French Documentary Movies

In his own words, the burglar behind the 2010 robbery of the Paris Museum of Modern Art tells how he pulled off the biggest art heist in French history.

The house referenced in the title is an old building, whose past splendour is recognisable despite the apparent lack of upkeep. This enormous house, in the middle of the forest, was a health cure site that Casanova and Voltaire apparently visited in their time. The spring was blocked and Nestlé, which was using it, closed the house.

A behind-the-scenes look at the of how the Paris Opera is run under the direction of Stephane Lissner.

A collection of stories about and images of our world, offering an immersion to the core of what it means to be human. Through these stories full of love and happiness, as well as hatred and violence, it brings us face to face with the Other, making us reflect on our lives. From stories of everyday experiences to accounts of the most unbelievable lives, these poignant encounters share a rare sincerity and underline who we are – our darker side, but also what is most noble in us, and what is universal. Our Earth is shown at its most sublime through never-before-seen aerial images accompanied by soaring music, resulting in an ode to the beauty of the world, providing a moment to draw breath and for introspection. This film is a politically engaged work which allows us to embrace the human condition and to reflect on the meaning of our existence.

You've seen him interview Mikhail Gorbachev, Angelina Jolie, Robbie Williams, Mariah Carey, Brad Pitt, Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro... You know him, but you don't really know him. Everyone has talked about Ardisson without ever getting close to the truth about him. My ambition: to reveal the man behind the costume of "The Man in Black." I thought to myself: if anyone can figure him out, it's me, a journalist and portraitist who has lived with him for 15 years. Who is the private Thierry behind the spectacular Ardisson? What we discover is how much Ardisson's personal history reflects the eras he has lived through, their contradictions, their utopias, their excesses, their violence. Like so many facets of a man and of society at the turn of the century.

18 years after his last film, (The Troubles We've Seen), Marcel Ophuls emerges from retirement as one of our last masters, the most corrosive, the funniest as well. And the most forceful. The director of The Sorrow and the Pity shares with us stories of his exceptionally rich life in this light-hearted yet bitter escapade though the century and the movies. Son of the great Max Ophuls, he is generous in his admiration. We also meet Jeanne Moreau, Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Lubitsch, Otto Preminger, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and of course François Truffaut. There are no great filmmakers without a memory, so here is the memory shop of Marcel Ophuls.

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Shot entirely from a boat on a lake, this evocative film confronts the viewer resolutely with his or her sensitivity for the moment. Surrounded by sounds of animal life, both from the lake and the neighbouring forests, this film takes us through the seasons. Sounds of water, the wind and a human presence.

Katya is a young woman and a professional welder. Abandoned as a little girl, she embarks on a personal journey to reunite with her lost family, and weld it together, like she welds metal at work. Yet what she discovers down the road is about to make her relive the early childhood trauma.

Summer 2016, somewhere in French provencal Drôme, a mysterious plague strikes in the villages: swarms of white butterflies invaded the area. At dusk, everyone is locked up home, trapped by the seemingly unstoppable vermin. As the big swarm approaches, Lou discovers both the strange insects and her feelings for her friend Sam. By the end of the season, the moths will have devastated the entirety of the century-old box trees, leaving a ruined landscape behind them.

The Mutability of All Things and the Possibility of Changing Some explores our human adaptability in light of catastrophe by way of seminal literature passages implying a transitory social body.

Rocco Siffredi is to pornography what Mike Tyson is to boxing or Mick Jagger is to rock’n’roll: a living legend. His mother wanted him to be a priest; with her blessing he became a hardcore performer, devoting his life to one God only: Desire. Rocco Siffredi reveals all, even if it sometimes means busting his own myth: his true story, beginnings, career, wife and children… and the ultimate revelation that will change his life forever.

For two decades, the victims of the Six-Day War have been fighting in Kisangani for the recognition of this bloody conflict and demanding compensation. Tired of unsuccessful pleas, they have finally decided to voice their claims in Kinshasa, after a long journey on the Congo River.

In both his private and public life, Foucault often contradicted himself, especially when his ideas collided with the institutions where he worked. Contemporary critics and philosophers reframe their legacy in an effort to build new ways of thinking about his struggle against the mechanisms of domination within society, demonstrating how the conflict lies at the heart of his life and work.

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Artem loves Yulia, Yulia loves Artem. They recently graduated from school, moved to Moscow and began an independent life. In search of part-time jobs, Artem comes up with the idea of creating another image from Yulia - Eva Elfie - and making an amateur video for Pornhub. Suddenly, the video becomes popular, Eva gets more and more job offers, and Artem becomes the boyfriend and producer of a world celebrity. The heroes seem to fall into the "American dream", but in their personal lives there are more and more problems and doubts.

