Sort:

Essential French Cinema

Beau Travail (1999)
Claire Denis · 133 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Foreign Legion officer Galoup recalls his once glorious life, training troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, until the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup's mind.
The Rules of the Game (1939)
Jean Renoir · 101 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
The Marquis de la Chesnaye and his wife host a weekend gala where a variety of complicated romantic and social entanglements between guests and servants lead to tragedy, all against the backdrop of a looming war.
Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
Agnès Varda · 92 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
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.
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Carl Theodor Dreyer · 88 critic votes
Free on JustWatch TV, Darkroom, Tubi TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, FlixFling, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.
Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
Robert Bresson · 82 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.
Playtime (1967)
Jacques Tati · 81 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
Clumsy Monsieur Hulot finds himself perplexed by the intimidating complexity of a gadget-filled Paris. He attempts to meet with a business contact but soon becomes lost. His roundabout journey parallels that of an American tourist, and as they weave through the inventive urban environment, they intermittently meet, developing an interest in one another. They eventually get together at a chaotic restaurant, along with several other quirky characters.
Breathless (1960)
Jean-Luc Godard · 79 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he attempts to persuade a girl to run away to Italy with him.
Shoah (1985)
Claude Lanzmann · 73 critic votes
Streaming on Philo
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
L'Atalante (1934)
Jean Vigo · 71 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Darkroom
Newly married couple Juliette and ship captain Jean struggle through marriage as they travel on the L'Atalante along with the captain's first mate and a cabin boy.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Céline Sciamma · 65 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, HBO Max
On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.
The 400 Blows (1959)
François Truffaut · 64 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Shout! Factory TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.
Contempt (1963)
Jean-Luc Godard · 57 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, BFI Player Amazon Channel
Art film producer Jeremy Prokosch, unhappy with the work of his director, hires Fritz Lang (as himself) to direct an adaptation of The Odyssey, but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb, he brings in a screenwriter to energise the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.
La Jetée (1962)
Chris Marker · 54 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A man confronts his past during an experiment that attempts to find a solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world caused by a world war.
Sans Soleil (1983)
Chris Marker · 52 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films
A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
A Man Escaped (1956)
Robert Bresson · 45 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A captured French Resistance fighter during World War II engineers a daunting escape from prison.
The Gleaners and I (2000)
Agnès Varda · 44 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films
Varda focuses her eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her investigation leads from forgotten corners of the French countryside to off-hours at the green markets of Paris, following those who insist on finding a use for that which society has cast off, whether out of necessity or activism.
Vagabond (1985)
Agnès Varda · 42 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Mona Bergeron is dead, her frozen body found in a ditch in the French countryside. From this, the film flashes back to the weeks leading up to her death. Through these flashbacks, Mona gradually declines as she travels from place to place, taking odd jobs and staying with whomever will offer her a place to sleep. Mona is fiercely independent, craving freedom over comfort, but it is this desire to be free that will eventually lead to her demise.
The Mother and the Whore (1973)
Jean Eustache · 41 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Aimless young Alexandre juggles his relationships with his girlfriend, Marie, and a casual lover named Veronika. Marie becomes increasingly jealous of Alexandre's fling with Veronika and as the trio continues their unsustainable affair, the emotional stakes get higher, leading to conflict and unhappiness.
Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988)
Jean-Luc Godard · 40 critic votes
An 8-part essay film chronicling the history of cinema, examining the history of the concept of cinema and how both relates to the 20th century.
Pierrot le Fou (1965)
Jean-Luc Godard · 38 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
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.
Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)
Jacques Rivette · 38 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Julie, a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline, an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama.
The Earrings of Madame de... (1953)
Max Ophüls · 36 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In late 19th century France, the Countess Louise, wife of a wealthy general, sells the earrings her husband gave her on their wedding day to pay off her secret debts, then claims to have lost them. Her husband quickly learns of the deceit, which is the beginning of many tragic misunderstandings, all involving the earrings, the general, the countess, and her new lover, the Italian Baron Donati.
Pickpocket (1959)
Robert Bresson · 30 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Michel takes up pickpocketing on a lark and is arrested soon after. His mother dies shortly after his release, and despite the objections of his only friend, Jacques, and his mother's neighbor Jeanne, Michel teams up with a couple of petty thieves in order to improve his craft. With a police inspector keeping an eye on him, Michel also tries to get a straight job, but the temptation to steal is hard to resist.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
Jacques Demy · 29 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Shout! Factory TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, TCM
This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher, a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery, an employee in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a two-year tour of combat in Algeria, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant and must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant.
L'Argent (1983)
Robert Bresson · 27 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A forged 500-franc note is passed from person to person and shop to shop, until it falls into the hands of a genuine innocent who doesn't see it for what it is—which will have devastating consequences on his life.
India Song (1975)
Marguerite Duras · 26 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of a French diplomat in 1930s India, takes many lovers to relieve the boredom in her life.
La Grande Illusion (1937)
Jean Renoir · 25 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Darkroom
A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal, grapple with their own class differences after being captured and held in a World War I German prison camp. When the men are transferred to a high-security fortress, they must concoct a plan to escape beneath the watchful eye of aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, who has formed an unexpected bond with de Boeldieu.
Un Chien Andalou (1929)
Luis Buñuel · 24 critic votes
Free on Bloodstream, YOW.tv, Fandor · Streaming on Kanopy, FlixFling, Philo
Un Chien Andalou is an European avant-garde surrealist film, a collaboration between director Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali.
