Polaris

Claire is a single mother with a grown-up son. She’s a dedicated midwife who is completely wrapped up in her job. Although the maternity ward where she works is to be closed, she turns down a job offer from a larger clinic because she cannot reconcile their methods with her own ideas about midwifery. In the midst of all this upheaval she receives a phone call that rekindles memories of her youth. Béatrice, her late father’s former mistress, asks to meet her. Béatrice is a true bohemian – loud, colourful, egocentric and completely different to the focussed, helpful Claire. The younger woman asks herself why, after all these years of silence, Béatrice has suddenly decided to approach her for help, and is at first less than enthusiastic. Martin Provost has made a name for himself with powerful portraits of women (Séraphine, Violette). Sage Femme revolves around the encounter between two headstrong women, perfectly cast with two of French cinema’s grandes dames. A dramatic comedy about the need for change, and the question of whether steak, pommes frites and red wine is really what one would call a healthy lunch.

Resemblances can be unnerving. Such as the one between the viscount who went, puffing on his pipe, to the guillotine during the Terror, the army chaplain who has a brigand's tattoos on his chest and is a compulsive baptizer of soldiers, pillagers and rapists, the Parisian down-and-out left as flat as a pancake by an encounter with a steamroller, and, last but not least, the cultivated concierge—and occasional arms dealer—in an upscale building. Almost all the film's characters meet in that very building except, of course, the homeless, who are carted by the cops from pillar to post. Yet amid all this chaos, there are dream spaces, love stories and solid friendships that perhaps allow us to hope that tomorrow will be better than today.

When a distant emergency summons the wealthy Bennett family back to the U.K., disrupting a vacation on the Mexican coast in Acapulco, simmering tensions rise to the fore between scions Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Neil (Tim Roth). The delicate balance of the deceptively close-knit clan, including siblings Colin and Alexa (Samuel Bottomley, Albertine Kotting McMillan), is irrevocably upset. Continuing his exploration of individuals and societies under pressure, writer-director Michel Franco ("Nuevo orden") ascends to the heights and depths of an Acapulco — and a family — that is more than meets the eye. Playing out in the sleek hotel suites and scruffy tourist haunts of a disparate and stratified seaside locale, and across the psychological battlefield of a precarious dynasty, "Sundown" unfolds in sharp, surreptitious bursts.

«Ailo's Journey» tells the fight for the survival of a small wild reindeer, frail and vulnerable to the challenges that punctuate his first year. Its awakening to the wild world is a real tale in the heart of the grandiose landscapes of Lapland.

Suffering and dying do not stop even at the most powerful, even absolute ones: The Sun King Louis XIV - a parade role for the Truffaut icon Jean-Pierre Léaud - suddenly feels pain in his leg after a walk in August 1715. He spent the next few days in his chamber, continuing government business in the best possible way and gradually gliding towards his death. A historical film as a chamber play.

A mutual friend introduces Paul to Frédéric, who is a painter living together with Angèle, an actress who makes films in Italy. Paul wants to work as an actor and keeps his head above water with minor roles. But when he manages to land a small role in a war film, Angèle leaves Frédéric because of Roland, the film assistant working on the set with Paul. Frédéric wants a divorce from Angèle. Paul is awakened one night by a phone call: Frédéric had a fatal accident. In actual fact it was suicide: Frédéric killed himself because Angèle was taken from him.

When Michèle, the CEO of a gaming software company, is attacked in her home by an unknown assailant, she refuses to let it alter her precisely ordered life. She manages crises involving family, all the while becoming engaged in a game of cat and mouse with her stalker.

This is the story of a ball. A grand ball. Every summer, more than two thousand people come from accross Europe to dance together, dance even more, during seven days and seven nights, in the countryside of France. A joyful crowd of men and women from all ages, speaking different languages, beginners, virtuosos, enthusiasts. A crowd that reveals how different it is when we dare look into one's eyes, when we dare touch one another. And how life pounds.

«Francofonia» by Alexander Sokurow is the story of two remarkable men, Louvre director Jacques Jaujard and Nazi Occupation officer Count Wolff-Metternich - enemies then collaborators - whose alliance would be the driving force behind the preservation of museum treasures. «Francofonia» explores the relationship between art and power, the Louvre museum as a living example of civilization, and what art tells us about ourselves even in the midst of one of the bloodiest conflicts the world has ever seen.

Suzanne is 16. People her own age bore her. Every day on her way to high school, she passes a theater. There, she meets an older man, who becomes obsessed with her. Despite their age difference, they find in each other an answer to their ennui and fall in love. But Suzanne is afraid she’s missing out on life – that life of a 16-year-old, which she had struggled so much to enjoy in the same way as her peers. Fulminant acting and directing debut by Suzanne Lindon - a bittersweet drama about the danger of living past one's own life.