French movies about single mothers

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.

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.

The O'Neills lived happily in their house in the Australian countryside. That was until one day fate struck blindly, taking the life of Peter, the father, leaving his grief-stricken wife Dawn alone with their four children. Among them, eight-year-old Simone denies this reality. She is persuaded that her father still lives in the giant fig tree growing near their house and speaks to her through its leaves. But the tree becomes more and more invasive and threatens the house. It must be felled. Of course, Simone won't allow it.

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...

Disaster strikes when a criminal mastermind reveals the identities of all active undercover agents in Britain. The secret service can now rely on only one man - Johnny English. Currently teaching at a minor prep school, Johnny springs back into action to find the mysterious hacker. For this mission to succeed, he’ll need all of his skills - what few he has - as the man with yesterday’s analogue methods faces off against tomorrow’s digital technology.

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.

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

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.

Two sibling doctors take on a young diabetic patient and both fall for the girl’s lovely mother, who tends bar at a local watering hole, testing their fraternal bonds and professional relationship.

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.

During World War I, a home care nurse treats a man who lost one leg on the front lines. A strong bond arises between them and evolves into a passionate love affair.

Sacha is a real seducer, a man with no ties or emotional or professional. Charlotte is a modern and independent woman, but barely has time to care for their three children. While Sacha and Charlotte are, at first glance, two incompatible beings, when they meet soon discover that they are quite complementary and need each other.

Claire is a midwife and has devoted her life to others. At a moment when she is preoccupied by the imminent closure of the maternity clinic where she works, her life is further turned upside down when Béatrice, her father's former mistress, turns up on the scene. Béatrice is a capricious and selfish woman, Claire's exact opposite.

Forty-year-old Paul-André is a timid, rather introverted man. Rich but alone, he is deeply bored and ends up concluding that what he needs is a family. Violette, a forty-year-old full of energy, is threatened with eviction and is afraid she'll lose custody of her two children. Paul-André then proposes a totally above the board contract to rent the family in exchange for him paying off Violette's debts. For better and for worse..

A kindhearted seventeen-year-old in the American Southwest turns to prostitution to fulfill her dream of a new life in San Francisco.

Romeo Aldea, a physician living in a small mountain town in Transylvania, has raised his daughter Eliza with the idea that once she turns 18, she will leave to study and live abroad. His plan is close to succeeding. Eliza has won a scholarship to study psychology in the UK. She just has to pass her final exams – a formality for such a good student. On the day before her first written exam, Eliza is assaulted in an attack that could jeopardize her entire future. Now Romeo has to make a decision. There are ways of solving the situation, but none of them using the principles he, as a father, has taught his daughter.

The professional and emotional cross-currents between two romantically entwined theater actors played by the director’s son Louis and Anna Mouglalis.

Exiled artist and poet Mustafa embarks on a journey home with his housekeeper and her daughter; together the trio must evade the authorities who fear that the truth in Mustafa's words will incite rebellion.

It's the beginning of the WWII. South of France. Patricia, 18, is the oldest daughter of a well-digger, Pascal, who considers her a princess because of her moral qualities. She's kind, devoted. One day, she briefly meets a young man, Jacques, the son of Mazel, owner of the shop where her father buy his material. He's handsome and teasing. Her father's friend, Felipe, would love to marry her, and he invites her to an aviation show. She accepts his invitation only because she knows Jacques is a pilot and will be there. Soon, she'll carry his child, and he'll be gone, and the family will have to deal with this out-of-wedlock pregnancy...

Ever since she served on the jury during his trial, Nora has been convinced that Jacques Viguier is innocent, despite him being accused of murdering his wife. Following an appeal by the public prosecutor’s office, and fearing a miscarriage of justice, she convinces a leading lawyer to defend him during his second trial, on appeal. Together, they will put up a tenacious fight against injustice.

A genetically engineered plant scatters its seeds and seems to cause uncanny changes on living creatures. The afflicted appear strange, as if they were replaced - especially for those, who are close to them. Or is it all just imagination? Thus starts a play between various truths,on which end stands the loss of the own identity.

A foster family in South Central a few weeks before the city erupts in violence following the verdict of the Rodney King trial in 1992.

The adventures of Shetland pony Poly in the South of France.

A bored young man meets with his former girlfriend, now a cabaret dancer and single mother, and soon finds himself falling back in love with her.

Maud is an architect and a mother. Due to a misunderstanding, she wins the competition to refurbish the parvis of Notre-Dame. Torn between these responsibilities and love issues, she will go through an emotional storm.

A middle aged carpenter, who requires state welfare after injuring himself, is joined by a single mother in a similar scenario.

A union pensioner and his wife are robbed, but find that merely getting the assailants brought to justice is not enough for their consciences.

