Crystel Fournier

The story revolves around Pierre who is 13 years old when he loses his mother. He’s a shy boy who lives only for his passion: skateboarding. Thirty-something Bertrand is a seasonal worker on Pierre’s father’s farm. United by their shared passion of skateboarding, they look to one another for the strength to rebuild and assert themselves, and to try to face up to their impossible losses.

After fleeing civil war in Liberia, a formerly-privileged refugee is barely scraping by in her new life in Greece when she strikes up an unexpected friendship with a rootless tour guide.

Assisi, 1211. Chiara is eighteen years old and one night she runs away from home to join her friend Francesco: from that moment on her life changes forever. With charisma and conviction, she breaks free from her family's constraints and stands up to the Pope himself. She fights for herself, for the women who join her and for her dream of freedom. The story of a Saint. The story of a girl and her revolution.

In post-war Germany, liberation by the Allies does not mean freedom for everyone. Hans Hoffmann is repeatedly imprisoned under Paragraph 175, which criminalizes homosexuality. Nevertheless, over the decades, he continues his quest for freedom and love, even if he finds it in the most unusual places.

The story of two sisters who grew up on the fractious Irish border. When one of them, who has been missing, finally returns home, the intense bond with her sister is re-ignited. Together they unearth their mother's past but uncovered secrets and resentments which have been buried deep, threaten to overwhelm them.

In her public persona, Eleanor “Tussy” Marx was a translator, actress, a children’s rights activist and a persuasive labour organizer, a tireless powerhouse determined to carry on her father’s work. She held her own with twentieth century gods, including both her father and his colleague Engels. In her privately life, however, she was vulnerable and her attraction to the self-indulgent and self-important Edward Aveling led her into misery and ultimately proved fatal.

In a small village under the shadow of a nuclear power station, a toxic family with a past must face the ghosts that threaten their future.

Approaching age 50, singer/songwriter Nico leads a solitary existence, far from her days as a Warhol superstar and celebrated vocalist for the Velvet Underground in the 1960s. Her life and career on the fringes, Nico's new manager convinces her to hit the road again and tour in Europe to promote her latest album. She longs to rebuild a relationship with her son, whose custody she lost long ago.

Anne is at a crossroads in her life. Long married to a successful, driven but inattentive movie producer, she unexpectedly finds herself taking a car trip from Cannes to Paris with Jacques, a business associate of her husband. What should be a seven-hour drive turns into a carefree two-day adventure replete with diversions involving picturesque sights, fine food and wine, humor, wisdom and romance - reawakening Anne's senses and giving her a new lust for life.

40-year-old foreman Vital is chosen by Alix (25) as a guinea pig in the anonymous study she is carrying out in her father's factory. The boss's daughter soon finds herself falling under the spell of this reserved, enigmatic worker as he begins to open up to her, revealing his dreams of another life.

Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom.

Kelly, Dan and Louis are students at a prestigious business school, destined to become tomorrow's elite. The industrious trio are determined to start putting their education into practise from the off in an attempt to make as much money as they can from their fellow students. Working on the theory that relationships between the sexes can be regulated by market principles, they begin to inflate the popularity of certain individuals artificially, by hiring beautiful and sexy off-campus women as their dates for exclusive and riotous college parties. However their perfect business model soon spirals out of control as their moneymaking scheme takes off in a big way across campus.

Antoine is a joyful but disenchanted photographer. His only true friend, Mateo, is 7 years old and the son of his neighbor, who is often absent. One day, he hears a piano sonata coming from the building across the courtyard. Mesmerized by the music, he becomes obsessed by Elena, the beautiful but mysterious pianist, and starts to photograph her at every opportunity. An intense relationship develops between fragile and idealistic Elena and Antoine, who is transformed by this encounter.

Satché is about to die. He decides to make his last day on this world the day of his life.

Ten-year-old Laure isn't like most girls. She prefers football to dolls and sweaters to dresses. When Laure and her family move to a new neighbourhood, local girl Lisa mistakes Laure for a boy. Indulging in this exciting new identity, Laure becomes Mickaël, and so begins a summer of long sunny afternoons, playground games and first kisses. Yet with the school term fast approaching, and with suspicions arising amongst friends and family, Laure must face up to an uncertain future.

