French films about tragedies

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.

North Carolina mountains at the end of the 1920s – George and Serena Pemberton, love-struck newly-weds, begin to build a timber empire. Serena soon proves herself to be equal to any man: overseeing loggers, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. With power and influence now in their hands, the Pembertons refuse to let anyone stand in the way of their inflated love and ambitions. However, once Serena discovers George’s hidden past and faces an unchangeable fate of her own, the Pemberton’s passionate marriage begins to unravel leading toward a dramatic reckoning.

In the vast rooms of a beautiful Sicilian villa, Anna receives an unexpected guest. Twenty-something Jeanne has arrived from France, declaring herself to be the girlfriend of Anna’s son, Giuseppe, who has invited her to the house to spend Easter together. But this is news to Anna, and Guiseppe is not yet there...

A 12-year-old cartographer secretly leaves his family's ranch in Montana where he lives with his cowboy father and scientist mother and travels across the country on board a freight train to receive an award at the Smithsonian Institute.

A look at the lives of Carlo, Giulia, and their friends some 10 years after the events of L'Ultimo bacio.

Set in Baroque France, a scheming widow and her lover make a bet regarding the corruption of a recently married woman. The lover, Valmont, bets that he can seduce her, even though she is an honorable woman. If he wins, he can have his lover to do as he will. However, in the process of seducing the married woman, Valmont falls in love. Based on the same novel as "Dangerous Liaisons."

Kate and Matt discover that a part of their house can grant wishes. In the wake of several miscarriages, what they want most is a child.

An account of the days of First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, in the immediate aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963.

Anna teaches violin at a music school, her husband is an instrument-maker. They have a 10-year-old son, Jonas. At school, Anna champions young Alexander, in whom she alone sees great talent. She devotes much energy and attention preparing him for the next stage exam to prove she was right. Soon Anna devotes more time to him than to Jonas, bringing the two boys into rivalry. At the same time her marriage is collapsing, she withdraws increasingly from her own family and starts an affair with her colleague Christian, who is encouraging her to join a quartet. When she fails during their joint concert, the pressure mounts. With Alexander now her vehicle, she drives him ever onwards and upwards. Come the day of the exam, events take a tragic turn...

In a place where killers are celebrated as heroes, these filmmakers challenge unrepentant death-squad leaders to dramatize their role in genocide. The result is a surreal, cinematic journey, not only into the memories and imaginations of mass murderers, but also into a frighteningly banal regime of corruption and impunity.

It is 1979 and Albertine, 10, and all her family members have gathered in Brittany to celebrate the birthday of her grandmother. Everyone thinks that the Skylab space station from NASA will fall on their heads this summer. The meeting turns into a crazy weekend full of revelations, love and song.

A biopic of French pop star Claude Francois, most famous for co-writing the song 'My Way'. Tracing his life from his childhood in Egypt through his success in France to his untimely death in Paris in 1978.

Between 1978 and 1979, the inhabitants of the Oise are in fear of a maniac who kills several hitchhikers and escape the police. He was then dubbed "the killer of the Oise" is actually a shy young policeman who will investigate his own murder, only to lose control of the situation.

Put in charge of his young son, Ali leaves Belgium for Antibes to live with his sister and her husband as a family. Ali's bond with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, grows deeper after Stephanie suffers a horrible accident.

Adrien is a young pianist prodigy. He collapsed psychologically having failed in a renowned competition and henceforth works as a piano tuner. As remedy to this life, he invents a blind person's mask to penetrate into the intimacy of his customers. This subtlety allows Adrien to get back the taste for music. But since he sees things he should not see, Adrien ends up witnessing a murder.

A true story of two men who should never have met – a quadriplegic aristocrat who was injured in a paragliding accident and a young man from the projects.

A teenage girl helps an escaped fugitive flee Germany into France, after extracting a promise that he will help her commit suicide.

An ex-SAS recluse, living in the mountains of France to escape a traumatic past, is hunted down by those who's lives he has destroyed.

Eleanor, thirties, has just lost her father. He bequeathed his house in Brittany in the Cotes d'Armor. She is a photographer, has had some success but business no longer work as before. It is imperative to sell the house. She goes there with Samuel, her former companion which she left some time ago, because she does not feel to go alone and she has not returned since the death of her father. But she is playing with fire - because she knows that their relationship did not exactly appeased, even if it was for some adventures and Samuel lives with Laura. Claire Andrieux, the real estate agent, was busy organizing visits during the two days Samuel and Eleanor will stay in the house. It's a funny weekend that these three are about to spend.A surprising weekend full of surprises, emotions, tensions, memories and shouting matches in melancholy and absurd moments that leave the couple necessarily changed.

A Buddhist monk walks barefoot and incredibly slowly through Marseille – so slowly, that his progress is barely perceptible and he becomes a calming influence in the midst of the town’s goings-on.

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.

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.

During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history ; international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes : a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Sebastião's Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.

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.

During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.

How to become a man when your mother and your closed circle have decided otherwise? This is the challenge Guillaume took up. The film recounts Guillaume's tragicomic battle from the young age of eight, as he adopts the role of a girl then of a homosexual... until, aged 30, he meets the woman who, after his mother, will become the other woman in his life. Beyond this story of a heterosexual coming-out, the film tells the tale of an actor who never stopped loving women, maybe even a little too much.

On a business trip to the Cannes Film Festival, Manhee is accused of being dishonest and fired. A teacher named Claire goes around taking photos with a Polaroid camera. She gets to know Manhee and sympathizes with her. Through taking photos, Claire has acquired the ability to look slowly at things and to transform objects.