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Alain Resnais · 24 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Darkroom
At a weekend gathering, a man tells a woman that they had spent time there together a year prior. But, the woman has no recollection whatsoever and is convinced that he is simply fabricating the encounter. The more he speaks about their activities the previous year however, the more compelling he becomes. The question remains however – did they meet previously or not?
My Life to Live (1962)
Jean-Luc Godard · 24 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.
A Day in the Country (1936)
Jean Renoir · 23 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
The family of a Parisian shop-owner spends a day in the country. The daughter falls in love with a man at the inn, where they spend the day.
Children of Paradise (1945)
Marcel Carné · 23 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, IndieFlix Shorts Amazon Channel, Fawesome
In a chaotic 19th-century Paris teeming with aristocrats, thieves, psychics, and courtesans, theater mime Baptiste is in love with the mysterious actress Garance. But Garance, in turn, is loved by three other men: pretentious actor Frederick, conniving thief Lacenaire, and Count Edouard of Montray.
Vampyr (1932)
Carl Theodor Dreyer · 22 critic votes
Free on Bloodstream, Plex, Cineverse · Streaming on Screambox Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel, FlixFling
Allan Gray, a young man fascinated by the supernatural, goes to a small village where he feels a sinister force descending upon him. There, Allan meets an old man who asks him to protect his two daughters, for one of them has been bitten by a vampire.
Hiroshima mon amour (1959)
Alain Resnais · 22 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Darkroom
The deep conversation between a Japanese architect and a French actress forms the basis of this celebrated French film, considered one of the vanguard productions of the French New Wave. Set in Hiroshima after the end of World War II, the couple -- lovers turned friends -- recount, over many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two intertwine their stories about the past with pondering the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city.
Le Bonheur (1965)
Agnès Varda · 21 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse, young husband and father François finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnès Varda's most provocative films, 'Le bonheur' examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world.
The River (1951)
Jean Renoir · 19 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Director Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature—shot entirely on location in India—is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the Bengal river around which their daily lives unfold. Enriched by Renoir’s subtle understanding and appreciation for India and its people, The River gracefully explores the fragile connections between transitory emotions and everlasting creation.
The Green Ray (1986)
Éric Rohmer · 19 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A lonely Parisian woman comes to terms with her isolation and anxieties during a long summer vacation.
Caché (2005)
Michael Haneke · 19 critic votes
Streaming on Sundance Now, Fandor Amazon Channel, Philo
George, host of a television show focusing on literature, receives videos shot on the sly that feature his family, along with disturbing drawings that are difficult to interpret. He has no idea who has made and sent him the videos. Progressively, the contents of the videos become more personal, indicating that the sender has known George for a long time.
Mouchette (1967)
Robert Bresson · 18 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A young girl living in the French countryside suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man.
Out 1 (1971)
Jacques Rivette, Suzanne Schiffman · 18 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy
While two theater groups rehearse plays by Aeschylus, two solitary individuals wander the Parisian streets hustling the populace for cash.
Army of Shadows (1969)
Jean-Pierre Melville · 17 critic votes
Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Though Gerbier escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseilles, France, and exacts his revenge on the informant, he must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis in an atmosphere of tension, paranoia and distrust.
Napoléon (1927)
Abel Gance · 16 critic votes
Free on Darkroom
A biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, tracing the Corsican's career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign) to his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797.
The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)
Jacques Demy · 16 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, TCM, HBO Max Amazon Channel
In the seaside town of Rochefort, twin sisters Delphine and Solange dream of love and artistic fulfillment beyond their quiet lives. As sailors, artists, musicians, and chance visitors pass through town during a weekend fair, a web of near-misses and romantic longing brings ideal partners tantalizingly close—without their realizing it.
Possession (1981)
Andrzej Żuławski · 16 critic votes
Streaming on Shudder, Kanopy, Shudder Amazon Channel
A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.
Petite Maman (2021)
Céline Sciamma · 15 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy
After the death of her beloved grandmother, eight-year-old Nelly meets a strangely familiar girl her own age in the woods. Instantly forming a connection with this mysterious new friend, Nelly embarks on a fantastical journey of discovery which helps her come to terms with this newfound loss.
Zero for Conduct (1933)
Jean Vigo · 14 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a repressive boarding school with rigid rules of behavior, four boys decide to rebel against the director on a celebration day.
Le Samouraï (1967)
Jean-Pierre Melville · 14 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Shout! Factory TV · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, Criterion Channel
After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts, finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him.
Three Colours: Blue (1993)
Krzysztof Kieślowski · 14 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
Luis Buñuel · 13 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Kanopy, BFI Player Amazon Channel
In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.
Jules and Jim (1962)
François Truffaut · 12 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
In the carefree days before World War I, introverted Austrian author Jules strikes up a friendship with the exuberant Frenchman Jim and both men fall for the impulsive and beautiful Catherine.
The Double Life of Véronique (1991)
Krzysztof Kieślowski · 12 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Véronique is a beautiful young French woman who aspires to be a renowned singer; Weronika lives in Poland, has a similar career goal and looks identical to Véronique, though the two are not related. The film follows both women as they contend with the ups and downs of their individual lives, with Véronique embarking on an unusual romance with Alexandre Fabbri, a puppeteer who may be able to help her with her existential issues.