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A handheld video camera explores image-surfaces as a visual collective unconscious: a TV screen, Polaroids, photos. A conceptually and formally compelling film about the idea of change, the loss of a revolution, the defying memory of the 70s decade.

This documentary is not a straightforward portrait of Armenian film director Sergei Paradjanov's life, but rather a fluid celebration of his talent and creativity. Focusing on the collages he produced during his years in prison, and featuring interviews with the director himself, Cazals' film demonstrates the scope of Paradjanov's artistic vision, lovingly commemorating this rebel of art cinema.

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The Cold War's wildest dreams of climate control have made a spectacular comeback: from the USA to China, 'geo-engineers' promise to make climate change the way we want. And they have found powerful supporters among lobbyists and entrepreneurs. This film is an investigation into the world-wide boom in geo-engineering. How did a pseudo-science with a controversial past become a planet-wide research subject?

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In the late 1970s, Marcel fled Catalonia to avoid conscription into the Spanish military. For 30 years he has been living in the tropical forests of Costa Rica, where he hosts ayahuasca ceremonies for young seekers from the West.

“When I was one year old I was already walking. At two, I was eating dirt. At three, my father was in prison. At four, I begged with my sister. At seven, I came to France.” Those are the words of Spartacus, a Roma child who, at 13, has already accumulated the experiences of several lifetimes. He and his sister Cassandre, 10, scrape out a living with an alcoholic, melodramatic father and a mother who begs them to free her from her husband’s tyranny. With the help of an exceptional social worker, they manage to detach themselves from their terrible parents and experience childhood as they never could before.

French national Stéphane Bouquet, the illegitimate son of a U.S. soldier, goes looking for the father he never met in the United States' heartland.

This documentary brings together a collection of remarkable interview footage with Douglas Sirk filmed in 1982 for the French TV show 'Cinéma cinémas', as well as material from the finished programme.

View of the audience, following the launch of a ship.

45,000 patients died in French psychiatric hospitals between 1939 and 1945. A single site escaped this carnage: the asylum in Saint-Alban, an isolated village in Lozère. What happened there for it to be an exception? Retracing several decades in the history of this important site of psychiatry, using precious archival films and the accounts of those who worked there, Martine Deyres answers this question and, in doing so, shows how the political courage and poetic audacity that were practised there contributed to changing medicine and society’s perception on madness. Intersecting in the crucible of this movement called “institutional psychotherapy” were members of the Resistance, artists, doctors and philosophers—including Paul Eluard, Tristan Tzara and Georges Canguilhem.

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Young and promising Chechen MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighter Khavaj must flee from Chechnya to Brussels when his brother discovers his homosexuality and promises to kill him. In an episode of silence, the young man finds comfort in the Planetarium, among the silence of the stars. In this documentary, which traces his first months of life in Belgium, Khavaj slowly observes how the last link that ties him to Chechnya disintegrates. The life of yesterday is in past, but the future is not clear yet.

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The eight-hour series of interviews between Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, filmed by Pierre-André Boutang in 1988-1989.

Originally there was a silence. That of Malek, the filmmaker’s father, who for years said nothing of his childhood in Algeria. And then, the need to break the silence, with a script that he gives to his children, to start telling his story. Several years later, the father and daughter finally make the journey to Mansourah, his native village: seeing his house, meeting other men who experienced the same heartbreak. Little by little, the film reveals what Malek, like many others, has long kept quiet about.

One of the first filmed portraits of a jazz musician.

"Journey to the West" is an embedded documentary film into a bus full of Chinese tourists visiting Europe (6 countries in 10 days!) for the very first time. This road movie captures with humor, poetry and spirit the cultural differences between China and Europe in a play of mirrors and contrasts. It also destroys the stereotypes about the emerging Chinese middle class and reveals what they think about the "others" who are "us", the Westerners.

In 2015, in Damascus, the Basateen al-Razi district and its orchards were razed to the ground as punishment for the population's uprising against the regime. Having lost everything, two former residents recall their neighborhood.

Paris 1983: They are between 14 and 18 and write their names on the walls of the city. Inspired by the New York phenomenon, they do not simply reproduce the forms. They create their own style, their required letters and inspire an entire generation. They communicate through letters of their name. They are called Writers.

Today, like a ship entering the storm, the world faces climate change induced collapse. Once You Know, by director Emmanuel Cappellin, is a poetic and poignant exploration of how four of the world’s leading climate scientists and energy experts find truth, chaos, and hope in their work.

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Ghislaine dances on the roof, Kamel makes himself look smart, and Salomon lies to his brother. Their three stories recount an entire high-rise block, a Republic of Enchanters.