French films about shipwrecks

Master filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) transforms a portrait of the world-renowned museum into a magisterial, centuries-spanning reflection on the relation between art, culture and power.

In the beginning of the 20th century, five children on the island of La Réunion commit a savage crime. As punishment, a Dutch captain takes them to a supernatural island with luxuriant vegetation and bewitching powers.

On a tiny exotic island, Tuesday, an outgoing parrot lives with his quirky animal friends in paradise. However, Tuesday can't stop dreaming about discovering the world. After a violent storm, Tuesday and his friends wake up to find a strange creature on the beach: Robinson Crusoe. Tuesday immediately views Crusoe as his ticket off the island to explore new lands. Likewise, Crusoe soon realizes that the key to surviving on the island is through the help of Tuesday and the other animals. It isn't always easy at first, as the animals don't speak "human." Slowly but surely, they all start living together in harmony, until one day, when their comfortable life is overturned by two savage cats, who wish to take control of the island. A battle ensues between the cats and the group of friends but Crusoe and the animals soon discover the true power of friendship up against all odds (even savage cats).

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.

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.

Primo is an ordinary middle-class youngster studying for his baccalaureate, who gets side-tracked when he falls in love with a rich girl. They soon learn they have to deal with her condescending friends who look down upon this upstart.

The film tells the story of Malony and his education as he grows from a six-year-old into an 18-year-old. A minors’ judge and a caseworker work tirelessly to try to save the young offender.

After a bank job goes badly wrong, three desperate criminals take a young woman and a father and child hostage - it's the beginning of a frantic and violent road trip that not all of them will survive.

Vincent, a wealthy real estate agent, is invited to dinner by his sister Elizabeth and her husband Peter, both professors in Paris. Claude, a childhood friend and trombonist in a symphony orchestra, is also present. Vincent brings news from the prenatal examination of his and his wife Anna's unborn son. The name chosen by the soon-to-be parents strongly offends the others for many reasons. The dispute between the guests quickly escalates and before long the resurgence of old grudges and hidden secrets is unavoidable ...

Fatal... c'est Fatal Bazooka, un rappeur bling-bling et hardcore. En fait, un personnage de sketch créé par Michaël Youn dans son show-télé "Morning Live", puis développé dans l'album "T'as vu" vendu à plus de 500 000 exemplaires. Ce film raconte ce que serait devenu ce rappeur s'il en avait vendu... 15 millions ! Fatal est désormais une énorme star. Des millions de fans, des dizaines de tubes, 4 Music Awards de la Musique du meilleur artiste de l'année, une ligne de vêtements, un magazine et prochainement l'ouverture de son propre parc d'attraction : Fataland. Il est le N°1 incontesté...

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.

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.

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

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.

Louise meets Nathan, her dreams resurface. It's also the story of her ailing brother, their mother, and the destiny of a leading family of wealthy Italian industrialists. The story of a family falling apart, a world coming to an end and love beginning.

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

Marcel Marx, a former bohemian and struggling author, has given up his literary ambitions and relocated to the port city Le Havre. He leads a simple life based around his wife Arletty, his favourite bar and his not too profitable profession as a shoeshiner. As Arletty suddenly becomes seriously ill, Marcel's path crosses with an underage illegal immigrant from Africa, who needs Marcel's help to hide from the police.

Occupied France; Lebrac leads a play war between two rival kid gangs, but a girl he likes, who's Jewish, is in danger of being discovered by local Nazi sympathisers. Lebrac and the village must now respond to the reality of what's happening.

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?

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.

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.

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

In the harbor city of Le Havre, France, a woman is stabbed during the night, just below the windows of her neighborhood. Pierre (Yvan Attal) has witnessed the murder, and heard the wails of the women crying for help. So have the neighbors, certainly. But at the end, nobody called the police. Nevertheless, sorrows are too heavy for Pierre, which feel the needs to tell everything to his wife (Sophie Quinton), and to the police. During the investigation, it appears that 38 people witnessed the murdering, and none reacted...

