Francis Lai

Radio France, with the support of Lambert Wilson, Anne Sila and Gabriel Yared, pays tribute to the great film composer Francis Lai with a journey through his work, from A Man and a Woman to Black Eyes.

They knew each other long ago: a man and a woman whose dazzling and unexpected romance captured in the now-iconic film revolutionized our understanding of love. Today, the former race car driver seems lost in the pathways of his memory. In order to help him, his son seeks out the woman his father wasn’t able to cherish but whom he constantly revisits in his thoughts and dreams. Anne reunites with Jean-Louis and their story picks up where they left it…

Before being judges, attorneys, or jury members, they are first of all men and women at a crossroads in their lives, with their dreams and their secrets, their hopes and their limitations, all beneath the same sun, each with their own dark side. In a lovely provincial town, during a jazz festival, life will juggle with their destinies.

A successful film composer falls in love when he travels to India to work on a Bollywood retelling of Romeo and Juliet.

A war photographer and absent father, who spends more time taking care of his camera than his four daughters, enjoys a happy life in the Alps with his new girlfriend. But his life is turned upside down the day that his best friend tries to reconcile him with his family by telling them a big lie.

On April 13, 2011, Les Films 13 production company turned 50. How can one celebrate an anniversary of this sort ? By simply making "another" film that would sum up all the earlier ones. D'un film à l'autre is hence a kind of anthology of the films produced Les Films 13 since the 1960s (short and feature films written and directed for the main part by Claude Lelouch), a best-of of half a century of cinema, going from Le Propre de l'homme to What Love May Bring. A biography in images of a filmmaker as admired as he is criticized. In reality, D'un film à l'autre is more than a series of film excerpts, interviews, and making-of documents (some of which possess an undeniable historical value, like that from A Man and A Woman, or the final performances of Patrick Dewaere).

A theater projectionist's daughter is involved in the Resistance in WWII, but she doesn’t share his political involvement & only believes in passion. She follows the men she loves unconditionally, suffering betrayal and hardship.

In Naples during the viceroyalty, Masaniello, a Neapolitan fishmonger, leads a popular uprising against Duke D'Arcos. The riots last just ten days, from July 7 to 16, 1647. The people, oppressed by the nobles and exorbitant taxes, find in Masaniello a way to make their voices heard.

A picture of humankind in Paris: singers, shows, social gatherings, businessmen, nightclub barmen, bums, shoppers.

Olivia, Irina and Masha are improving their acting skills. They no longer believe in Prince Charming, and their career is waning. Olivia works at the front desk at the airport and offers a wonderful plan: he would do so that friends will be aboard the Paris - New York plane and will sit next to wealthy men. Their task is to seduce the rich and pull them out of money. But the fraudsters do not suspect that Comissaire Bayard and his young assistant are closely watching them...

Once a successful dancer, Miriam has abandoned her career to bring up her son, Serge, after her boyfriend walked out of her.

Benoit Blanc loves living, he loves women, he loves daring. He is a famous businessman who suffers from stomach-ache. Fabiolini, a would-be actor, is a policeman and he too suffers from the same sickness. The two man face suffering in opposite ways: Benoit Blanc is optimistic while Fabiolini, always unsure of himself, is persuaded he is seriously ill. The two men meet by chance while doing a gastroscopy and become friends. After having known their real different conditions, they will change and will understand better their lives. Around them, other people, women and men, will see their lives changed, by chance, by love or solely by the life stream.

In WWII France, poor and illiterate Henri Fortin is introduced to Victor Hugo's classic novel Les Misérables and begins to see parallels between the book and his own life.

The plot is about a trial against three men who tried to earn loads of money by illegal methods to get to Canada and about the lawyers and the judge who get on with the trial and who are being unfaithful to their couples.

The thief: a gangster on the lam, is waiting for a boat which is to sail away from this harbor,a dead end. The liar: a young woman he meets in a restaurant tells him the story of her life based on the screenplay of a movie she was to make. They fall head over heels in love. The convict who has just escaped from jail wants to keep her out of his predicament, but after a night of desperate love, she refuses to leave him.And the police are tracking him down.

