Claire Mathon

Céline arrives in Armenia for the first time to legalize the death of Arto, her husband. She discovers that he has lied to her, that he fought in the war, usurped his identity, and that his former friends consider him a deserter.

Across time, a Black woman seeks to piece together the fragments of Black female figures and, guided by Black Venus, attempts to regain control of their narrative.

A tender posthumous letter to Tamara’s father, who was a film actor in Soviet Armenia. She already watched him on TV as a child before later establishing herself as a filmmaker. A captivating sleepwalk through the landscapes of Armenian film history.

The story takes us back to 1930 and centres around Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, an Airmail pilot in Argentina. When his best friend who happens to be Airmail’s best pilot Henri Guillaumet disappears in the Andes, Saint-Ex decides to set out in search of him, against all odds. This impossible quest forces him to push beyond his limits, turning his capacity to dream into his greatest strength...

Jérémie returns to his hometown for the funeral of his former boss, the village baker. He decides to stay for a few days with Martine, the man's widow. A mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbor and a priest with strange intentions make Jérémie's short stay in the village take an unexpected turn.

On a barren island, a mother and son confront years of silence and misunderstandings in writer-director Hanna Slak’s formidable fourth feature film starring Maren Eggert, scored by Amélie Legrand, and shot by Claire Mathon.

Boys dive, cats moan, an old lady smokes, a guardian of the dead sighs, young people dance. They are the people of a ghost town: Beirut, which exists only in dreams.

A novelist attends the trial of a woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. But as the trial continues, her own family history, doubts, and fears about motherhood are steadily dislodged as the life story of the accused is gradually revealed.

A Flower in the Mouth is a film diptych about time running out and how to live through the days that remain. The first act, filmed as an observational documentary in the world’s largest flower market, follows millions of bouquets transiting through a cavernous refrigerated hangar to be sold at auction, an industrial process at once both beautiful and terrifying. The film transitions to fiction in a second act freely adapted from a Pirandello play. A man with a flower-shaped tumour on his lip accosts a traveller in an all-night café. Their seemingly mundane conversation becomes a metaphysical monologue as the man, feeling death approach, clings to life by scrupulously observing its activity, watching reality in every detail, as if to fill the gap between himself and the rest of the world.

October 2015. French customs seize seven tonnes of cannabis in the heart of the capital. The same day, Hubert Antoine, a former mole with a shady past, contacts Stéphane Vilner, a journalist at Libération. He claims to be able to demonstrate the existence of State drug trafficking led by Jacques Billard, prominent media figure and high-ranking French police officer. Suspicious at first, the young journalist finally dives into an investigation that will lead him to the darkest corners of the Republic.

During her Christmas holidays with the royal family at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England, Diana decides to leave her marriage to Prince Charles.

In an abandoned warehouse, a crowd is dancing as one on 145 BPM techno music. Among them is Dustin, a young transgender woman and crew: Felix, Raya and Juan. As the night draws on, collective hysteria morphs into sweet melancholy, and euphoria into yearning for tenderness.

After the death of her beloved grandmother, eight-year-old Nelly meets a strangely familiar girl her own age in the woods. Instantly forming a connection with this mysterious new friend, Nelly embarks on a fantastical journey of discovery which helps her come to terms with this newfound loss.

Artist and filmmaker Eric Baudelaire spent four years interacting with the pupils of a film class, at a secondary school in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis. Keeping himself on the sidelines, he gives way to the children to express their thoughts and dreams. Their remarks are intuitive, inquisitive, yet passionate and surprisingly mature, concerning rocky and complicated issues, ranging from racism, immigration, and identity, all the way to the possibilities of film as a medium. As time flows almost unnoticed, it is evident that these children have not only become the co-directors of this film but also the heroes of their own lives.

Arranged to marry a rich man, young Ada is crushed when her true love goes missing at sea during a migration attempt — until a miracle reunites them.

On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.