David, a professor of dermatology, has been treating 13-year-old Romain since he was a baby. Afflicted with a rare skin condition, Romain must avoid sunlight and is condemned to live in the shade. David and Romain have become the closest of friends and nothing can separate them. But then David learns that he is about to be transferred to another clinic in another town. How will he be able to break the news to Romain? And how will Romain cope with this new crisis in his life?

Julie Bataille is fed up with student jobs. At 23, with a 5-years university degree, she wants to work for real. She meets Ben by chance at a job interview. He's a guy who chose to live by the day, getting by with whatever crosses his path and small-time trafficking. Ben asks her to come and spend the summer with him in the South. Julie declines. Then one day, on an impulse, she leaves everything behind and joins him.

Simon Nardis was once an internationally renowned jazz pianist but for the past ten years he has led a more orderly life as a husband and father. But all that changes when he walks into a jazz club by chance one evening. He comes face-to-face with the demons he thought he had tamed: music, alcohol and doubts about himself. He wonders if he really is happy...

Louis was adopted when he was just a baby. Now sixteen-year-old Louis wants to know where he comes from. He therefore heads south to find the mother he's never known. Totally thrown by this unexpected visit, Solange rejects the child she never desired. Louis will nevertheless do everything he can to make her accept him.

Set during a sultry summer in a French suburb, Marie is desperate to join the local pool's synchronized swimming team, but is her interest solely for the sake of sport or for a chance to get close to Floriane, the bad girl of the team? Sciamma, and the two leads, capture the uncertainty of teenage sexuality with a sympathetic eye in this delicate drama of the angst of coming-of-age.

Alfred lives with his mother in a small village keeping chickens and selling eggs at the local market. He doesn't speak, except to his mother and to children. He has a girlfriend of sorts, although she shies away from any physical contact with her. But more than anything, Alfred wants a child. As natural fatherhood is out of the question he takes the next best option, and makes an application to adopt. With a very un-French lack of bureaucracy Alfred's adoptive son arrives, but turns out not to be the bouncing baby he was hoping for. [taken from London Film Festival 2006 catalogue]

Vincent and Mathias are two friends, in their thirties, who live off Vincent’s father. One day, during a meal where the wine and talk both flow a little too freely, Vincent’s father offers the two friends a bet. If they can survive seven days and seven nights in Paris with just seven Euros in their pocket, he will pay off all of their debts. If not, they will have to learn to fend for themselves. Confident of their abilities to survive in the jungle that is Paris, Vincent and Mathias willingly accept the offer, but soon regret doing so...

François Durrieux, a man in his forties, married to Clémence and father of Benjamin, has been employed for years by the firm DSBO. In order not to lose his job, he always submits to his boss's demands whether it means working after office hours, canceling planned holidays or harming his family life. However, when one night, Simon Lacaze, his best friend and colleague, commits suicide just after being fired ignominiously, François rebels...

In Uruguay, where he lives with his wife and son Thomas, Orlando Vargas suffers from pressure from the government. Permanently watched by a policeman, Orlando seems not to care about danger. He decides to leave with his family to go to Josefina, the last village by the sea before Brazil. There, things move faster: on the day of his arrival, Orlando fails to return home.

A film director, whose career is going downhill, reluctantly decides to adapt an inadaptable best selling novel. Will she succeed or will the book adapt her in the process?

The title reflects the brand of a financial institution, the bank of the Saltim family: Frederic, the younger brother, runs the family bank; his brother Bruno rejected the position of executive director, and chose to fund a theatrical company. Around them, there is a net of family members, friends, and acquaintances who seem to swirl around the banking brothers. Frederic and Bruno are both trying to control the future of their beautiful niece, Vanessa. The coffee shop owners Eve and Jim complicate everybody's life with their intrigues and lies. A strange stage director comes from his foreign exile. And lack of funds suddenly reveals the true colors of everyone - in banking, on stage, and everywhere.

After a bull is killed in a bullfight, its body parts are transported across Spain, France, Italy and Belgium. The bull's parts fall into the wide variety of people, including: an Italian actress selling the bones in a supermarket promotion, a Spanish woman who dines on its steaks, a little girl in France who imagines a world where animals are much larger than humans, and a taxidermist whose wife is simultaneously giving birth to quintuplets.

Benoit turns 13 and develops an intense crush on his godmother, Marion. As they lie on beaches in the summer, she humors him by talking about the mysteries of women.

A César award nominated short feature.