The Intruder (2004)
Claire Denis · 12 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy
An emotionally cold man leaves the safety of his Alpine home to seek a heart transplant and an estranged son.
Holy Motors (2012)
Leos Carax · 12 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Pluto TV · Streaming on Fandor, Sundance Now, Kanopy
We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, worker, family man.
Lola Montès (1955)
Max Ophüls · 11 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Lola Montes, previously a great adventuress, is reduced to being the attraction of a circus after having been the lover of various important men.
Mon Oncle (1958)
Jacques Tati · 11 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Genial, bumbling Monsieur Hulot loves his top-floor apartment in a grimy corner of the city, and cannot fathom why his sister's family has moved to the suburbs. Their house is an ultra-modern nightmare, which Hulot only visits for the sake of stealing away his rambunctious young nephew. Hulot's sister, however, wants to win him over to her new way of life, and conspires to set him up with a wife and job.
Night and Fog (1956)
Alain Resnais · 10 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
Trouble Every Day (2001)
Claire Denis · 10 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy
Newlyweds Shane and June arrive in Paris for their honeymoon. In the process of trying to find a cure for his strange, bloodthirsty disease, Shane stumbles upon the story of a doctor and his flesh eating wife.
35 Shots of Rum (2008)
Claire Denis · 10 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Metrograph
A widower and his daughter witness the retirement of a colleague of his and the closing of her department at her university.
Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
Robert Bresson · 9 critic votes
An inexperienced, sickly priest shows up in the rural French community of Ambricourt, where he joins the community's clergy. But the locals don't take kindly to the priest, and his ascetic ways and unsociable demeanor make him an outcast. During Bible studies at the nearby girls school, he is continually mocked by his students. Then his attempt to intervene in a family feud backfires into a scandal. His failures, compounded with his declining health, begin to erode his faith.
Muriel (1963)
Alain Resnais, Brett Kelly · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In the seacoast town of Boulogne, antique furniture saleswoman Hélène lives with her stepson, Bernard, who's back from military duty in Algiers. An old lover of Hélène's comes to visit, Alphonse, with his niece Françoise; he too is back from Algiers, where he ran a café. Bernard speaks of his fiancée, Muriel, whom Hélène has not met. The past is obscured by guilt, misperceptions, and missed possibilities. Appearances deceive, things change. As Hélène and Alphonse try to sort out a renewal, everyone seems off-kilter just enough to hint that all cannot end well.
My Night at Maud's (1969)
Éric Rohmer · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
The Catholic Jean-Louis runs into an old friend, the Marxist Vidal, in Clermont-Ferrand around Christmas. Vidal introduces Jean-Louis to the modestly libertine, recently divorced Maud and the three engage in conversation on religion, atheism, love, morality and Blaise Pascal's life and writings on philosophy, faith and mathematics. Jean-Louis ends up spending a night at Maud's. Jean-Louis' Catholic views on marriage, fidelity and obligation make his situation a dilemma, as he has already, at the very beginning of the film, proclaimed his love for a young woman whom, however, he has never yet spoken to.
Persepolis (2007)
Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Sony Pictures Core Amazon Channel
In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Satrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.
L’Age d’Or (1930)
Luis Buñuel · 8 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, FlixFling
The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.
The Tenant (1976)
Roman Polanski · 8 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla
A quiet and inconspicuous man rents an apartment in Paris where he finds himself drawn into a rabbit hole of dangerous paranoia.
La Haine (1995)
Mathieu Kassovitz · 8 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After a chaotic night of rioting in a marginal suburb of Paris, three young friends, Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, wander around unoccupied waiting for news about the state of health of a mutual friend who has been seriously injured when confronting the police.
Beauty and the Beast (1946)
Jean Cocteau, René Clément · 7 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Shout! Factory TV, Plex · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
The story of a gentle-hearted beast in love with a simple and beautiful girl. She is drawn to the repellent but strangely fascinating Beast, who tests her fidelity by giving her a key, telling her that if she doesn't return it to him by a specific time, he will die of grief. She is unable to return the key on time, but it is revealed that the Beast is the genuinely handsome one. A simple tale of tragic love that turns into a surreal vision of death, desire, and beauty.
Masculin Féminin (1966)
Jean-Luc Godard · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Paul, a young idealist trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life, takes a job interviewing people for a marketing research firm. He moves in with aspiring pop singer Madeleine. Paul, however, is disillusioned by the growing commercialism in society, while Madeleine just wants to be successful. The story is told in a series of 15 unrelated vignettes.
Day for Night (1973)
François Truffaut · 7 critic votes
A committed filmmaker struggles to complete his latest project while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.
The Devil Probably (1977)
Robert Bresson · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Charles drifts through politics, religion and psychoanalysis, rejecting them all. Once he realises the depth of his disgust with the moral and physical decline of the society he lives in, he decides that suicide is the only option...
Too Early/Too Late (1981)
Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet · 7 critic votes
Inspired by a letter by Friedrich Engels and a 1974 account of two militant Marxist writers who had been imprisoned by the Nasser regime, Straub-Huillet filmed this film in France and Egypt during 1980. They reflect on Egypt’s history of peasant struggle and liberation from Western colonization, and link it to class tensions in France shortly before the Revolution of 1789, quoting texts by Engels as well as the pioneering nonfiction film Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895).
