French films about the 90s

Spans the period from 1958 to the present day and tells the story of an unconditional love between a mother and her daughter which is endangered by an unsteady and manipulative father.

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.

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 young Parisian must make major decisions about pregnancy, a job and her boyfriend.

Turin, 1969. Nine-year-old Massimo’s idyllic childhood is shattered by the mysterious death of his mother. The young boy refuses to accept this brutal loss, even if the priest says she is now in Heaven. Years later in the 90s, adult Massimo has become an accomplished journalist. After reporting on the war in Sarajevo, he begins to suffer from panic attacks. As he prepares to sell his parents’ apartment, Massimo is forced to relive his traumatic past. Compassionate doctor Elisa could help tormented Massimo open up and confront his childhood wounds…

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.

How, thanks to what's known as the "Butterfly theory" (a random series of unlinked events), can a young woman and a young man meet?

Mika is the wife of celebrated pianist Andre Polonski and stepmother to his son, Guillaume, whose mother died in a car wreck on his sixth birthday. Their lives are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Jeanne, a young woman who has learned that she was almost switched at birth with Guillaume whilst in hospital. Also a pianist, Jeanne harbors a suspicion that she may be Andre's daughter. Andre undertakes to continue her piano tuition, but, on entering the Polonski family, Jeanne begins to notice the icily controlled Mika behaving strangely. Her suspicions aroused, Jeanne begins the dangerous task of unraveling Mika's dark past of secrets and lies...

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

A Chinese movie actress, in France to star in a remake of "Les Vampires", finds petty intrigues and clashing egos on the set.

Set in 1992, a manager Vincent has to run a children's holiday camp for three weeks and to face the unexpected concerning the place, his colleagues, various problems linked to children about the rooms, trips, their belongings...

California, Mojave Desert, 1998. A strange glow appears in the sky. Sam, a forty-something door-to-door salesman, travels through the few inhabited zones of the Californian desert in search of clients.

One night, Pierre decides to reveal his painful secret to his daughter-in-law, who's just been abandoned by her husband. Pierre's secret is about his secret love to Mathilde, the woman he left to instead follow an easier path in life.

A second-class horror movie has to be shown at Cannes Film Festival, but, before each screening, the projectionist is killed by a mysterious fellow, with hammer and sickle, just as it happens in the film to be shown.

Amanzio Rastelli appointed several of his relations to managerial positions in his firm. They decided to think internationally and now business is heavily in debt. Luckily for the Rastellis, Bolta the accountant uses all the tricks of his art to cook the books, but catastrophe awaits.

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.

In 1982, André Bamberski learns about the death of his 14 year-old daughter, Kalinka, while she was on vacation with her mother and stepfather in Germany. Convinced that Kalinka’s death was not an accident, Bamberski begins to investigate. A botched autopsy report raises his suspicions and leads him to accuse Kalinka’s stepfather, Dr Dieter Krombach, as the murderer. Unable to indict Krombach in Germany, Bamberski attempts to take the trial to France, where he will dedicate his life to Kalinka’s justice and the imprisonment of Krombach.

Paris, in the early 1990s: a group of young activists is desperately tied to finding the cure against an unknown lethal disease. They target the pharmaceutical labs that are retaining potential cures, and multiply direct actions, with the hope of saving their lives as well as the ones of future generations.

Even among bombers and murderers, there is a social ladder, a hierarchy to climb. Jeremie is a mere bomber who blows up people and places for mobsters in Paris. He may not look it, scruffy lad that he is, but he is a sensitive fellow, and he feels his lowly status keenly. If only he could graduate to the ranks of hitmen, who are honored in his world, perhaps then he would feel more like somebody. He finally gets his chance when he receives instructions to kill the eminent hitman Max, who knows too much to be left alive. Instead of planning a cool and distant hit, Jeremie gets to know his quarry personally and thereby gets entangled in a mass of conflicting allegiances. Max has one more assignment and has asked Jeremie to help him with it. The hero-worshipping boy can't bring himself to knock of this classy guy. However, just having such an inept apprentice as Jeremie around is enormously dangerous for the soon-to-be-retired killer.

