After writing for Cahiers du cinéma, a young Jean-Luc Godard decides making films is the best film criticism. He convinces producer Georges de Beauregard to fund a low-budget feature, and creates a treatment with fellow New Wave filmmaker François Truffaut about a gangster couple. The result? Breathless, one of the first features of the Nouvelle Vague era of French cinema.
In 1961, a 60-year-old taxi driver stole Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. It was the first (and remains the only) theft in the Gallery’s history. What happened next became the stuff of legend.
The warmhearted story of Polish immigrant and mathematician Stan Ulam, who moved to the U.S. in the 1930s. Stan deals with the difficult losses of family and friends all while helping to create the hydrogen bomb and the first computer.
An amateur historian defies the academic establishment in her efforts to find King Richard III's remains, which were lost for over 500 years.
At the tense 1938 Munich Conference, former friends who now work for opposing governments become reluctant spies racing to expose a Nazi secret.
Young women toiling in a factory are exposed to hazardous material which takes a disastrous toll on their health.
France. End of the 19th century. Louise Violet 40, a Parisian teacher, is sent on a mission to the French countryside. But in a place where the daily life is linked to the seasons, land and crops, she must first convince parents to send their kids to school. With the help of the mayor, she is gradually accepted by the parents and their children. But soon, her past catches up with her. Despite the obstacles she faces, Miss Violet will give her heart and soul to her belief that education is the key to freedom.
In 1887, at a time when duels are in vogue in Paris, Clément Lacaze and Marie-Rose Astié meet. He's a charismatic master of arms; she's a feminist, far ahead of her time. Clément gets caught in a spiral of violence and decides to initiate Marie-Rose in the art of dueling. The two must work together to save face. How far will they go to defend their honor?
The story of Django Reinhardt, famous guitarist and composer, and his flight from German-occupied Paris in 1943.
They loved each other with the ardor of thirteen-year-old boys. Rebellion and curiosity, hopes and doubts, girls and dreams of glory – they shared it all. Paul was rich, Emile poor. They went skinny-dipping, drank absinthe, starved, only to overeat. Sketched models by day, caressed them by night... Now, Paul is a painter and Emile a writer. Glory has passed Paul by. But Emile has it all: fame, money, the perfect wife, whom Paul once loved. They judge each other, admire each other, confront each other. They lose touch, meet up again, like a couple who cannot stop loving each other.
The story of Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham, who uncovers one of the most significant social scandals in recent times – the forced migration of children from the United Kingdom to Australia and other Commonwealth countries. Almost singlehandedly, Margaret reunited thousands of families, brought authorities to account and worldwide attention to an extraordinary miscarriage of justice.
A story set in 19th century China and centered on the lifelong friendship between two girls who develop their own secret code as a way to contend with the rigid cultural norms imposed on women.
When a celebrated TV show host returns to his hometown in the South, his family is there to remind him that going home is no vacation!
After leaving France in search of a better life in America, a television producer returns with a group of burlesque dancers to take the Paris club scene by storm.
Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made.
The true story of Jasmine Plummer who, at the age of eleven, became the first female to play in Pop Warner football tournament in its 56-year history.
A 1950s London cleaning lady falls in love with an haute couture dress by Christian Dior and decides to gamble everything for the sake of this folly.
When 43-year-old hairdresser Suze Trappet finds out that she's seriously ill, she decides to go looking for a child she was forced to abandon when she was only 15. On her madcap bureaucratic quest she crosses paths with JB, a 50-year-old man in the middle of a burnout, and Mr. Blin, a blind archivist prone to overenthusiasm. The unlikely trio set off on a hilarious and poignant helterskelter journey across the city in search of Suze's long-lost child.
Two young girls meet, Reinette from the countryside and Mirabelle from Paris, and decide to take a flat together in Paris where they attend University. Four successive stories about their daily lives illustrate the very different views, characters and relation to the world of these two friends.
Stephen Glass is a staff writer for the respected current events and policy magazine The New Republic and a freelance feature writer for publications such as Rolling Stone, Harper's and George. By the mid-90s, Glass' articles had turned him into one of the most sought-after young journalists in Washington, but a bizarre chain of events - chronicled in Buzz Bissinger's September 1998 Vanity Fair article - suddenly stopped his career in its tracks.