À Nos Amours (1983)
Maurice Pialat · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Fifteen-year-old Suzanne seeks refuge from a disintegrating family in a series of impulsive, promiscuous affairs. Her fulsome sexuality further ratchets up the suppressed passions of her narcissistic brother, insecure mother and brooding, authoritarian father.
La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000)
Peter Watkins · 7 critic votes
Streaming on OVID
We are in the year 1871. A journalist for Versailles Television broadcasts a soothing and official view of events while a Commune television is set up to provide the perspectives of the Paris rebels. On a stage-like set, more than 200 actors interpret characters of the Commune, especially the Popincourt neighborhood in the XIth arrondissement. They voice their thoughts and feelings concerning the social and political reforms.
Girlhood (2014)
Céline Sciamma · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Strand Releasing Amazon Channel
Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom.
Titane (2021)
Julia Ducournau · 7 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy
A woman with a metal plate in her head from a childhood car accident embarks on a bizarre journey, bringing her into contact with a firefighter who's reunited with his missing son after 10 years.
A Trip to the Moon (1902)
Georges Méliès · 6 critic votes
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Kanopy, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Professor Barbenfouillis and five of his colleagues from the Academy of Astronomy travel to the Moon aboard a rocket propelled by a giant cannon. Once on the lunar surface, the bold explorers face the many perils hidden in the caves of the mysterious planet.
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1935)
Jean Renoir · 6 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Mild-mannered novelist of Western fiction, Amédée Lange, and his colleagues take over a publishing house after their exploitative boss disappears, only for the superior to return and try to reclaim the profits from their successful cooperative.
Orpheus (1950)
Jean Cocteau · 6 critic votes
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A famous poet in postwar Paris, scorned by the Left Bank youth, is in love with both his wife Eurydice and a mysterious princess. Seeking inspiration, the poet becomes obsessed and follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead.
The Golden Coach (1952)
Jean Renoir · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A viceroy, a nobleman and a bullfighter court a comedy-troupe actress in 18th-century Peru.
Lola (1961)
Jacques Demy · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A bored young man meets with his former girlfriend, now a cabaret dancer and single mother, and soon finds himself falling back in love with her.
Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967)
Jean-Luc Godard · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.
One Sings, the Other Doesn't (1977)
Agnès Varda · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
The intertwined lives of two women in 1970s France, set against the progress of the women's movement in which Agnes Varda was involved. Pomme and Suzanne meet when Pomme helps Suzanne obtain an abortion after a third pregnancy which she cannot afford. They lose contact but meet again ten years later. Pomme has become an unconventional singer, Suzanne a serious community worker - despite the contrast they remain friends and share in the various dramas of each others' lives, in the process affirming their different female identities.
The Piano Teacher (2001)
Michael Haneke · 6 critic votes
Free on Shout! Factory TV, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max
Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.
A Prophet (2009)
Jacques Audiard · 6 critic votes
Sentenced to six years in prison, Malik El Djebena is alone in the world and can neither read nor write. On his arrival at the prison, he seems younger and more brittle than the others detained there. At once he falls under the sway of a group of Corsicans who enforce their rule in the prison. As the 'missions' go by, he toughens himself and wins the confidence of the Corsican group.
Amour (2012)
Michael Haneke · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Sundance Now
Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.
Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013)
Abdellatif Kechiche · 6 critic votes
Free on The Roku Channel, Plex, Xumo Play · Streaming on Netflix, Sundance Now, Kanopy
Adèle's life is changed when she meets Emma, a young woman with blue hair, who will allow her to discover desire, to assert herself as a woman and as an adult. In front of others, Adele grows, seeks herself, loses herself, finds herself.
Les Vampires (1915)
Louis Feuillade · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy
Paris is prey to an invisible terror against which the police can do nothing: a sinister organization that sows chaos and death. The intrepid journalist Philippe Guérande and his partner embark on a long crusade to put an end to the crimes of the Great Vampire and Irma Vep, his dangerous accomplice. (A ten episode movie serial.)
Tih Minh (1918)
Louis Feuillade · 5 critic votes
Jacques d'Athys, a French adventurer, returns to his home in Nice after an expedition to Indochina where he has picked up a Eurasian fiancée and a book that, unbeknownst to him, contains a coded message revealing the whereabouts of both secret treasures and sensitive government intelligence. This makes him the target of foreign spies, including a Marquise of mysterious Latin origin, a Hindu hypnotist and an evil German doctor, who will stop at nothing to obtain the book.
Stormy Waters (1941)
Jean Grémillon · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A married tugboat captain falls for a woman he rescues from a sinking ship.
Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953)
Jacques Tati · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati’s endearing clown, takes a holiday at a seaside resort, where his presence provokes one catastrophe after another. Tati’s masterpiece of gentle slapstick is a series of effortlessly well-choreographed sight gags involving dogs, boats, and firecrackers; it was the first entry in the Hulot series and the film that launched its maker to international stardom.
The Wages of Fear (1953)
Henri-Georges Clouzot · 5 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
In a run-down South American town, four men are paid to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin into the jungle through to the oil field. Friendships are tested and rivalries develop as they embark upon the perilous journey.
French Cancan (1955)
Jean Renoir · 5 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Nineteenth-century Paris comes vibrantly alive in Jean Renoir’s exhilarating tale of the opening of the world-renowned Moulin Rouge. Jean Gabin plays the wily impresario Danglard, who makes the cancan all the rage while juggling the love of two beautiful women—an Egyptian belly-dancer and a naive working girl turned cancan star.