Amin, an aspiring screenwriter living in Paris, returns home for the summer, to a fishing village in the South of France. It is a time of reconnecting with his family and his childhood friends. Together with his cousin Tony and his best friend Ophélie, he spends his time between the Tunisian restaurant run by his parents, the local bars and the beaches frequented by girls on holiday. Enchanted by the many female characters who surround him, Amin remains in awe of these summer sirens while his dionysiac cousin throws himself into their carnal delights with euphoria. Armed with his camera and guided by the bright simmer light of the Mediterranean coast, Amin pursues his philosophical quest while gathering inspiration for his screenplays. When it comes to love, only Mektoub (‘destiny' in Arabic) can decide.

Véronique is a beautiful young French woman who aspires to be a renowned singer; Weronika lives in Poland, has a similar career goal and looks identical to Véronique, though the two are not related. The film follows both women as they contend with the ups and downs of their individual lives, with Véronique embarking on an unusual romance with Alexandre Fabbri, a puppeteer who may be able to help her with her existential issues.

Α tragi-comedy about 9 women of different ages and various backgrounds that gather in an Algerian hammam to talk about their lives.

Paul, a teenager in the underground scene of early-nineties Paris, forms a DJ collective with his friends and together they plunge into the nightlife of sex, drugs, and endless music.

Paris, 1995. Laure is about to meet friends for dinner. But on her way out, she discovers that the entire city is stalled by a massive transit strike. When a handsome stranger offers her a ride, Laure takes a highly charged, impossibly erotic detour.

Set in the mid 1990s in Singapore, ILOILO chronicles the relationship between a family and their maid from Ilo Ilo, a province in the Philippines.

Nounours is the nickname of a "cousin" an informer with a special arrangement with the police: he gets 10% of the drugs seized thanks to his help. When his personal contact, inspector Maurin, commits suicide, inspector Gérard Delvaux takes over. Meanwhile, judge Lambert is uncovering the illegal practices of the policemen. Her persistent investigations, which had cornered Maurin, are leading to Gérard, and also to Nounours as the source of heroin that led to recent cases of deadly overdoses. Nounours promises Gérard increasingly bigger catches which he is intent on realising before he is forced to reveal who Nounours is to judge Lambert.

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

Havana, Cuba, 1990. René González, an airplane pilot, unexpectedly flees the country, leaving behind his wife Olga and his daughter Irma, and begins a new life in Miami, where he becomes a member of an anti-Castro organization.

In Paris, Dominique, a middle-aged fashion professional, solicits the services of the handsome Quentin , a bisexual bartender and prostitute who is 15 years her junior. After they first sleep together, their business transaction becomes transformed into a passionate love affair. However, the couple's romance becomes an ugly power struggle when social class and age distinctions begin to bubble toward the surface.

A shy maths graduate takes a holiday in Dinard before starting his first job. He hopes his sort-of girlfriend will join him, but soon strikes up a friendship with another girl working in town. She in turn introduces him to a further young lady who fancies him. Thus the quiet young lad finds he is having to do some tricky juggling in territory new to him.

In the summer of 1991 an elderly woman Ghislaine Marchal is found murdered in the basement of her home with the message "Omar M'a Tuer" (Omar has kill me) written beside in her own blood. Despite a lack of forensic or DNA evidence, her Moroccan gardener Omar Raddad is found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in a French prison. Shocked by the case, and convinced of his innocence, journalist Pierre-Emmanuel Vaugrenard moves to Nice to investigate, and uncover the truth...

This outrageous time-travel comedy follows the misadventures of a wacky medieval knight (Jean Reno) and his faithful servant when they are accidentally transported to contemporary times by a senile sorcerer. Mayhem rules as these 12th-century visitors try adapting to the wildly confusing modern world. To avoid being stuck here for good, however, they soon begin an all-out cosmic assault on their former castle -- now a luxury hotel -- in their quest to return to the past.

