Emmanuel Machuel

A meditation on civilization. July, 2001: friends wave as a cruise ship departs Lisbon for Mediterranean ports and the Indian Ocean. On board and on day trips in Marseilles, Pompeii, Athens, Istanbul, and Cairo, a professor tells her young daughter about myth, history, religion, and wars. Men approach her; she's cool, on her way to her husband in Bombay. After Cairo, for two evenings divided by a stop in Aden, the captain charms three successful, famous (and childless) women, who talk with wit and intellect, each understanding the others' native tongue, a European union. The captain asks mother and child to join them. He gives the girl a gift. Helena sings. Life can be sweet.

Myriam, a survivor of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, is a filmmaker and journalist who has spent many years living abroad. She takes part in a memorial event at the town hall in Paris commemorating the liberation of the camp, where she wins a flight to Cracow. At first she refuses to accept the prize, then decides to go.

Justine and Richard's 15-year relationship ends in separation due to irreconcilable differences with Justine maintaining custody of their three boys. Her new life means having to deal with being a single parent but at the same time, she comes to terms with her own parents' divorce and finds a common bond with her long-suffering mother. Richard, a renowned author, deals with the situation by devoting all his attention to his writing. Both are forced to confront their uncertain futures, while examining what led to the breakdown of their marriage.

Feature film about the life of André Malraux. While still a teenager, Malraux embarks on an initiatory journey in search of the artistic and literary culture of Paris. He won the Goncourt Prize for his fourth novel and went to Spain to fight fascism.

Manoel de Oliveira's autobiographical documentary about returning to his hometown.

Ana lives in a little village by the sea, with her husband and daughter. He decides to leave for a few days. That seems to be the ideal solution, because Ana needs to finish a work she has been doing for a long time. But her concentration seems threatened when she starts doing her daily walks by the village and the beach: she saves a stranger from death in the sea, meets young Alexandre and Emilia, and her friend Vera turns up in her house. And then, everything changes…

In 14th-century France, Aliénor breaks with the codes governing girls’ behavior and does as she wishes. The King of France grants her the hand of her childhood love, but her new husband deserts her immediately after the ceremony. Undeterred, she sets out after him, traveling to Siena to bring him back.

A well-bred, lovely, spiritual, sad young woman marries an attentive physician who loves her. She feels affection but no love. Soon after, without design, she falls in love with Pedro Abrunhosa, a poet and performance artist. He also loves her. She keeps her distance from him, confessing her love to a friend who is a nun and, later, to her husband. Hunger for her love and jealousy consume him; she attends him as he wastes away. With his death, she can marry and express her passion, but what she does and how she explains herself, particularly to her cloistered friend, is at the heart of the film. Glimpses of convent life and of Abrunhosa on stage give contrast and mute comment.

Arthur is a history teacher who lives alone in Paris after having broken up with Claire. He is a sensitive man, full of existential doubts and questions. He has to go to Lisbon to meet an eminent historian whose work is the subject of his thesis. Having just made up with Claire, he decides to take her along. She's an ideal travel companion and it seems their relationship has not yet exhausted its potential. But moving from Lisbon to Oporto, their fantasy of a second honeymoon clashes with the reality of a world on the verge of a nightmare.

Toni is a mob movie combined with an urban love story and reflections about one's roots. The protagonist, Toni, is a young man from a small village in the south of Italy who arrives at the station Gare de Lyon in Paris. He never questions the education he receives from his mob family or the rules to which he is always chained. He contacts a man called "The Old Man," a strange character discarded by the family who is of help from time to time. This man is supposed to communicate to Toni all necessary information for him to accomplish his mission. Toni plans to execute it in perfect calm. But things do not go according to plan. He meets Marie, a vulnerable journalist whose best friend has just committed suicide. Two doomed characters enter a mysterious relationship.

When she discovers that her husband is cheating on her, Sabine decides to develop a strategy to save her relationship.

After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her baby’s safety to the troubled, deadbeat father, whose violent actions take the viewer on a tour of the foreboding, crumbling shantytown in which they live.

Independent Parisian doctor Annie finds herself in an emotional tangle when she tries to help single-minded HIV-positive patient Laurent and embarks on a brief affair with conceited actor Richard.

The film tells a story of Mariana, a nurse who leaves Lisbon to accompany an immigrant worker in a comatose sleep on his trip home to Cape Verde. The devoted Portuguese nurse took a journey only to find herself lost in abstract drama.