Based on fourteen poems by Max Jacob put to music by Henri Sauguet and Robert Caby, Carte de visite is a particularly vibrant and faithful tribute to the overlooked great poet. Michel Zumpf makes good use of cinema and directs his film just like Max Jacob changed poetry and risked his life – in a unique and unsettling harmony between the most studied seriousness and the wildest imagination.

If anyone knows anything about bikes, it’s Raoul Taburin, official bicycle dealer of Saint Céron, a lovely village in the South of France. But Raoul has a terrible secret: he has never been able to keep his balance on a bike without using stabilisers. His childhood and teenage years were spent trying to overcome his flaw - in vain. All attempts to tell his secret have also failed. Nobody believes him. When photographer Hervé Figougne moves to Saint Céron, the two men become fast friends. And when Figougne offers to photograph Raoul riding a racing bike along a mountain precipice, the moment of truth has arrived. He does all he can to avoid the photo shoot. But everything goes against him and he finally has to accept his destiny. “At least”, he thinks, “people will have to believe me”. But for Raoul Taburin, things are never that simple...

No Man Is an Island travels across Europe, from the farmers working together in the Galline Felici cooperative in Sicily to the architects, craftspersons and elected representatives who collaborate in the Swiss Alps and in Austria. All are engaged in politics through their work and all believe in a common destiny. Is the local level the last possible place for a viable utopia?

Riyad and his friend Zaïd leave their estate near Lyon and go to Switzerland to steal two luxurious cars for the account of Chérif, the thug ruling their area. Yet the journey goes wrong. Hunted, Riyad sinks into the mountains to escape the police.

Despite the life threat hanging over his head, Stéphane decides to go back to Corsica for the funeral of Christophe, a childhood friend and companion in arms, murdered the day before. On this occasion, the chain of events which made him, the learned petit-bourgeois from Bastia, shift from delinquency to political radicalization and then to clandestinity, comes back to his mind.

Sight, like other senses, is as much a matter of personal experience as of the absence of possible comparisons. How can we know what others see and in what way? How can we describe when our reference points are constantly escaping? Faced with the risk of blindness since childhood, Manuel von Stürler lives in dread of this fate and condition; his lust for sight (Fureur de voir) retraces an initiatory journey into the universe of vision and senses, into the definition of darkness or of nothing.

A lonely mother and her son go to the opera where a performance of Cherubini’s opera Medea is given. It is the mother’s birthday and she wanted to surprise her son by inviting him to the opera. But, the son’s plan were different and he is quite upset about it. His mother tries to break the silent barrier behind which he hides. A semblance of discussion begins, not without humour. Tension is present but, as the performance goes on, both find themselves astounded, captured, alone in the opera house.

Also Known as Jihadi follows the progress of a young man's journey from France to Syria, and back to France, where he is incarcerated for allegedly joining Daesh. Based on real events, and drawn from thousands of pages of judicial documents, the work employs the so-called landscape theory (fukeiron in Japanese). The character's paths to radicalism are rendered purely through a series of landscape shots filmed at the locations traversed by the subject: a biography determined not by what the subject did, but by what the subject saw, and one that questions how these landscapes reflect the social and political structures that are the backdrop for a journey of alienation and return.

For an estimated population of 4 million, Lebanon boasts some 200,000 foreign domestic workers, contracted under a system of full custodianship that deprives them of basic rights. Implemented since the start of the civil war (1975), this system is borrowed from similar ones in the Gulf countries. It is predicated on a transaction whereby the worker is not providing a service, but is rather commodified as a product, with specialised agencies organising their import under conditions not unlike modern-day outposts of slavery. Director Maher Abi Samra places his camera inside the offices of the El Raed agency with the full complicity of its owner Zein. Diligently, unobtrusively, he observes and probes. The components of this state-sanctioned system come undone methodically

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.