Since the suicide of his wife, Jacques Loursat has gone downhill. Estranged from his daughter, his lawyer's pratice in ruins, he consoles himself with drink. One night he is woken by a gunshot and catches sight of a young man fleeing the house. Isabelle, his daughter, claims to know nothing about it, even when he finds the body of a young man. Isabelle hangs around with a gang of spoiled young people who have no shortage of money, and is in love with Joel, an ambitious boy involved in drug dealing. Antoine, from a more modest background, is in love with her. When the police start investigating Joel's murder, Antoine becomes the ideal suspect.

A film with emphasis on visuals and music, the plot concerns characters who meet in present time, mainly the male gypsy Jesus, and the female thief and con-artist Odona, who share parallel experiences from lives 2000 years in the past. These stories are juxtaposed.

Two brothers, one very successful and the other not, switch places with each other, exchanging jobs and wives.

After eighteen years of psychiatric care, the former bank manager Augusto Scrivani returns home from his daughter-in-law Carla. Dino Risi directs a melancholy and scratchy Gassman.

A provincial is hired for a commercial and discovers Paris. He soon discovers that the city is not so different than his small village.

Chronicles Bernadette's years with the Sisters of Charity of Nevers convent, from age 22 until her untimely death from tuberculosis at age 35.

How can moon and time affect human mood and fate? In the manner of a Greek tragedy , this movie shows how the chaos of life ineluctably propels its characters towards violence and alienation.

The partners are back and are in a tight spot! Francois is going through a moral crisis, and Rene is experiencing the same. But, honesty is not always the best policy. After being suspended for their actions, they return to face their far more crooked replacements.

A car dealer, well-to-do and with a beautiful wife, finds himself attracted to his rather plain new temporary secretary. Despite her own commitments she feels the same and the two soon embark on an affair. Though it would seem it has happened before his wife finds this particular entanglement of her husband's very difficult to accept.

A foundling, raised in the circus, Sam Lion becomes a businessman after a trapeze accident. However, when he reaches fifty and becomes tired of his responsibilities and of his son Jean-Philippe, he decides to disappear at sea. However, he runs into Albert Duvivier, one of his former employees. He comes to realise that he has ignored the important things in his life.

In early 1858, at the Massabielle grotto, 14-year old asthmatic, illiterate miller's daughter Bernadette sees a light she later distinguishes as a beautiful young woman. The girl and the woman converse over the next few months. Crowds follow and people are cured by the waters from a spring Bernadette has cleared. Secular authorities are threatened by the popular gatherings and subject the girl to inquiry and medical review. The local monsignor, initially skeptical, becomes Bernadette's champion. She maintains her forthright simplicity and untutored wisdom throughout.

The keys to freedom for citizens of Hong Kong are U.S. passports, as their city quakes with the imminent transition to Chinese Communist rule. A deadly black market for passports is thriving, controlled by Hong Kong's warlords.

On the day Jean Gabin dies, a kidnaper who also takes a fortune in jewels heisted from Cartiers murders Simon Verini's wife. (Simon was fencing the jewels for a youthful gang who robbed Cartiers; he suspects them of the murder.) He's framed for the theft and spends ten years in prison, writing to his daughter, Marie-Sophie, who's 11 when he's sent away. Released, he reconnects to Marie-Sophie and to the young thieves, seeks revenge, and is quickly arrested again. She doesn't know what to make of her father, retreats to her Swiss fiancé, and is flummoxed when one of the young thieves falls for her. Is resolution possible when crime cuts across families and romance?

Aboard a ship early in the 20th-century, a middle-aged Italian tells his story of love to a Russian.

Jean-Louis and Anne have had their fling and separated. Now 20 years have passed. He is still dating various women. She is now a big-time director whose most recent film was a very expensive bomb. She comes up with the idea of making a romance based upon her fling with Jean-Louis. She contacts him to gain his permission. Jean-Louis is still in racing and goes away for a desert rally while she begins filming. She finds the mood of their romance difficult to recapture in her film.