Monsieur Charme is an old man, and the love of his life passed away some years ago. Despite being wealthy and in relatively good health, he finds that life without her is no longer supportable. Determined to end it all, he approaches Reine, a home-care nurse known for her willingness to bend the rules, and asks her if, in return for receiving his apartment, she will kill him. She readily agrees, and now the fun in this black comedy can begin. It seems that the old man has a nephew who is determined to thwart this scheme at all costs. A battle royal is joined between the ingenuity of the nurse and her willing victim, and the determination of his equally ingenious nephew.

Family life in a parisian apartment during the 60's.

After leaving the asylum, Vincent van Gogh settles in the home of Doctor Gachet, where he keeps painting amidst the torments of his failing mental health. He begins an affair with his host’s daughter, however, she soon realizes that he doesn’t love her and that his heart beats only for art.

In Brazzaville, in 1944, Alex Emmerich was sentenced to wander the seas by Hélène Latray, the wife of Félix Beauvois, the man Alex loved. In 1962, exiled on Hatray cruises and feeling the coming death, Alex decides to compose for his love a testament: the photographic report of his agony.

The American musician Rickie falls in love with the prostitute Sara, who pretends to be a princess. As they escape together, Rickie gets into a dangerous adventure.

Allan is an engineer working in 1930s Calcutta. He is invited to stay with the family of his boss, Narendra Sen which includes his wife, Indira and daughter Gayatri. Gayatri and Allan become romantically involved leading to tragedy.

This uneven comedy of manners concerns a young film projectionist (Jerome Ange) who sets out to find a marriageable woman. He sets his sights on two women he has lived with for nearly ten years (Kristin Scott-Thomas and Sylvie Orcier). For some reason, the projectionist encourages one of the women to hire a private detective (Patrice Kerbrat) to monitor his romantic activities.

Two teenage lovers are caught up in the thrill of forbidden love in this tragic romantic drama. Pierre (Jean-Pierre Andre) is a 16-year-old French lad who loves 14-year-old Djemila (Nadja Reski), the offspring of Algerian immigrants. Pierre's father is an Algerian war veteran who tolerates living with the immigrants at the low-income housing project as long as the two factions are separated. Djemila's older brother carries bitter hatred for the French over their invasion of Algeria. Both young lovers fall victim to the intolerance of their families when their relatives discover that the two are engaged in a passionate love affair.

In the large ward of a military hospital, a child of about ten years old crawls under the beds of the wounded. To keep him away from the turmoil of war, his mother sends him to an elderly Lutheran woman, Mother Cazal, who lives with her daughter Suzanne in a house lost in the mountains.

Antoine leaves his new bride behind to go on a skiing excursion with his uncle up the mountain behind their village of Derborence. Nine weeks after an avalanche apparently buries them alive, Antoine returns home. Certain that his uncle has also survived, he resolves to go back up and look for him—leaving his now-pregnant wife behind once more.

Max, who dreams of adventures, abandons his studies at 18 to become involved in the navy. He becomes the sailor 512.

A forged 500-franc note is passed from person to person and shop to shop, until it falls into the hands of a genuine innocent who doesn't see it for what it is—which will have devastating consequences on his life.

After the death of his parents, Pierre is forced to care for his younger sister Nathalie by committing petty crimes. In a recurring motif of Gérard Blain’s cinema, Pierre is taken under the wing of an older gay man, Hubert , who offers him work and financial security; but when Hubert makes advances to him, Pierre robs him and takes up with a group of radical leftists who are planning terrorist attacks. Without employment, Pierre loses Nathalie to child services and spirals into desperation, finally erupting in an act of horrific violence. An x-ray showing the largely undiagnosed sickness of its time, and a stern warning to ours.

An aging dentist looks for a little liveliness by abandoning his wife in favor of a younger woman. When he learns that his mistress also has another younger lover, he gets jealous, but tries not to make an issue of it. In the end, he dumps her and returns to his wife, who is not about to stand for his middle-aged immaturity. She leaves him.

Deserted by his father, and dislocated by the Second World War, Paul is a boy who wants affection and attention and cannot find it at home. For a while, he becomes the pet of some German soldiers, running errands for them. Later, he helps the Resistance, and when the Americans come to stay, he is really in his element with them.

In 1916, Vincent van Horst leaves Europe to return to his Canadian homeland. There, he seeks his former love, Maria... but the lady's pride is hurt and she refuses to see him. Vincent then falls for a younger woman, Annie.

In seven different parts, Godard, Ivens, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais, and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War.