Xavier Sirven

A small group of French high school students goes on a school trip to Pompeii to discover its ruins and the bodies petrified by Vesuvius in 79 CE. It is in this ghost town that they are suddenly overcome by a dizzying sensation. One after another, James, Toni, Suzanne, and their Latin teacher, Mme Mercier, allow themselves to be engulfed by desire, anger, and despair—until they surrender to it completely and lose everything.

As he pedals through the streets of Paris to deliver meals, Souleymane recounts his story. In two days, he has to go through his asylum application interview, the key to obtaining papers, but Souleymane is not ready.

Bangui, Central African Republic. 17 year-old Robert dreams of a career in music, but civil war is tearing the country apart. When both his parents are thrown into prison, he is left to look after his four younger siblings on his own, juggling daily life, odd jobs, school exams and concert stages, determined to follow his dream.

1997. Garry Kasparov, the greatest chess player of all time, faces Deep Blue, IBM's supercomputer. Two brains, face to face; one man against an empire; a battle of humans against machines that forever changed the perception of artificial intelligence.

14-year-old Grasshoppers gang member Djibril leads a dangerous existence in a Marseille slum, along with his pregnant girlfriend Camilla who belongs to a rival gang, the Crickets. When Djibril is manipulated into killing the young Cricket Mahad, war breaks out. Djibril is haunted by the curse Mahad spat out as he lay dying, and begins to communicate with the spirit world. Convinced that global apocalypse is imminent, he embarks on a crazy plan to flee with Camilla and their unborn child – the only one capable of saving them all from Mahad’s malediction. But the law catches up with him. Now, after 12 years in prison and a secure psychiatric unit, Djibril will do whatever it takes to find his daughter and convince her to fulfil his prophecy.

Nestor, Aaron, Benjamin and Rafiki are economics undergraduates at the University of Bangui. Navigating between the overcrowded classrooms, the petty trades that allow students to survive, bribery lurking everywhere, Rafiki shows us what students lives are like in the Central African Republic, a shattered society where the youth keeps dreaming for a brighter future for their country.

Summer 1900, Switzerland. Elisabeth, 17, is about to take her vows when the sudden death of her older sister forces her to leave the convent and return to the family farm. Stifled by the suffocating and strict rules of the village, walking in her sister’s step to uncover the mystery of her death, Elisabeth is slowly driven to rebel against the local order and for her right to live her life.

Nassim, in his early thirties, lives in Abu Dhabi with his American fiancée, Elisabeth. After several years of absence, he returns with her to Bollene, a town in the South of France where he grew up. But Nassim must face his past: a dead city now governed by the far right party, a complex relationship with his family, and a father, he no longer speaks to.

A remote village in the Finistère countryside. A man is suspected of carrying the Ebola virus. He is black. His name is Maurice. His best friend, Michel, an ambulance driver, travels across the region with his intern Rémi to find him and check on him.

1917. Bakary Diallo enlists in the French army to join his 17-year-old son, Thierno, who has been forcibly recruited. Sent to the front, they will have to face the war together. While Thierno learns to become a man, Bakary will do everything to bring him back safely.

Beirut, Lebanon. Hassan is assembling wooden boards. His wife is dead. He is building her coffin. Tamara and Rami, the children, in their twenties, are helping him as best they can to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her childhood village, abandoned for more than 20 years.

A lonely French trucker's routine life on the road takes an unexpected turn when he encounters a Polish driver. As feelings develop, he struggles to balance his demanding job with a chance at love, determined to make their connection work.

Arnaud is looking for his place in society. Soy Libre shows his insatiable desire for freedom on a nearly ten year long quest, which brings him from Northern France to Spain to Peru. A portrait of a little brother growing bigger and bigger, through the eyes of his elder sister.

Marc Châtaigne, an intern at the Ministry of Standards, is sent to French Guiana to implement European construction standards at Guyaneige: the first Amazonian ski slope, intended to boost tourism in French Guiana. There, he meets Tarzan, an attractive intern at the National Forestry Office, with whom he’ll get lost on a journey through the jungle that will take him far, far away…

Camille, a young idealistic photojournalist, goes to the Central African Republic to cover the civil war that is brewing up. What she sees there will change her destiny forever.

A film like spring, a bittersweet coming-of-age tale that feels very real in a joie-de-vivre way. This is a film about complex relations and about celebrating freedom, told as a nature-saturated love story with secret doors that sometimes even creek when closed, with everyone bathed in that special kind of light from that sun that only seems to shine for adolescents.

“In Sofia, the residents of a mythical building had been evicted. I had come to hunt for film locations.” After this brief introductory title card, we discover what makes this Bulgarian building mythical, why its residents were evicted and how location-hun­ting turned into a film.

Christine’s father died when she was still a small child, and she remained in the care of her sadistic mother, who beat her and abused her psychologically. Christine is still convinced that her mother hid a farewell letter from her beloved father. Jean’s father committed suicide several years ago, and left behind a lengthy letter, but Jean never found the courage to read it. Together, Christine and Jean embark on a unique road trip across the French countryside to visit Christine’s mother, and try to confront the past.

Thirteen European directors explore the theme of Sarajevo; what this city has represented in European history over the past hundred years, and what Sarajevo stands for today in Europe. These eminent filmmakers of different generations and origins offer exceptional singular styles and visions.

Beneath the blazing summer sun in Corsica, sixteen-year-old Horace loses his dog. After a trying to find the animal, Horace and his gang suspect a man of Arab origin who lives outside the village.