Frank, a young taxi driver from Berlin, falls in love with Jessica, a model. But the calls for help from his brother Ritchie bring him back to a tragic reality. For like Frank, he once was a dope fiend. Ritchie, as for him, is still deep in the hell of drugs, torn between getting his doses and trying to find 4,000 marks he owes to his dealers.

In 1978 Tennessee, a single mother and political appointee risks her career and her life to blow the whistle on rampant corruption in the penal system.

Released after seven years in prison, an inveterate thug goes from strength to ruthless strength as he makes his way through a succession of dubious jobs, illegal schemes, and brutal romances.

All Simon wants for Christmas is his parents (who are being held captive by an African warlord) back. So, he and another student stowaway on a flight to Lapland to find Santa Claus. There they meet St. Nick as well as a Christmas Fairy and an evil Ogre.

A streetwise Paris policeman who takes kickbacks from the minor criminals on his beat to allow them to continue is assigned an idealistic new partner fresh from police academy. He sets out to corrupt him...

This tragic musical drama chronicles the star-crossed love between beloved French singer Edith Piaf and World Middleweight boxing champion Marcel Cerdan who died in a plane crash. The tumultuous affair is paralleled by the love affair of a French POW and his young pen pal who get engaged after writing to each other for four years and having never met. Their romances are framed by the sad, torchy songs of Piaf.

The film follows four families, with different nationalities (French, German, Russian and American) but with the same passion for music, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The various story lines cross each other time and again in different places and times, with their own theme scores that evolve as time passes. The main event in the film is the Second World War, which throws the stories of the four musical families together and mixes their fates. Although all characters are fictional, many of them are loosely based on historical musical icons (Édith Piaf, Josephine Baker, Herbert von Karajan, Glenn Miller, Rudolf Nureyev, etc.) The Boléro dance sequence at the end brings all the threads together.

Tikoyo lives by the Bora Bora lagoon in the South Pacific, where he found a man-eating tiger shark when it was an orphaned baby, just a foot long. He named it Manidu, and it grew to be sixteen feet long. Tikoyo believes that his companion houses the soul of a wise old man, and helps him guard the sacred black pearls in the lagoon. In fact, Manidu does protects Tikoyo and his girlfriend Diana, only eating those who are their enemies, or who seek to destroy their environment, or steal the pearls.

Françoise has gone into business seducing men whose wives want to divorce them, and who need incriminating evidence against them. In addition, she has a little blackmail operation going on on the side with politicians who can't afford a scandal. She got started on this business after she was raped, and hasn't looked back since. Now the police are on her trail, and she avails herself of the services of a couple who make a profession of hiding wanted criminals. At the hideout, she meets Simon, a second-generation mobster. As the police close in, Françoise and Simon go on the run together, pulling off occasional heists for operating money. Before long, they have also fallen in love.

Sarah Brown is sent to England after her parents die in a car crash. There, she lives with her aunt Velvet who introduces Sarah to the world of equestrian competition and gives her the last foal of her own prize horse, The Pie. Under the watchful eye of her aunt and horse trainer Capt. Johnson, Sarah develops into a talented rider who might have a shot at the Olympics.

This film tells the story about a group of girls at an exclusive German girls boarding school. Across the lake is an exclusive boys boarding school...

Young Jeanne falls in love with photographer Francis, who soon takes her with him when he emigrates to America. In a small town in the still wild west, they build up a small photo shop. Meanwhile, animal doctor David lives on his lonesome farm together with his unlucky wife. It takes years and two tragic accidents until Jeanne and David meet. She has already decided to return to France as soon as possible, but love, and fate, have other plans.

A coming of age story centering on the exploits of a teenage girl during summer vacation.

Bizarre events keep occurring in an old mansion, and it's soon become obvious that something mysterious is up in the attic.