A shaman from the South American rain forest visits France for a public relations campaign. In a hotel's elevator in Paris he meets a French good-for-nothing named Perrin he's fascinated with. He follows Perrin to his flat and although Perrin is not very enthusiastic about so much interest in his person, he lets the shaman spend the night in his flat. After an official meeting on the next day being part of the PR campaign the shaman suffers from a heart attack. Hardly being able to speak and laying in a hospital bed he demands to see Perrin. The latter is not very interested in meeting the shaman again. However it looks like it is to late for animosities as the shaman and Perrin seem to be tied mentally somehow since they've met in the elevator.

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.

A sprawling drama centered on five key days in a family's life.

Drawing some intriguing parallels between the work of the prostitute and that of the psychiatrist-both have clients, both charge for sessions, both take on roles that serve the needs, psychological or otherwise, of those they serve, Jeanne Labrune's drama stars Isabelle Huppert and Bouli Lanners as, respectively, Alice, a disaffected call girl and Xavier, a shrink with a crumbling domestic situation.

On a trip to Paris Sally meets Pablo, a tango dancer. He starts teaching her to dance then she returns to London to work on some "projects". She visits Buenos Aires and learns more from Pablo's friends. Sally and Pablo meet again but this time their relationship changes, she realises they want different things from each other. On a trip to Buenos Aires they cement their friendship.

Stephen, an international trader, tracks down his ex-wife Patricia in some Amazonian backwater. He needs her consent to a divorce so that he can marry Charlotte. Unfortunately, he discovers a son he didn’t know he had – Mimi-Siku. The young jungle boy yearns to see Paris so Stephen reluctantly agrees to take him back home with him for a few days. How will Mimi-Siku react to life in the great metropolis?

Beautiful violin virtuoso Camille has two obsessions: the music of Ravel, and a friend of her husband's who crafts violins. But his heart seems to be as cold as her playing is passionate.

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?

A Scottish woman who attends school in Paris comes home for the summer and helps take in the straw, where she meets an attractive and simple man. They begin a torrid affair despite the differences in their lifestyles. He asks her to marry him but she refuses, and they continue their separate lives but also continue their affair through the years, loving each other despite their differences.

After a serious sport accident in a swimming pool, Ben, now an incomplete quadriplegic, arrives in a rehabilitation center. He meets with other handicapped persons (tetraplegics, paraplegics, traumatized crania), all victims of accidents, as well as a handicapped since his early childhood. They go through impotence, despair and resignation, with their daily struggle to learn how to move a finger or to hold a fork. Some of them slowly find a little mobility while others receive the verdict of the handicap for life. Despite everything, hope and friendship help them endure their difficulties.

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.

An average guy who works in a recycling plant wakes up one morning to discover that he's become inexplicably famous.

A police officer who's transfered in the police of Marseille gets assigned to take down a group of Italian robbers who drive the powerfull Ferrari's with the older niece of Daniel, a terrible driver who gets the legendary white taxi.

Martin, an ex-Parisian well-heeled hipster passionate about Gustave Flaubert who settled into a Norman village as a baker, sees an English couple moving into a small farm nearby. Not only are the names of the new arrivals Gemma and Charles Bovery, but their behavior also seems to be inspired by Flaubert's heroes.

Ellesmere Island, northern Canada, 1908. Josephine, a brave but naive woman, embarks on a dangerous journey through inhospitable regions in search of her husband, the explorer Robert Peary, who tries to find a route to the North Pole.

There is something strange - some would even say abnormal - about the Malaussène family. But if you take a closer look, no one could be happier than this cheerfully chaotic family, even though their mother is usually off on one romantic adventure or another. Life is never a bore for Benjamin Malaussène, professional scapegoat and the older brother responsible for this horde of kids. But when incidents happen wherever he goes, police and colleagues begin to eye him suspiciously. It soon becomes a matter of life and death to find out what is going on and who is so interested in ruining his life. Written by Pathe International

A young Arab is caught between cultures as he is sent to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Israel in the 1980s.

Set in the high courts of 16th Century France, where the wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants are raging. Marie de Mézières, a beautiful young aristocrat, is in love with Henri de Guise, but her hand in marriage is promised to the Prince of Montpensier.