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Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday
It’s August and M. Hulot sets off on holiday in his ancient Amilcar. He arrives in Brittany at the beachfront hotel, where an unsuspecting assortment of holiday-makers is unaware of the impending havoc. The charm of this film lies in its benign humour: there are no victims. M. Hulot is oblivious of the trail of…
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Three Colours: Blue
Three Colours Blue is the first part of Kieslowski’s trilogy examining the meaning to contemporary French society of the concepts behind the three national colours blue, white, and red. These represent liberty, equality and fraternity. The director gives us the story of Julie who loses her husband and daughter in a car crash. Blue manifests…
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Hidden
Professional couple Georges (Auteuil) and Anne (Binoche) appear to have it all, but when they start to receive secretly filmed footage of their movements as well as disturbing drawings, their cooling relationship and comfortable life begin to unravel. Dreams help Georges make links with a half-forgotten past, yet why wont he share his thoughts with…
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Kirikou and the Sorceress
omewhere in Africa south of the Sahara, Kirikou is born. Imbued with supernatural precocity he talks to his mother in the womb, is more knowing than adults at birth and braver and faster than the men in the village. And this is just as well because the village needs Kirikou to save them from an…
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Tell No One
In this taut thriller, the case of a woman’s (Marie-Josee Croze) brutal murder is reopened years after the event and her husband (Francois Cluzet) becomes prime suspect. However the widower starts to receive emails which suggest his wife may still be alive. Based on American author Harlan Coben’s best-seller, this intricately plotted multi-award winning film…
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The Singer
In the multi award-winning The Singer (aka When I Was a Singer, “Quand j’étais chanteur“) Gerard Depardieu returns to excellent form following a few mediocre roles where people were being to wonder how bettable he was at the box office. Giannoli’s direction brings out the best in Depardieu and the film is an engaging, reflective…
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Persepolis
This Oscar-nominated, multi-award-winning animation tells the story of the coming of age of a young Iranian girl, Marji. Finding a way to express your teenage self with all its contradictions, mini-rebellions and leanings towards Western pop culture isn’t easy in the middle of an Islamic revolution. With the full implications of the mullahs crackdown on…
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Caramel
Caramel delightfully weaves together a comedy about the daily lives of five Lebanese women. Each woman has a romantic problem and they play out their dramas against the backdrop of Layal’s (Nadine Labaki) Beirut beauty salon. Will one resolve a relationship with a married man, will another marry while trying to cover up her past,…
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The Class
The leading actor in The Class, Bégaudeau, is a man of many parts novelist, actor, screenplay writer and former teacher. The film is loosely based on a Bégaudeau’s fictionalised account of his experience as an idealistic, novice teacher. Director, Cantet, whose parents were teachers, workshopped the script with Bégaudeau and a group of teenage pupils…
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I’ve Loved You So Long
In Claudel’s story of estrangement from society, Juliette (Scott Thomas) has served a term in prison, we can guess this much from her institutionalised appearance in the opening sequences. Her younger sister Lea, (Zylberstein), offers her refuge as she makes her first steps in the outside world, yet they have not seen each other for…