Deneuve plays sassy grandmother Cathy who takes to the road after being betrayed by her lover and learning her business is on the verge of bankruptcy on the same day. During a weeklong odyssey across France, she spends time with a grandson she hardly knows and reconnects with her past as former Miss Brittany through a reunion for former beauty queens.

David, a professor of dermatology, has been treating 13-year-old Romain since he was a baby. Afflicted with a rare skin condition, Romain must avoid sunlight and is condemned to live in the shade. David and Romain have become the closest of friends and nothing can separate them. But then David learns that he is about to be transferred to another clinic in another town. How will he be able to break the news to Romain? And how will Romain cope with this new crisis in his life?

A small time delinquent, turned police mechanic for a go fast task force, is forced to defend his innocence when his mentor is killed by dirty cops.

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.

Paulette lives alone in a housing project in the Paris suburbs. With her meager pension, she can no longer make ends meet.

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.

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.

Following a series of unexplained crimes, a father is reunited with the son who has been missing for 10 years.

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.

Max is a battle-weary veteran of the wedding-planning racket. His latest — and last — gig is a hell of a fête, involving stuffy period costumes for the caterers, a vain, hyper- sensitive singer who thinks he's a Gallic James Brown, and a morose, micromanaging groom determined to make Max's night as miserable as possible. But what makes the affair too bitter to endure is that Max's colleague and ostensible girlfriend, Joisette, seems to have written him off, coolly going about her professional duties while openly flirting with a much younger server. It's going to be a very long night… especially once the groom's aerial serenade gets underway.

Celestine is a little mouse trying to avoid a dental career; Ernest is a big bear craving an artistic outlet. When Celestine meets Ernest, they overcome their natural enmity by forging a life of crime together.

A timid young grad student madly in love with her scientist boss offers her body to his research.

Based on a true story. In Léon Blum high school in Créteil (France), a history teacher decides to have her weakest 10th grade class take a national history competition. This will change them.

From his childhood in Poland to his adolescence in Nice to his years as a student in Paris and his tough training as a pilot during World War II, this tragi-comedy tells the romantic story of Romain Gary, one of the most famous French novelists and sole writer to have won the Goncourt Prize for French literature two times.

Valentin D is a hot designer architect who claims to be an orphan because he is too ashamed to admit he is the son of working-class scrap metal merchants from the north of France.

Leila is released from prison after five years of confinement. She will meet Yannick, a young athlete who became blind after an accident. This last practice race despite his disability, but to run it must be connected by a wire to guide a person called. It offers Leila to be his guide. Through this project, they will learn to rebuild.

"It's a simple subject. A married woman and a single man meet. They love each other, fight, blows rain down. A dog wanders between town and countryside. Seasons pass. The man and woman get back together. The dog comes between them. The other is in one of them. One of them is in the other. And then there are three people. The ex-husband makes everything explode. A second film begins. The same as the first. And yet, not. From the human species, we move on to metaphor. It will end in barking. And a baby's cries." JLG

A hitman named Tul is shot in the head during an assignment. When he wakes up from a two month coma Tul discovers that he literally sees everything upside down.

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.

The story of an Indian boy named Pi, a zookeeper's son who finds himself in the company of a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger after a shipwreck sets them adrift in the Pacific Ocean.

A comedy that affectionately pokes fun at men and their eternal quest for satisfaction. At last, a film about self-acceptance and renunciation.

Agathe runs an art gallery. Her husband François is a publisher. Together they have one son, and in every way seem to be the picture of normality — but emotions are stewing under the surface. All it takes is the arrival of a complete stranger for things to start unravelling. Patrick is brash, uncouth and totally unselfconscious...

Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom.

Cast out of his insular community, a damaged and down on his luck man teeters between a life of crime and the path to redemption.

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.

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?

Despite his age and general weariness, Gebo keeps on working as an accountant to provide for his family. He lives with his wife, Doroteia, and his daughter-in-law, Sofia, but it is the absence of João, son and husband, that worries them.Gebo seems to be hiding something, especially to Doroteia, who is anxiously waiting to see her son again. Sofia is also waiting for her husband to come home, and yet she fears him. All of a sudden, João arrives and everything changes.