La Pointe Courte (1955)
Agnès Varda · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the inhabitants of Sète in the South of France.
Moi, un noir (1958)
Jean Rouch, Pierre Braunberger · 5 critic votes
Streaming on OVID
Winner of the prestigious Prix Louis Delluc in 1958, "Moi, un noir" marked Jean Rouch's break with traditional ethnography, and his embrace of the collaborative and improvisatory strategies he called "shared ethnography" and "ethnofiction". The film depicts an ordinary week in the lives of men and women from Niger who have migrated to Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire for work.
Shoot the Piano Player (1960)
François Truffaut · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Charlie is a former classical pianist who has changed his name and now plays jazz in a grimy Paris bar. When Charlie's brothers, Richard and Chico, surface and ask for Charlie's help while on the run from gangsters they have scammed, he aids their escape. Soon Charlie and Lena, a waitress at the same bar, face trouble when the gangsters arrive, looking for his brothers.
Méditerranée (1963)
Jean-Daniel Pollet · 5 critic votes
[Here] Pollet made a work that is the very definition of what French critics like to call an ovni or ufo (as in ‘unidentified filmic object’). [It] has been described as being ‘like a comet in the sky of French cinema,’ an ‘unknown masterpiece,’ and an ‘unprecedented’ work that refuses interpretation even as it has provoked reams of critical writing. Its rhythmic collage of images – a girl on a gurney, a fisherman, Greek ruins, a Sicilian garden, a Spanish corrida – is accompanied by an abstract commentary written by Sollers, and only the somber lyricism of Antoine Duhamel’s score holds the film’s elements together. At first viewing, you fear that [it] might fly apart into incoherent fragments. Instead, over the course of its 45 minutes it invents its own rules, and you realize you’re watching something like the filmic channeling of an ancient ritual.
Belle de Jour (1967)
Luis Buñuel · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max
Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.
Weekend (1967)
Jean-Luc Godard · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations.
Le Cercle rouge (1970)
Jean-Pierre Melville · 5 critic votes
When French criminal Corey gets released from prison, he resolves to never return. He is quickly pulled back into the underworld, however, after a chance encounter with escaped murderer Vogel. Along with former policeman and current alcoholic Jansen, they plot an intricate jewel heist. All the while, quirky Police Commissioner Mattei, who was the one to lose custody of Vogel, is determined to find him.
The House in the Woods (1971)
Maurice Pialat · 5 critic votes
A collection of explicitly simulated sexual vignettes ranging from rape and orgy to historical events.
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
Luis Buñuel · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After dumping a bucket of water on a beautiful young woman from the window of a train car, wealthy Frenchman Mathieu, regales his fellow passengers with the story of the dysfunctional relationship between himself and the young woman in question, a fiery 19-year-old flamenco dancer named Conchita. What follows is a tale of cruelty, depravity and lies -- the very building blocks of love.
The Lorry (1977)
Marguerite Duras · 5 critic votes
In this most talky and personal of films, director Marguerite Duras and actor Gerard Depardieu do an on-camera read-through of a movie script. Occasionally, the director comments about the characters or their motivations, and sometimes the actor does. That's all -- there is no action, there are no location shots, no one pretends to be anything else. The script itself tells about an encounter between a blank-slate of a woman hitchhiker, and a communist truck driver. As the reading progresses, Duras comments bitterly about the failed ideals of communism and the glorious revolution that will probably never happen.
Simone Barbès ou la vertu (1980)
Marie-Claude Treilhou · 5 critic votes
Simone, a leather-clad porn theater worker, spends her shifts bantering with her coworker and observing eccentric customers in the cinema’s lobby. Tonight, she clocks out and heads off to meet her girlfriend, a waitress at a lesbian club. Later, she’ll encounter a lonely man on the prowl.
Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991)
Leos Carax · 5 critic votes
Set against Paris' oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, while it was closed for repairs, this film is a love story between two young vagrants: Alex, a would be circus performer addicted to alcohol and sedatives and Michele, a painter driven to a life on the streets because of a failed relationship and an affliction which is slowly turning her blind.
Amélie (2001)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet · 5 critic votes
At a tiny Parisian café, the adorable yet painfully shy Amélie accidentally discovers a gift for helping others. Soon Amelie is spending her days as a matchmaker, guardian angel, and all-around do-gooder. But when she bumps into a handsome stranger, will she find the courage to become the star of her very own love story?
The Beaches of Agnès (2008)
Agnès Varda · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films
Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.
Goodbye to Language (2014)
Jean-Luc Godard · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Kino Film Collection
"The idea is simple / A married woman and a single man meet / They love, they argue, fists fly / A dog strays between town and country / The seasons pass / The man and woman meet again / The dog finds itself between them / The other is in one, / the one is in the other / and they are three / The former husband shatters everything / A second film begins: / the same as the first, / and yet not / From the human race we pass to metaphor / This ends in barking / and a baby's cries / In the meantime, we will have seen people talking of the demise of the dollar, of truth in mathematics and of the death of a robin." -JLG
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)
Jean Epstein · 4 critic votes
Free on JustWatch TV, Tubi TV
Convinced that his family is tainted by generations of evil, Roderick Usher is hellbent on stopping his sister Madeline’s wedding to prevent the cursed Usher bloodline from expanding. When her fiancé Allan arrives at the crumbling estate to claim his bride, Roderick goes to ruthless—even deadly—lengths to keep them apart.