Sentaro runs a small bakery that serves dorayaki pastries filled with sweet red bean paste (“an”). When an old lady, Tokue, offers to help in the kitchen he reluctantly accepts. She will soon prove to have magic in her hands…

Just when Julie finally gets an interview for a job that will let her raise her children better, she runs into a national transit strike.

Yann, a cook, and Nadia, a waitress and mother of 9-year-old child, decide to risk everything on the purchase of a restaurant. With plenty of talent, energy, love and dreams, but no finance of their own, they find themselves forced into a jungle of financing and bank loans that quickly overwhelms them. To bail them out, Nadia has to take a job in Canada, while Yann is forced to stay behind to save the restaurant. Together, he and the child confront a relentless avalanche of creditors, an uncaring system and the daily grind from which there is no respite… Yann finally understands that his only chance of salvation lies in joining his lover – as well as reuniting mother and child – by following Nadia to Canada and a better life.

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

A single mother breeds locusts as high-protein foods but has trouble getting them to reproduce until she finds they have a taste for blood.

Tunis, summer 2010, a few months before the Revolution: Farah, 18 years old, has just graduated and her family already sees her as a future doctor. But she doesn't have the same idea. She sings in a political rock band, has a passion for life, gets drunk, discovers love and her city by night against the wishes of her mother Hayet, who knows Tunisia and its dangers all too well.

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?

8-year-old Elli and her mother, Marlène, live in a small town by the French Riviera where they act out to relieve boredom and hide from social services. When Marlène caves in to yet another night of excess, she chooses to leave Elli behind for a man she just met. The young child must confront her mother's demons in order to get her back.

The whole Bélier family is deaf, except for sixteen year old Paula who is the important translator in her parents' day to day life especially when it comes to matters concerning the family farm. When her music teacher discovers she has a fantastic singing voice and she gets an opportunity to enter a big Radio France contest the whole family's future is set up for big changes.

Ever since she broke up with Nigel, Lena soldiers on through life as best she can with her two kids. She valiantly overcomes the obstacles put in her way. But she has yet to confront the worst of them: Her unstoppable family has decided, by any means necessary, to make her happy.

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.

Set in France during the mid-1970s, Vanessa, a former dancer, and her husband Roland, an American writer, travel the country together. They seem to be growing apart, but when they linger in one quiet, seaside town they begin to draw close to some of its more vibrant inhabitants, such as a local bar/café-keeper and a hotel owner.

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.

Erwan, a strapping Breton who clears mines for a living, is shaken when he discovers that his father is not his father. Despite his affection for the man who raised him, he quietly sets out to find his biological father, and succeeds in locating Joseph, an endearing old codger he takes a liking to. Just when things look settled, another unexpected “bomb” hits Erwan in the form of Anna, an elusive nymph.

French filmmaker Eric Lartigau directs the anarchic buddy comedy Bullit and Riper, originally released as Mais qui a tue Pamela Rose? French comedic television stars Kad Merad and Olivier Barroux are both the protagonists and the screenwriters. As a parody of Hollywood cop films, the story is set somewhere in the American Midwest as fabricated by the French. After losing his regular partner, FBI agent Richard Bullit (Merad) gets assigned to the book-learned cop Riper (Barroux) to investigate the death of a stripper. American movie stereotypes abound, such as shock jock Phil Canon (Gérard Darmon) and sheriff Steve Marley (Jean-Paul Rouve).

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.

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.

Murphy is an American living in Paris who enters a highly sexually and emotionally charged relationship with the unstable Electra. Unaware of the seismic effect it will have on their relationship, they invite their pretty neighbor into their bed.

When the fun loving Marie sets her eyes on brooding comic book artist Paul, it sets off the kind of romantic sparks that quickly culminate in the bedroom. But the next morning brings its share of surprises as Marie crawls out of bed to discover her life flash-forwarded fifteen years down the road: Not only has she been married to Paul all this time, but she’s now the mother of a little boy the head of a powerful multinational investment firm and the proprietor of a fabulous apartment overlooking the Eiffel Tower. Quickly Marie discovers that all her achievements have not brought happiness.

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.

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.

Philippe Mars wants to please everyone. He wants to be a good father, a friendly ex-husband, a helpful colleague and an understanding brother. Unfortunately, his little world goes out of its planned orbit. His son becomes a hardcore vegetarian, his daughter a compulsive swot, whilst his sister exhibits giant paintings of their naked parents. At the office he must face the rampages of his mentally unstable colleague Jerôme who one night turns up at his door with a young woman in tow who has just been released from a clinic.

Unable to repay their debts, Milan and Victor, best friends and co-owners of a Paris nightclub, are lured into a drug deal that goes bad. Tortured by police, they negotiate their freedom against an overwhelming testimony that condemns their psychotic liaison to prison. Six years later, the men's nightmare begins again when the pyschopath is granted his freedom. Now, not having talked for years, the old friends are united again in order to survive.