Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.
A comedy/drama set in a village and centered on a battle of the sexes, where women threaten to withhold sexual favours as long as the men refuse to install a water pipe.
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.
In 200,000 years of existence, man has upset the balance on which the Earth had lived for 4 billion years. Global warming, resource depletion, species extinction: man has endangered his own home. But it is too late to be pessimistic: humanity has barely ten years left to reverse the trend, become aware of its excessive exploitation of the Earth's riches, and change its consumption pattern.
In 1980 the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews and are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy.
Paolo, an Italian tour bus driver living in Paris, has just summoned up the courage to propose marriage to his German girlfriend Greta. However, a chance encounter with a French woman on a bicycle the very next day turns Paolo's life upside down.
A Himalayan legend of a love struggling against the inevitability of death, an astonishing tale spanning from the early 19th century mountain existence, to hectic, bustling modern day Tokyo.
Four gay French expatriots share a business in Barcelona. When they and their parents are thrown together for a "coming out" party, another French Farce ensues.
Despite their differences, Celeste and Sihem quickly become inseparable. The common will to get out of drugs seals their fusional friendship. This will be as much a force as an obstacle when, transferred from the center that welcomes them, they find themselves left to themselves, to the test of the real world and its temptations. They will have to fight to finally live.
In a small town lost in the middle of nowhere, Edmond Zweck's funeral business is on the wing. The company now has only two employees: Georges, Zweck's right-hand man, and Eddy, a young man still a novice in the trade. One fine morning, however, a dead man pointed his nose. Hope is born again. Georges and Eddy are responsible for leading the deceased to his last abode. But in search of the cemetery that can not be found, the funeral convoy goes astray and the journey turns into a fiasco.
Paul Vidal is a country doctor in a small town. A husband and father, he seems to have all he needs to be happy. Yet he suffers a serious nervous breakdown, making him unable to practise.
Mimi is 29 years old and still dreaming about a job she could get. She meets Paul, a sidelined lawyer, as she decides to seek employment. Together, they will defend Christophe, a conman who proclaims his innocence.
Angélique is a 60-year-old bar hostess. She still likes to party, she still likes men. At night, she makes them drink, in a cabaret by the French-German border. As time goes by, clients become rare. But Michel, her regular client, is still in love with her. One day, he asks Angélique to marry him.
When Mica is sent away from his humble home to work for a privileged family at their tennis club in Casablanca, his eyes are opened to new possibilities.
Alex, the son of a gang boss from Marseilles, joins the French Foreign Legion to avoid a hit put out on him by the Corsican Mafia. Four years later, Alex deserts and returns to Marseilles to get back together with Katia, his former girlfriend. But in the city, relationships have changed...
A beautiful, self-centered young woman's life turns upside down when she suddenly "loses her clitoris" (i.e. her ability to have an orgasm).
One year after the death of her mother, Elena, a young French woman of Greek origin, returns to her holiday home on the island of Lesbos. She is accompanied by her friends Nassim and Sekou, two young suburbanites more used to the benches of the city than the paradisiac beaches.
For six years, Melati, 18, has been fighting the plastic pollution that is ravaging her country, Indonesia. Like her, a generation is rising up to fix the world. Everywhere, teenagers and young adults are fighting for human rights, the climate, freedom of expression, social justice, access to education or food. Dignity. Alone against all odds, sometimes risking their lives and safety, they protect, denounce and care for others. The earth. And they change everything. Melati goes to meet them across the globe. At a time when everything seems to be or has been falling apart, these young people show us how to live. And what it means to be in the world today.
Twenty-year-old Kamal has been married for a few months but his wife is still a virgin. Learning that there is nothing physically wrong with him after visiting a doctor, Kamal sets off to town to search for another woman. The city is full of them but Kamal is still unable to meet anyone, until a chance encounter on a bus. But it looks as if this accidental meeting will take Kamal much farther than he was prepared to go… By the director of ‘Angel on the Right’. —Celluloid Dreams