The film follows the exploits of Jacques, a car-mechanic turned pro-thief, and his Jewish co-conspirator Simon as their robberies, beginning well before the Second World War, take on a political coloration under the occupation.

A disillusioned and depressed film director is forced to confront his lack of humanity through his involvement in the death of a young actress and the suicide of her husband.

Emmanuelle returns to her husband in Hong Kong and proceeds to have several extramarital affairs -- with his knowledge, of course. Her husband's lover and American guest are both very puzzled by their openness.

Michelle, a French sculptor living in Rome, is informed of a job babysitting a rich man's son by her new friend Ann, an actress. However, upon arrival, Michelle makes a horrifying discovery.

A jaded and charming police inspector is assigned along with his cheerful partner to a case involving the mysterious death and/or suicide of a wealthy entrepreneur. The chief suspect is his enchanting wife who was aware that her husband had a mistress. It is also possible that the dead man may be the victim of a radical terrorist group.

Four wedding anniversaries serve to chronicle the beginning and end of a thirty-year marriage.

A restless woman seems unable to leave her husband or her lover.

In a little French town everything goes on as usual and people seem friendly and good-natured, until the day two women arrive from Paris. A man gets off the same bus, and that very night he seizes the two women and asks for the most beautiful woman in town as their ransom. After the initial shock, the mayor, his brother, the prefect, the police, and the gendarmerie gather around the house where the two woman are imprisoned. It will be a test for everyone and each of them will show his/her real stuff: hypocrisy, meanness, or humanity concealed under their provincial respectability.

Elizabeth and her daughter Cecile spend their holidays at a lakeside resort in the French mountains. Elizabeth falls in love with a strange Italian, Giovanni, while young Cecile is courted by an apprentice cook. It seems that mother and daughter are drifting apart from each other, but then their holidays are over.

An all-knowing interlocutor guides us through a series of affairs in Vienna, 1900. A soldier meets an eager young lady of the evening. Later he has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid and does similarly with the young man of the house. The young man seduces a married woman. On and on, spinning on the gay carousel of life.

Released from prison under a New Year amnesty, a criminal tries to pick up the threads of a life changed not only by his daring plan to rob a jewelry store in out-of-season Cannes, but also by a very special someone he met there.

The murder of a Parisian mobster starts a war within the world of organized crime.

Young pilot Tony Cardot goes on the run after inadvertently crashing his plane into a group of Gypsy children. He reaches Montreal and crosses paths with American gangster Charley Ellis, who forces him to join in his gang's latest scheme.

Outlaw sisters in the old West inherit a ranch and try to settle down and develop relationships with neighboring family of lots of brothers.

Claude Lelouch presents in his own vision of Iran. Between tradition and modernity, the movie reveals all the country's vision contrasts, under the very precise and aesthetic eye of Lelouch: veil and miniskirt, caviar and oil, ancestral Islamic art and the Shah of Iran.

Harvard Law student Oliver Barrett IV and music student Jennifer Cavilleri share a chemistry they cannot deny - and a love they cannot ignore. Despite their opposite backgrounds, the young couple put their hearts on the line for each other. When they marry, Oliver's wealthy father threatens to disown him. Jenny tries to reconcile the Barrett men, but to no avail.

A thief known as Simon the Swiss faces up and downs in his criminal profession.

From Great Britain, the United States, France, Italy, Australia and behind the Iron Curtain. They are the most superbly conditioned animals in the world. They are also the pawns of powerful nations, the victims of dangerous drugs and the object of many men's ambitions. Once every four years they come together... for the Olympic Games.

While on a train to Rome, Léon muses about his love life after leaving his wife.

A car salesman journeys to France and encounters an apparently lonely woman. He immediately begins to successfully woo her only to learn that she is actually a baron's wife. Fortunately, the baron believes in open marriages and winds up hiring the Englishman to teach his son (from an earlier marriage) everything about automobiles. Meanwhile the car salesman finds himself falling seriously in love with the wife. The baron really doesn't mind as he himself is involved with another.

