same day that the comet of Haley could be seen from earth. Tonight, a new comet is going to appear and everyone in Chris’s building are getting ready for a big apocalypse party to celebrate the event. As the night falls, Chris starts to discover that people are acting strange and it seems to somehow be connected to the comet. People are becoming disoriented and violent and it doesn’t take long before they start mutating into something from beyond this world.

He invents puzzles. He’s committed body and soul to his work and needs silence to be able to concentrate. She is an accomplished pianist and can’t live without music. She must prepare for a competition that could change her life. They are going to be forced to coexist without seeing each other.

A glimpse at the life of French singer Serge Gainsbourg, from growing up in 1940s Nazi-occupied Paris through his successful song-writing years in the 1960s to his death in 1991 at the age of 62.

A veteran chef faces off against his restaurant group's new CEO, who wants to the establishment to lose a star from its rating in order to bring in a younger chef who specializes in molecular gastronomy.

Hua, a young woman from Beijing, is a recent arrival in Paris. Exiled in an unknown city, she wanders between her tiny apartment and the university, drifting between former lovers and recent French acquaintances. She meets Matthieu, a young worker who falls madly in love with her. Possessed by an insatiable desire for her body, he treats Hua like a dog. An intense affair begins, marked by Matthieu’s passionate embraces and harsh verbal abuse. When Hua determines to leave her lover, she discovers the strength of her addiction, and the vital role he has come to play in her life as a woman.

The longtime mayor of Marseille is preparing to hand over the reins to his protégé when a sudden and ruthless battle erupts for control of the city.

The night of August 24, 1944. The fate of Paris is in the hands of General von Choltitz, governor of Grand Paris, who is preparing, on Hitler’s orders, to blow up the French capital. The descendent of a long line of Prussian military men, the general has never had any hesitation when it came to obeying orders. This is what’s on Swedish consul Raoul Nordling’s mind as he takes the secret staircase that leads to General von Choltitz’s suite at the Hôtel Meurice. The bridges on the Seine and the major monuments of Paris (including the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower) are mined with explosives, ready to be detonated. Armed with all the weapons of diplomacy, the consul will try to convince the general not to follow Hitler’s order of destruction.

A thrilling mystery that unfurls in the alleys and on the rooftops of the French capital, Paris, over the course of one adventurous evening.

"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.

Christian, a visionary scientist, studies wild geese. For his son, a teenager obsessed with video games, the idea of spending a holiday with his father in the wilderness is a nightmare. However, father and son will get together around a crazy project: save a species endangered, thanks to the ultralight of Christian! Then begins an incredible and perilous journey ...

Two young boys, Victor and Rainer, take the commuter train to spend the evening in Paris. In a nightclub on the banks of the Seine they go from one disappointment to another, from failed chat ups to street brawls. But as they get carried away by the night, they leave the city for the forest. In the silence of the moonlight nature, the desire between the two friends becomes increasingly vibrant. A new day is born from their friendship.

Tony, a promising young motorcycle racer, is forced to do perilous drug runs to save the mother of his child from a dangerous mobster.

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…

Lucas and his team are after a gang of Serbian criminals using NATO-issued weapons. As the investigation leads him to Paris, Lucas attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter, a young narc officer.

A gripping anthological relationship thriller series exploring the emotional fallout of a child's abduction not only on the family but on the wider community, told over two time frames.

An ex-soldier with PTSD is hired to protect the wife and child of a wealthy Lebanese businessman while he's out of town.

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.

Summer 1910. Several tourists have vanished while relaxing on the beautiful beaches of the Channel Coast. Infamous inspectors Machin and Malfoy soon gather that the epicenter of these mysterious disappearances must be Slack Bay, a unique site where the Slack river and the sea join only at high tide.

Saturday 24th December 1994. Four GIA terrorists hijack an Air France A300 Airbus at the Algiers airport. The Airbus, bound for Paris, has 227 passengers on board. No one knows exactly what the terrorists’ intentions are, just that they are armed and extremely determined. They demand the liberation of their “brothers in arms” and want the aircraft to take off at once. After very lengthy and intense negotiations between the French and Algerian governments, the plane is finally allowed to leave. There are three main characters at the heart of the action: a member of the GIGN, Carole Jeanton, an ambitious technocrat willing to do anything it takes to achieve personal gain from the events, and Yahia Abdallah, a determined jihadist who grew up in the slums of Algiers and was being manipulated by an obscure GIA envoy, Ali Touchent.

Condamné pour un crime qui n'était, selon lui, qu'un accident, Constant réussit à s'évader de la prison où il purge sa peine... Après une fuite aveugle, livré à tous les hasards, Constant finit par échouer dans un coin perdu, près des berges désertes d'un canal.... Se cachant sur une péniche à l'abandon, Constant tente de reprendre son souffle, accalmie de courte durée... Dès l'aube, Sylvia une pétillante jeune femme qui a reconnu l'homme traqué, lui propose un implacable marché : assassiner (puisqu'elle le pense être un tueur professionnel) Jeanne, sa mère adoptive sinon elle le dénonce à la police ! Piégé, Constant ne peut qu'accepter cette périlleuse " mission ". Mais bien loin de tuer Jeanne, Constant la sauve d'un suicide annoncé.

France asleep in the nineteenth century, governed by steam and Napoleon VI, where scientists vanish mysteriously, a girl, Avril, goes in search of her missing scientist parents.

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.

Winter, 1915. Confined by her family to an asylum in the South of France - where she will never sculpt again - the chronicle of Camille Claudel's reclusive life, as she waits for a visit from her brother, Paul Claudel.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What happens when a man and a woman share a common passion? They fall in love. And this is what happens to Jean-René, the boss of a small chocolate factory, and Angélique, a gifted chocolate maker he has just hired. What occurs when a highly emotional man meets a highly emotional woman? They fall in love, and this is what occurs to Jean-René and Angélique who share the same handicap. But being pathologically timid does not make things easy for them. So whether they will manage to get together, join their solitudes and live happily ever after is a guessing matter.

Antoine is a lawyer living in New York. On his way back to France for the final round of a job interview, Antoine finds himself sitting right next to his ex-girlfriend Julie. With a seven-hour flight ahead of them, they are going to have to speak to each other.

A hairdresser forwards a passionate love letter to her widowed mother.

After waking up in an apartment where only the night before a party was raging, Sam is forced to come to grips with reality: He is now alone and the living dead have invaded the streets of Paris. Petrified with fear, Sam is going to have to barricade himself inside the building and organize his survival. But is he really the sole survivor?

After promising 1100 employees that they would protect their jobs, the managers of a factory decide to suddenly close up shop. Laurent takes the lead in a fight against this decision.

Sebastien Nicolas is a reclusive realtor leading a double life – in his spare time he creates complex disguises based on acquaintances. Combined with minutely studied and rehearsed impersonations, Sebastien can disappear completely into other people's lives. Things spiral out of control after he impersonates the wrong man.

An attorney stumbles upon a suitcase filled with cocaine.