Toni (1935)
Jean Renoir · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In the 1920s, the Provence is a magnet for immigrants seeking work in the quarries or in the agriculture. Many mingle with locals and settle down for good — like Toni, an Italian who has moved in with Marie, a Frenchwoman. Even a well-ordered existence is not immune from boredom, friendship, romance, or enmity, and Toni becomes entangled in a web of increasingly passionate relationships. For there is his best pal Fernand, but also Albert, his overbearing foreman; there is Sebastian, a steady Spanish peasant, but also Gabi, his young rogue relative; there is Marie, but there is also Josefa.
Le Plaisir (1952)
Max Ophüls · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
19 year old Linnéa leaves her small town in Sweden and heads for Los Angeles with the aim of becoming the world's next big porn star, but the road to her goal turns out to be bumpier than she imagined.
Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Georges Franju, Claude Sautet · 4 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Shout! Factory TV, Plex · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Dr. Génessier is riddled with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures the face of his daughter, the once beautiful Christiane, who outsiders believe is dead. Dr. Génessier, along with accomplice and laboratory assistant Louise, kidnaps young women and brings them to the Génessier mansion. After rendering his victims unconscious, Dr. Génessier removes their faces and attempts to graft them on to Christiane's.
Chronique d'un été (1961)
Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Paris, summer 1960. Anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch and sociologist and film critic Edgar Morin wander through the crowded streets asking passersby how they cope with life's misfortunes.
The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (1966)
Roberto Rossellini · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Cardinal Mazarin dies, leaving a power vacuum in which the young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, the Superintendant who has been systematically looting the treasury and wants to be prime minister. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand by offering a bribe to Louis' mistress to be his ally. She reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt, the urban poor working and fed, and peasants untaxed.
Naked Childhood (1968)
Maurice Pialat · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Handed over to foster care by his mother—who's unwilling to give up permanent custody—the now-adolescent François understands that nothing in life is permanent, and his increasingly erratic actions reflect this knowledge.
L'amour fou (1969)
Jacques Rivette · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A troubled marriage is tested by the couple's involvement in a theatrical production of Racine’s Andromaque.
The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)
Marcel Ophuls · 4 critic votes
An investigation into the nature, details and reasons for the collaboration, from 1940 to 1944, during World War II, between the Vichy regime, established in the south of France and headed by Marshal Pétain, and Nazi Germany.
The Butcher (1970)
Claude Chabrol · 4 critic votes
An unlikely friendship between a dour, working class butcher and a repressed schoolteacher coincides with a grisly series of Ripper-type murders in a provincial French town.
Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971)
Robert Bresson · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Jacques, a young man with artistic aspirations, spends four nights wandering Paris with a young woman, whom he rescued from suicide.
Two English Girls (1971)
François Truffaut · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In the early 20th-century, Frenchman Claude meets Englishwoman Ann in Paris. Ann invites him to her family home, intending him for her sister Muriel. Claude falls for Muriel, but families demand year-long separation before approving marriage.
My Little Loves (1974)
Jean Eustache · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Daniel lives with his grandmother and, after a year of high school, goes to live with his mother in the south of France; a harsher environment which rapidly changes his perception of friends, work, and women.
Women Women (1974)
Paul Vecchiali · 4 critic votes
The fantasies and dreams of two over-the-hill actresses are intertwined with their realities, as the two roommates struggle to survive their day-to-day lives in the expensive and difficult world of Paris.
Daguerréotypes (1975)
Agnès Varda · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films
An intimate portrait of the small shops and shopkeepers of the Rue Daguerre in Paris, a picturesque street that has been the filmmaker’s home for more than 50 years.
Monsieur Klein (1976)
Joseph Losey · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Paris, France, 1942, during the Nazi occupation. Robert Klein, a successful art dealer who benefits from the misfortunes of those who are ruthlessly persecuted, discovers by chance that there is another Robert Klein, apparently a Jewish man; someone with whom he could be mistakenly identified, something dangerous in such harsh times.
Every Man for Himself (1980)
Jean-Luc Godard · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A look at the sexual and professional lives of three people — a television director, his ex-girlfriend, and a sex worker.
Full Moon in Paris (1984)
Éric Rohmer · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Feeling suffocated by a possessive boyfriend, work and suburban life, a young woman starts spending the weekends in her Paris apartment in order to reclaim some of her lost freedom.
Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988)
Marcel Ophuls · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, OVID
Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape—with U.S. help—to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.
Nouvelle Vague (1990)
Jean-Luc Godard · 4 critic votes
Composed entirely of literary quotations from many different sources and from several historical periods, the loose narrative concerns a drifter found by a rich woman who soon falls in love with him. A drowning accident takes place and the drifter dies, but some time later he reappears in the woman’s life looking for a job. Or could it be the man’s twin brother?
US Go Home (1994)
Claire Denis · 4 critic votes
In the sixties, in a suburb near Paris, Martine wants to lose her virginity.
Bouquets (1995)
Rose Lowder · 4 critic votes
Bouquets 1-10 is Lowder’s first collection in an ongoing series of one minute episodes, each composed of footage shot around a general geographic location that has been alternately woven, frame by frame, into a single film reel and connected through the interstitial still life image of a flower that cues the beginning of each integrated film Bouquet. Each bouquet of flowers is also a bouquet of frames mingling the plants to be found in a given place with the activities that happen to be there at the time. Lowder uses the film strip as a canvas with the freedom to film frames on any part of the strip in any order, running the film through the camera as many times as needed.