Vincent, a twenty-five year-old intern, lives in Rennes with his mother and his eighteen-year-old brother Bernard. In order to cheer up Bernard who has just failed his baccalauréat exam, the father invites him and his older brother to spend a holiday in his villa in Morocco, where he lives estranged from his ex-wife. Vincent and and Bernard decide to get there by sailboat, accompanied by Geneviève, Vincent's fiancée. Vincent, who has never forgiven his father for leaving him when he was a child, remains hostile and withdrawn. Once in Agadir, they take part in a regatta during which Bernard gets to know Monika, a sexy uninhibited girl. But Monika is actually attracted to Vincent who, despite his dislike for any compromise of principle, finds himself torn between two women.

Melancolie Mau is a lonely woman on the French seaside who falls victim to a horrific rape, but she manages to turn the tables and kill her attacker. She chooses not to tell anyone and dumps the body, but it comes back to haunt her when a U.S. colonel arrives, mysteriously armed with full knowledge about her ordeal. However, he seems to have his own agenda, and it may concern Melancolie's absent husband.

A composer and a French film star, both of whom are married to others, meet and fall in love while shooting a film in the United States.

Steve Howard, a British sales executive living in Manchester, England, begins an affair with a young hitchhiker, Elle Patterson, to emotionally get away from his marriage to his wife Francis. But when Elle moves into a room in Steve and Francis's house, he must keep the true nature of his relationship with Elle under wraps at all costs.

A POW in World War II is put to work in a Munich zoo, looking after an Asian elephant. The zoo is bombed by the Americans and the director of the zoo decides it is not safe for his Asian elephant Lucy to remain there. So he sends Brooks to safety with Lucy. They escape and go on the run in order to get to Switzerland.

An eighteen-year-old student is infatuated with an older woman, the mistress of a famous racing driver. Taking advantage of a misunderstanding between the two lovers, he manages to seduce her and falls in love.

Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria clashes with his father, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, over implementing progressive policies for their country. Rudolf soon feels he is a man born at the wrong time in a country that doesn't realize the need for social reform. The Prince of Wales, later to become Britain's King Edward VII, provides comic relief. Rudolf finds refuge from a loveless marriage with Princess Stéphanie by taking a mistress, Baroness Maria Vetsera. Their untimely demise at Mayerling, the imperial family's hunting lodge, is cloaked in mystery.

This colorful documentary chronicles the events of the 1968 Winter Olympics in France. The events made international celebrities of skater Peggy Fleming and skier Jean-Claude Killy for their gold-medal performances. The camera accurately catches the speed of bobsleds and downhill racers and ski jumpers as they race for the gold. President Charles DeGaulle is shown observing the action over 13 days, which saw France earn the best performance to date in the winter games.

In 1960s Paris, an American boxer stumbles upon an international fascist conspiracy that aims to create a new world order.

Advertising golden boy Andrew Quint is fed up with his fabulously successful life. In very dramatic fashion, he quits his job to return to writing for a small literary magazine. He wants to leave his former life behind, going as far as saying good-bye to his wife and mistresses. He finds, however, that it's not so easy to escape the past.

Famous TV newscaster Robert Colomb is married to Catherine, but is continually unfaithful to her. Then he meets, and becomes fascinated with Candice.

An architect has an affair with a young woman who aspires to be a pop singer. She ends up pregnant but does not tell her lover about her condition as she contemplates having an abortion.

An American talks a retired French crook into robbing a bank, but kidnappers demand the loot as ransom.

Unsuccessful singing bullfighter Juan arrives in Barcelona to try his luck in a big town. He finally persuades a devious local impresario to book him, but only on the condition that Juan first manages to spend an evening with Olimpia, a "shrewd merciless beauty" who seems effortlessly to collect apartments and Maserati sports cars while leaving a trail of broken hearts behind her. Juan approaches the challenge by pretending to her he is an emissary for a rich count. Written by Jeremy Perkins

A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly, they reveal themselves to each other, finding that they have something deeply in common.