Everyone in the village of Bouzolles knows the Tuche family, who live by the philosophy "Man is not made to work." Despite their lack of money, they strive to be happy... that is, until their hand-to-mouth existence is turned on its head. After winning the lottery, the Tuches get rich beyond their wildest dreams and move to Monaco. And while attempting to fit in in their swanky new homeland, they struggle to stay true to the same principles by which they've always lived.

Orson Welles' unfinished masterpiece, restored and assembled based on Welles' own notes. During the last 15 years of his life, Welles, who died in 1985, worked obsessively on the film, which chronicles a temperamental film director—much like him—who is battling with the Hollywood establishment to finish an iconoclastic work.

Propelled to the head of the W Group after the death of his adoptive father, Largo Winch decides, to everyone's surprise, to sell it, and use the proceeds to create an ambitious humanitarian foundation. But on the very same day, he finds himself accused of crimes against humanity by a mysterious witness. To prove his innocence, Largo will have to retrace the steps of his past life, in the heart of the Burmese jungle.

Family man François Nouel is the number one fan of the Tour de France – an obsession that costs him his wife and his job. At a loose end, François meets a former sports manager, Rémi who encourages him to take the plunge and do the Tour himself. With nothing to lose, François sets off, always one day ahead of the race, attracting fellow amateurs, media coverage and cheering crowds. As obstacle after obstacle is thrown his way, and his family comes back on the scene, François discovers what is really most important in his life.

Ariane Felder is pregnant! This is surprising with her being a young hardened judge with strict morals. But what is more surprising is that, according to paternity testing, the child's father is none other than Bob, a criminal from the prosecution charged with an atrocious attack! Ariane doesn't remember any of what has happened, so she has no idea what to expect...

Alex is in love with Sandra since childhood but has never dared approach her.He asks Antoine, a lonely writer to help him seduce her, because in his time he was the only one to conquer the heart of the mother.

A man leaves prison after a 15-year sentence and returns to his home district to find that it has changed completely, almost beyond recognition. He will find it hard to adjust to a world that is governed by a totally different set of rules...

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.

Laura is still waiting for Prince Charming at the age of 24. So when Sandro appears at a party, exactly like her Prince would in her dreams, she thinks she's found the right one. But then again, when she meets Maxime, Laura starts to wonder if some Princes could be more charming than others? Of course Sandro has problems of his own : his father, Pierre, just bumped into Madam Irma at his father's funeral and this reminded him of the date of his own death which Madame Irma had predicted ages ago. Now Pierre is unable to make any plans, not with his new partner Eleonore, nor with Sandro. And Maxime has his own problems, and so does Eleonore, Marianne, Jacqueline and many others. But don't worry, in the end, they'll all live happily ever after.

Newly transferred to the bustling port city of Marseille to assist with a crackdown on organized crime, energetic young magistrate Pierre Michel is given a rapid-fire tutorial on the ins and outs of an out-of-control drug trade. Pierre's wildly ambitious mission is to take on the French Connection, a highly organized operation that controls the city's underground heroin economy and is overseen by the notorious —and reputedly untouchable— Gaetan Zampa. Fearless, determined and willing to go the distance, Pierre plunges into an underworld world of insane danger and ruthless criminals.

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…

In 1894, French Captain Alfred Dreyfus is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil's Island.

Nono, a Dutch kid lacking two days being thirteen, runs away from problems at home and, disguised as a girl, takes up with the world's cleverest thief, who unbeknownst to Nono, may hold the bizarre key to his true identity.

Screenwriter Leo is searching for the wolf in the south of France. During a scouting excursion he is seduced by Marie, a free-spirited and dynamic shepherdess. Nine months later she gives birth to their child. Suffering from post-natal depression and with no faith in Leo, who comes and goes without warning, Marie abandons both of them. Leo finds himself alone, with a baby to care for.

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.

Théo and Hugo meet in a club and form an immediate bond. Once the desire and elation of this first moment has passed, the two young men, now sober, wander through the empty streets of nocturnal Paris, having to confront the love they sense blossoming between them. Ducastel and Martineau's most ambitious film to date and a candid insight into 21st century life.

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.

Victoria Spick, a criminal lawyer who is single, turns up at a wedding and meets three men there: David, the father of her daughters; Vincent, a friend of hers; and Sam, a former drug dealer who she bailed out. The next day, Vincent is accused of attempted murder by his partner.

1967-1976. As one of history's greatest fashion designers entered a decade of freedom, neither came out of it in one piece.

Roberto is an unemployed publicist who achieved success when he thought of a famous slogan: "Coca-Cola, the spark of life." Now he is a desperate man, trying to remember the happy days, back to the hotel where he spent the honeymoon with his wife. However, instead of the hotel, he finds a museum built around the Roman theater in the city. While walking through the ruins, he has an accident, an iron rod sticks into his head and leaves him completely paralyzed. If he tries to move he would die. Roberto becomes the focus of the media, which will change his life ...

Étienne Meunier (Benoît Magimel) is a young executive who has everything going for him. His career is skyrocketing and he is about to become #1 at work, he is married to a picture-perfect wife, has a dream home and money. To top it off, he's charming, healthy and everyone likes him and seems to consider him "a great guy". But beneath the surface, not everything is perfect. Meunier feels some pressure at work, knowing others eye his future position and he and his wife have been unable to have children so far. One day, Meunier bumps into a childhood friend, Patrick Chambon (François-Xavier Demaison) and the two resume their friendship, despite Chambon having struggled as a petty criminal.

After the death of her mother, a woman returns home to care for her sister.

In the hospital where she works in Brest, France, a lung specialist discovers a direct link between suspicious deaths and state-approved medicine. She fights single-handedly for the truth to come out.