Code Unknown (2000)
Michael Haneke · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters' lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.
The Pianist (2002)
Roman Polanski · 4 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, Fandango at Home Free · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.
Enter the Void (2009)
Gaspar Noé · 4 critic votes
Streaming on MUBI, Shudder, Sundance Now
This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar, a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda. When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.
Certified Copy (2010)
Abbas Kiarostami · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, Philo
In Tuscany to promote his latest book, a middle-aged English writer meets a French woman who leads him to the village of Lucignano.
Faces Places (2017)
Agnès Varda, JR · 4 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Fandor Amazon Channel, Cohen Media Amazon Channel
Director Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.
Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895)
Louis Lumière · 3 critic votes
Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.
La Souriante Madame Beudet (1923)
Germaine Dulac · 3 critic votes
Free on Public Domain Movies · Streaming on Kanopy
An unhappily married woman devises a scheme to get rid of her husband.
The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928)
Germaine Dulac · 3 critic votes
Obsessed with a general's wife, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.
À propos de Nice (1930)
Jean Vigo · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.
Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)
Jean Renoir · 3 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Michel Simon gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history as Boudu, a Parisian tramp who takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine and is rescued by a well-to-do bookseller, Edouard Lestingois. The Lestingois family decides to take in the irrepressible bum, and he shows his gratitude by shaking the household to its foundations. With Boudu Saved from Drowning, legendary director Jean Renoir takes advantage of a host of Parisian locations and the anarchic charms of his lead actor to create an effervescent satire of the bourgeoisie.
A Song of Love (1950)
Jean Genet · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy
Two prisoners in complete isolation, separated by the thick brick walls, and desperately in need of human contact, devise a most unusual kind of communication.
Forbidden Games (1952)
René Clément · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Darkroom
Orphaned after a Nazi air raid, Paulette, a young Parisian girl, runs into Michel, an older peasant boy, and the two quickly become close. Together, they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as they create a burial ground for Paulette's deceased pet dog. Eventually, however, Paulette's stay with Michel's family is threatened by the harsh realities of wartime.
Elevator to the Gallows (1958)
Louis Malle · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A self-assured businessman murders his employer, husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events.
Adieu Philippine (1962)
Jacques Rozier · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Michel is a young technician in the fledgling TV industry and is due for military service in two months at the time of the Algerian War. Juliette and Liliane are inseparable best friends, and aspiring actresses, who hang around outside the TV studio. Michel invites them in to watch, flirts with them both, and dates them separately and together. When Michel goes on a holiday to Corsica, just before he is drafted, the girls follow.
The Trial (1962)
Orson Welles · 3 critic votes
Free on FlixHouse · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Night Flight Plus, Artiflix
Arrested for an unnamed crime, Josef K. is trapped in a surreal bureaucratic maze where justice is unknowable and guilt is assumed.
Le Joli Mai (1963)
Chris Marker, Pierre Lhomme · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, OVID
Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and inarticulable notion that evokes more basic and fundamentally egalitarian ideals of self-betterment, prosperity, tolerance, economic opportunity, and freedom.
Goto, Island of Love (1968)
Walerian Borowczyk · 3 critic votes
A petty thief works his way up the absurd hierarchy of Goto, an archipelago cut off from civilisation by a tumultuous earthquake. His dream is to possess Glossia, a stifled beauty trapped in a loveless marriage to a melancholic dictator.
Les yeux ne veulent pas en tout temps se fermer, ou Peut-être qu'un jour Rome se permettra de choisir à son tour (1970)
Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet · 3 critic votes
Straub-Huillet’s first color film, adapts a lesser-known Corneille tragedy from 1664, which in turn was based on an episode of imperial court intrigue chronicled in Tacitus’s Histories. The costuming is classical, and the toga-clad, nonprofessional cast performs the drama’s original French text amid the ruins of Rome’s Palatine Hill while the noise of contemporary urban life hums in the background. Their lines are executed with a terrific flatness and frequently through heavy accents; the language in Othon becomes not merely an expression but a thing itself, an element whose plainness here alerts us to qualities of the work that might otherwise be subordinated.
The Things of Life (1970)
Claude Sautet · 3 critic votes
The mind of Pierre Bérard, a successful middle-aged architect, is torn between his unstable present with Hélène, his younger lover, and his happy memories of the past with Catherine, his ex-wife; but his true destiny awaits him at a crossroads on his way to Rennes…
Tout Va Bien (1972)
Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A strike at a French sausage factory contributes to the estrangement of a married filmmaker and his reporter wife.
Fantastic Planet (1973)
René Laloux · 3 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, The Roku Channel, Plex · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Cinemax Amazon Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
On the planet Ygam, the Draags, extremely technologically and spiritually advanced blue humanoids, consider the tiny Oms, human beings descendants of Terra's inhabitants, as ignorant animals. Those who live in slavery are treated as simple pets and used to entertain Draag children; those who live hidden in the hostile wilderness of the planet are periodically hunted and ruthlessly slaughtered as if they were vermin.