Answering the call of his homeland Algeria, there seems to be a path unfolding in front of him, and it is tortuous. Providence provides a child to guide him. The apparently pristine wilderness is heavy with the history of the land. Along a fine line between reality and fantasy, the past surfaces through archive footage. Strangely, the uncanny trip will lead the foreign son to connect with a landscape he hardly knows, and allow his intimate reunion with an estranged family.

Tony is admitted to a rehabilitation center after a serious ski accident. Dependent on the medical staff and pain relievers, she takes time to look back on a turbulent relationship that she experienced with Georgio.

At a shop on a Paris street corner, Arabic-speaking men are often overheard engaging in friendly conversation. The sentiments shared in this gathering place for immigrant men resonate with letters the director's father wrote to his family in Lebanon years ago, and the nostalgia they bring makes it feel as though time has stopped.

Mona, a prisoner on work release, meets Clément, a shy actor. Desperate to impress Mona, Clément recruits his extroverted friend, Abel, to help. When Mona becomes more interested in Abel, it sets off a conflict between the two friends. Meanwhile, Mona attempts to keep her past hidden.

Michel, a fifty year old man, graphic designer, decides to change the urban lifestyle and go on an adventure. Fascinated by airmail, he dreams at Jean Mermoz when he's on scooter. One day, Michel sees a picture of a kayak.

When he first enters the Montpellier Opera House, Victor knows nothing about music. Nor does he know his father, Samuel Rovinski, who is there to conduct Mahler’s 6th symphony. To change the course of his suddenly uncertain future, for Nadia his mother, for Luna whom he has fallen in love with, Victor has decided to step out of the shadows. He’ll go as far as he needs to.

Adelaide and her two children Jean and Sacha spend a few days together in the mountains. As she takes her family on lengthy hikes, she is hoping for them to discover the trace of a hidden memory.

Line watershed falls within the scope of the watershed of the Loire, the source of the Vienna Convention on the Millevaches to the estuary. Watershed, not the Loire river! That is to say the inclined to the sea level, all of the irrigated area, not only the stroke of the river. That is to say, the business areas and wetlands, ditches and highways, meeting rooms and yards. Because water is everywhere, in soil, ground, air, flowing, seeping, evaporating and everywhere connecting the territories between them, indicating their interdependence, making us dream of solidarity. The line of the watershed is not only the geographical dividing line between watersheds but it is also the policy line that connects individuals and groups who have something shared: water, territory, landscape.

Adashi, ex-member of the Japanese Red Army, narrates a story taking place in Beirut. The melancholy of war, the pain of disillusionment. A story being written and rewritten, open to interpretation. When the time comes, return to reality can only be cruel.

Franck spends his summer days hopelessly searching for companionship at a popular cruising spot on the shores of a lake in rural France. One day, he meets Michel, an attractive yet darkly mysterious man and falls blindly in love.

Al, a young man from a modest background is about to marry his boss’ daughter, along with succeeding him as the head of a car dealership. One night, while coming back from his bachelor party, he is guilty of a hit-and-run accident, urged by his two childhood friends present in the car. The next day, gnawed with guilt, Al decides to inquire about his victim. What he does not know is that Juliette, a young woman, has witnessed the entire accident from her balcony.

Violette knows that she will go and one night, she goes. Once away from her home,she will make good on her innermost wish, to walk in the steps of Rosa, the Rosa to whom she feels intimately attached, her Rosa, Rosa Luxembourg. Just eleven, but Violette, thinks of herself as Rosa's heir, the guardian of her memory. In the energy and the courage of this revolutionary figure, she finds her own identity. She feels herself transported by the utopia vision of the letters which Rosa wrote from her prison cells in 1917.

An 18-year-old beauty develops an attraction to an older photographer.

In an indeterminate future where it seems to be raining endlessly a man called Balthazar is waiting at home alone with his dog for a visit from an employee of an organisation called La Piqûre.

Angèle, a beautiful young woman with a past, arrives in a small fishing harbor in Normandy. She meets Tony, a professional fisherman, who finds himself attracted to her although he dislikes her blunt ways. Tony hires her as a fishmonger, lodges her and teaches her the tricks of the trade. The relationships between Myriam, Tony's mother, and Angèle are far from easy but the young woman gradually adapts to her new environment and little by little Tony and Angèle manage to tame each other.

