Viviane Candas

Sexy, gritty and as provocative as a lap dance, The Bathers takes an insider's look at the lives of six women working as dancers at a seedy Parisian peep show. Governed by their overprotective boss, the girls' routine of glittery neon lights and lecherous customers is soon disrupted when an enigmatic stranger enters the scene. Now, drugs, sex and bickering all take a back seat as the girls unite to save this man haunted by a mysterious past and unforgiving demons. A fascinating glimpse into a world of back alleys and primal instincts, The Bathers transports us to a netherworld where the show always goes on.

After the death of his musician wife, Franck, a septuagenarian hellenist, feels lost. His friend Max, a womanizer, and his daughter Sabine successively welcome him to their home, but it is his meeting with Suzanne that will give him a taste for life. She is not of his world, nor of his age, but she will be his last love.

After his father leaves home for another woman, 16-year-old Martial has to move with his mother, Sabine, to a more modest apartment. Martial finds it difficult to fit in his new life. His mother offers to help him, but she only makes the situation worse. Martial then forms a bond with two twin sisters his own age, with whom he has a series of exciting and disturbing experiences.

By meeting his former comrades in combat, the film follows the journey of Yves Mathieu, anti-colonialist in Black Africa then lawyer for the FLN. When Algeria became independent, he drafted the Decrees of March on vacant property and self-management, promulgated in 1963 by Ahmed Ben Bella. Yves Mathieu's life is punctuated by his commitments in an Algeria that was then called "The Lighthouse of the Third World". The director, who is his daughter, returns to the conditions of his death in 1966.

A brother and sister pair of orphans live together in a suburban high-rise block. Each of them forges their own path. The brother spends most of his time helping his neighbors, while his sister is passionate about the theater. One of them lives closed off the from world in his public housing building, the other escapes from it by playing imaginary characters. But then one day, the brother refuses that his sister continue her theater studies. They then lock themselves in a painful fraternal battle, from which neither of them will emerge unscathed.