Cinématon n°322 : Yann Beauvais

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

An inexperienced young actress is invited to play a role in a film based on Dostoyevsky's 'The Possessed'. The film director, a Czech immigrant in Paris, takes over her life, and in a short time she is unable to draw the line between acting and reality. She winds up playing a real-life role posing as the dead wife of another Czech immigrant, who is manipulated by the filmmaker into commiting a political assassination.

Paris, 1964. The Swiss sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti, one of the most accomplished and respected artists of his generation, asks his friend, the American writer James Lord, to sit for a portrait, assuring him that it will take no longer than two or three hours, an afternoon at the most.

A widowed professor living in Paris develops a special relationship with a younger French woman.

France, 1950s. From the Quartier Latin to Saint-Tropez via New York, a young Parisienne becomes the icon of a whole generation. In 1954, 19-year-old Francoise Sagan shot to fame with her first novel, Bonjour Tristesse. Flamboyant, scandalous and underrated, Sagan lived her life at the furthest edge of excess. She won and lost fortunes at the roulette table, bought and crashed superb sports cars, drank, danced and partied, leaving a trail of lovers in her wake.

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to choose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

As his life comes to its end, famous Hollywood director Orson Welles puts it all on the line at the chance for renewed success with the film The Other Side of the Wind.

In the shadowy outskirts of Paris, a desperate door-to-door salesman crosses paths with a mysterious young woman trapped in a grim world. As his obsession deepens, his grip on reality begins to slip—and the line between escape and destruction starts to blur.

Stigmatized from infancy by the fate of his criminal father, a man is bruised and bullied until one night, in a fit of rage, he kills his most persistent tormentor. As the police close in around him, he makes a desperate bid for the love of the dead man’s fiancée, a schoolteacher who sees the wounded soul behind his aggression.

True tale of the tumultuous love affair between two French literary icons of the 19th Century, novelist George Sand and poet Alfred de Musset. But their affair falls apart during an excursion to Venice, Italy where Musset is distracted by drugs and Sand by a handsome doctor.

A French woman mourning over the death of her husband three years prior is courted by a Swedish co-worker.

In a Paris hotel room, Jack Whitman lies on a bed. His phone rings; it's a woman on her way to see him, a surprise. She arrives and the complications of their relationship emerge in bits and pieces. Will they make love? Is their relationship over? (A prequel to The Darjeeling Limited, 2007.)

In the hospital where she works in Brest, France, a lung specialist discovers a direct link between suspicious deaths and state-approved medicine. She fights single-handedly for the truth to come out.

Jacquot Demy, the son of a garage owner and a hairdresser, is fascinated by cinema and decides to pursue his dream of becoming a filmmaker by any means necessary.

France, 1963. Anne is a bright young student with a promising future ahead of her. But when she falls pregnant, she sees the opportunity to finish her studies and escape the constraints of her social background disappearing. With her final exams fast approaching and her belly growing, Anne resolves to act, even if she has to confront shame and pain, even if she must risk prison to do so.

The life story of ‘Zen Anarchist’ filmmaker John Milius, one of the most influential storytellers of his generation.

Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.

1915, Sarah Bernhardt is the world's first star. Free. Modern. Divine. Eccentric. Visionary... Between legend and fantasy, Sarah Bernhardt tells us the love story that marked her life.

On trial for murdering his girlfriend, philandering stockbroker Larry Ballentine takes the stand to claim his innocence and describe the actual, but improbable sounding, sequence of events that led to her death.

From his poor childhood to his rise to fame, from his triumphs to his failures, from Paris to New York, discover the exceptional journey of an artist. Intimate, intense, fragile and indestructible, devoted to his art until the very end, here is one of the most immortal singers of all time: MONSIEUR AZNAVOUR.