Japan, 1944. Trained for intelligence work, Hiroo Onoda, 22 years old, discovers a philosophy contrary to the official line: no suicide; stay alive whatever happens; the mission is more important than anything else. Sent to Lubang, a small island in the Philippines where the Americans are about to land, this role will be to wage a guerrilla war until the return of the Japanese troops. The Empire will surrender soon after; Onoda, 10,000 days later.
1936. Giovanni Comini, the youngest Federal in Fascist Italy, is summoned to Rome for a delicate mission: to surveil aging national poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, whose increasingly restless behavior Mussolini fears could damage his alliance with Nazi Germany. However, after spending time with D'Annunzio, Comini finds himself torn between loyalty to the Party and his fascination with the poet, who will put his burgeoning career at risk.
Abel Ferrara headlines a film retrospective and a series of concerts in France dedicated to songs and music from his films. Preparations with his family and friends will form the material of this self portrait, showing another side of the director of legendary films BAD LIEUTENANT, THE KING OF NEW YORK and THE ADDICTION. Ferrara is joined on stage by past collaborators, including composer Joe Delia, actor-singer Paul Hipp and his wife actress Cristina Chiriac for concerts at the Metronum in Toulouse and the Salo Club in Paris in October 2016.
Victor, in his early 20s, works at the town hall and lives with his girlfriend Charlotte, who is expecting their first child. When an incident happens at the nearby nuclear power plant, he and his high school friends are forced to confine themselves inside a farmhouse, whereas they should have evacuated the area. As the rain is threatening, they are keeping an eye out for the radioactive cloud. The next 24 hours will be crucial.
It's the end of the academic year at the Hénin-Beaumont high school. Between two TikTok videos and their science lessons, best friends Linda and Irina confide in each other about their families and their future. But Linda is going to have to move in the coming year. What will remain of their friendship? The marvellous story of a bygone summer.
Louise revisits her childhood when her family decides to sell their farm. 20 years ago, she was Louloute, a mischievous and exuberant little girl, helping her father with their farm, fighting with her siblings and worrying her mother… When the family's debts accumulate and overwhelm them, tender childhood moments become intertwined with the harsh adult reality of a disappearing rural world.
Kabwita, a young man living with his wife and daughters in Kolwezi, a town in the southwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, dreams of buying land to build a house. To do so, he produces charcoal (makala), extracted from the ashes of a mighty hardwood tree. Carrying the sacks of charcoal on the back of his bicycle, he embarks on a dangerous journey to sell them on the market.
Spooky stuff is afoot in a French school. All of a sudden, 10-year-old Daniel finds himself alone with Marthe – their encounter is both tender and troubling, and it seems to take place in a sort of vacuum. In Marine Atlan’s dream-like feature film debut, children dance tango timelessly, recite poems and do the drill for an imaginary terrorist attack.
A summer on an island of leisure in the Paris region. Land of Adventures, dredge and transgression for some, place of refuge and escape for the other. Its pay range to its hidden nooks, the exploration of a Kingdom of childhood, in resonance with the bustle of the world.
Ebba is a lonely 18-year-old who finds a wounded man in the Oslo harbour. When she discovers he has amnesia, she lies and tells him they are lovers.
For a residency organized by the University, Miranda Ackerman, a writer, returns to Caen where she lived a decade earlier. She is astonished to discover that the University is hosting her in the very house where she lived with Richard, her partner at the time. Richard now teaches at the university. As they reconnect, she begins to be disturbed by presences in the house.
Ady, a 13 years old boy, no longer listens to his father who raises him alone. The latter, running out of resources, decides to entrust Ady to his uncle Amadou for the summer. Uncle Amadou and his family live on the other side of the Mediterranean sea... in Burkina Faso! There, at 13 years, one must become a man but Ady, persuaded to go on holidays, understands things differently.
One summer evening in a small town in France, two teenage boys, Clarinet and Piano, say goodbye. For twelve years, they rejoin each other at irregular intervals in the same town, discussing their ambitions as they drift apart. Michaël Dacheux's 'Here and There' is a delicate exploration of the eager aspirations of two young men, wise beyond their years yet still innocent in their experience.
1996, Bruno publishes his first novel. He is critically acclaimed and is seen as the french John Fante. Twenty years later, Bruno is soon 50 and has not published anything since. He is single, has no children and lives with a young Femen as a roommate. For him, all goes well but his loved ones are worried and decide to take action.
Two languorous summer days, two thorny tales of romantic misunderstanding: in part one, two girlfriends head to the Cergy leisure park for a day of swimming and equally vigorous flirtation; in the second, a Norwegian exchange student finds herself the target of unwanted attention from two would-be suitors.
In the summer of her seventh birthday, Selma is molested by an associate of her father’s who soon appears to her in the guise of an animal. Shocked, Selma discovers the power of her own language as a bulwark against adult violence.
It starts like a fairy tale: there is a queen, a king and their beautiful children, Pauline, Anaïs and Guillaume. But it's a little more complicated than that actually ...
Émilien, a young figurative painter, is welcomed by a very great collector who is getting ready to shift to Hong Kong. In the middle of a jumble of boxes, they discuss painting. The collector reveals his huge and amazing collection of old masters. Rubens, Titian, Velázquez, Vermeer, Rembrandt, they're all there. Émilien ends up understanding that the owner of these many unknown masterpieces doesn't only collect paintings, he also collects artists.
In the fields, we see them, extended on the grass or grazing peacefully. Large placid beasts that we thought we knew because they are livestock. Lions, gorillas, bears have our attention, but has anyone ever really looked at cows? Asked what they were doing with their days? What do they do when a storm passes? When the sun comes back? What do they think when they stand motionless, seemingly contemplating the void? Do they think? "Bovines" chronicles the true life of a cow: grazing, ruminating, gazing - but also feeling - mooing with grief, or just enjoying an apple…
In 1940 Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, two lesbian and Jewish artists, move from Paris to Jersey island to escape the Nazi persecution. Threatened by the arrival of German troops on the island too, resist. Armed with a 8mm camera, they create an army of "nameless soldiers" who panic the Nazi machine. A film about love, passion for art and the resistance of two heroines who challenge totalitarianism with the power of the imagination; a work that supports the radical flair of its protagonists by resorting to divergent narrative and stylistic registers, juxtaposing the analog creaks of surrealist ascendancy with more "contemporary", muscular, punk-looking forms of subversion typical of genre cinema.