In the fall of 2010, Bozon and co-conspirator Pascale Bodet commandeered the first floor of Paris’s famed Centre Pompidou for 10 days of screenings, lectures and performances that amounted to a counter-canonical history of French cinema. During the ensuing merriment (entitled Beaubourg, la dernière Major !) audience members were invited to observe the daily making of this film, directed by Bozon and written by Axelle Ropert, about an inexperienced young journalist (Laure Marsac) sent to the Pompidou to interview a maverick artistic impresario (Thomas Chabrol). The result is an unexpected love story that is also a record of this landmark exhibition, featuring cameos by Raul Ruiz, Paul Vecchiali, Luc Moullet and more !

Uninhibited examination of the legacy of Lebanon’s civil war. A reflection on the destinies of comrades who were once bound by ideologies and remain tightly knit friends. The film travels the chimeric and daunting reality of Lebanon's fractured post-war landscape.

Pam is twenty. She and her girlfriends hang out together on the couch at The Ranch, the apartment she shares with Manon. Sitting around chatting, drinking, smoking, and dancing are part of life at their age, but there comes a time when you need to cut loose from the group and go your own way...

In the summer, 27 year-old Sam drives towards the south of France in his Ford. He meets Matthieu and his sister Léa and takes them along in his apparently aimless journey. Matthieu has a crush on Sam and tries to seduce him. Léa is a beautiful, young, provocative girl who likes men so much that she got pregnant. She soon brings along Jérémie with them. Throughout the trip, they learn to know, fight and love each other. In spite of a blooming relationship with Matthieu, Sam isolates himself because of his secret: he is headed for Spain to find his long-lost mother.

It is the end of a meal. Eight people are gathered around a big table. They evoke the memory of a lost friend. Through the stories of each about the absentee, the character traits, the haabits or the expressions, a portrait in hollow is outlined.

In the Land That Is Like You is a progress on the tracks of my lost past, with the contact of my mother, my grandmother and the man who I love, in a country which escapes from me and retains me, Lebanon.

Twenty Show was the first "user generated film", edited from fictional and real video-blogs. A unique experience initiated on the Internet, a mockumentary that paints a generational portrait of young French people in their twenties.

In this musical take on everyday life, Adele is devastated after a painful breakup. Her distant cousin, Rachel, finds her a job and suggests that Adele sleep with other men to get over her heartbreak. The search begins, but Adele can’t escape the visage of her former lover….

Every afternoon, Clara climbs aboard a pleasure boat to gaze at Jacques, the gruff, aloof crew chief. When she learns he's leaving, to be replaced by Sophie, she's compelled to talk to him.

A Comorian village. Djibril spends his frees time taking care of an abandoned villa. While he is busy there, his cabin catches fire. Homeless, he must find a place to live.

A passenger takes a journey in a taxi.

Alban lives in a castle that he has just inherited in a small village in Charente-Maritime. Inside, the dilapidation has long since taken hold. He meets Jérôme, a young gypsy from the neighbouring town, with whom he has a sexual relationship. In this space that is impossible to rebuild, a strange intimacy is gradually invented, barely disturbed by the interruption of a young woman who has come to spend a few days in this residence.

Julie pays a visit to her father in the south of France. He has been amputated and lives alone in a seaside house. Father and daughter don't know how to talk to one another, they approach each other, try to explore, dare come closer, and sometimes acknowledge each other. They share the same desire for women, an ambiguous mutual understanding which is tolerated if kept silent.

A girl, a boy, a ghost. Some pop music and noisy rock. Meanwhile, youth keeps fading away.

Expecting her first child, actress Violette decides to dive deep into her dysfunctional family's history by filming a documentary about them.

The story of a young man who does not understand what he says or does. At least that's what he says.