The Mouth Agape (1974)
Maurice Pialat · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Cohen Media Amazon Channel
Monique is dying of cancer, lying in bed in the apartment above the store her family owns. Her philandering husband carries on with life, her son remains aloof, and her daughter-in-law wonders if she is witnessing her own decline. They all struggle to express, or feel, their love for one another.
Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta (1976)
Marguerite Duras · 3 critic votes
The full soundtrack to Marguerite Duras' 1975 film India Song, about a French ambassador's wife in 1930s India, is here repurposed with all new cinematography. As we hear all the dialogue of a bygone movie, we travel visually through images of absence and decay, bereft of life. It's the ghost of a film, and a further commentary on colonialism.
The Man Who Loved Women (1977)
François Truffaut · 3 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on fuboTV, MGM+ Amazon Channel, MGM Plus Roku Premium Channel
At Bertrand Morane's burial there are many of the women that the 40-year-old engineer loved. In flashback Bertrand's life and love affairs are told by himself while writing an autobiographical novel.
We Spin Around the Night Consumed by the Fire (1978)
Guy Debord · 3 critic votes
A Latin palindrome is the title of Guy Debord's last film, in which he, as narrator, explains that he will make neither concessions to the tastes of his viewers nor to the dominant ideas of his day. After extensively insulting the audience that goes to the cinema to forget its heteronomous life, the film becomes autobiographical, using images from the world of spectacle: advertising brochures, clips from feature films (Les enfants du paradis), comics, aerial footage of Paris, tracking shots through Venice, photographs of friends – all commented on by Debord, with an at times melancholy undertone: "This Paris no longer exists." His assessment is that one of the great pleasures of his life has been the sensation of the passage of time, and as a witness to the disintegration of social order, he has loved his epoch.
Loulou (1980)
Maurice Pialat · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Cohen Media Amazon Channel
A bored wife leaves her husband for an unemployed, petty criminal.
The King and the Mockingbird (1980)
Paul Grimault · 3 critic votes
A young shepherdess and a chimneysweep plan to get married and escape the clutches of a tyrannical king in love with her, assisted by the guile of a cheeky mockingbird, the king's archenemy.
Le Pont du Nord (1981)
Jacques Rivette · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Marie is just out from prison when she runs into Baptiste, a young paranoid needing companionship. In their pursuit of a mysterious briefcase carried by Marie's former lover, they roam the street of Paris, transformed into a giant board game, a maze spotted with mysterious traps, puzzling clues, and chance encounters. Maybe they are bricks in some sinister scheme, maybe they are playing a board game, maybe it's a fairy tale, maybe it's yet something else...
First Name: Carmen (1983)
Jean-Luc Godard · 3 critic votes
Streaming on MUBI
A woman involved with a terrorist group becomes dangerously close to the police officer guarding the bank they plan to rob.
Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983)
Raúl Ruiz · 3 critic votes
Shortly after murdering his professor, a young man encounters a sailor who offers him a position on his ship in exchange for 3 Danish crowns and his attention as he recounts his life story.
Jean de Florette (1986)
Claude Berri · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a rural French village, an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water for growing their flowers, and are dismayed to hear that the man who has inherited it is moving in. They block up the spring and watch as their new neighbour tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield through the hot summer. Though they see his desperate efforts are breaking his health and his wife and daughter's hearts, they think only of getting the water.
Chocolat (1988)
Claire Denis · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
On her way to visit her childhood home in a colonial outpost in Northern Cameroon, a young French woman recalls her childhood, her memories concentrating on her family's houseboy.
Jane B. par Agnès V. (1988)
Agnès Varda · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The interests, obsessions, and fantasies of two singular artists converge in this inspired collaboration between Agnès Varda and her longtime friend the actor Jane Birkin. Made over the course of a year and motivated by Birkin’s fortieth birthday—a milestone she admits to some anxiety over—Jane B. by Agnès V. contrasts the private, reflective Birkin with Birkin the icon.
La Belle Noiseuse (1991)
Jacques Rivette · 3 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Fandor Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel
The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife on a countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start again the work on a painting he long ago stopped: La Belle Noiseuse. And he wants Marianne as model.
Van Gogh (1991)
Maurice Pialat · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Cohen Media Amazon Channel
After leaving the asylum, Vincent van Gogh settles in the home of Doctor Gachet, where he keeps painting amidst the torments of his failing mental health. He begins an affair with his host’s daughter, however, she soon realizes that he doesn’t love her and that his heart beats only for art.
La Cérémonie (1995)
Claude Chabrol · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Sophie, a quiet and shy maid working for an upper-class French family, finds a friend in the energetic and uncompromising postmaster Jeanne, who encourages her to stand up against her bourgeois employers.
Same Old Song (1997)
Alain Resnais · 3 critic votes
Business executive Odile seeks a new, larger apartment. Her younger sister Camille, having completed her doctoral thesis in history, is a Paris tour guide. Simon is a regular on Camille's tours as he's attracted to her. However, Camille has fallen for Marc, and they begin an affair. Nicolas is also looking for an apartment, since he hopes to eventually have his family join him in Paris.
In Praise of Love (2001)
Jean-Luc Godard · 3 critic votes
Someone we hear talking - but whom we do not see - speaks of a project which describes the four key moments of love: meeting, physical passion, arguments/separation and making up. This project is to be told through three couples: young, adult and old. We do not know if the project is for a play, a film, a novel or an opera. The author of the project is always accompanied by a kind of servant. Meanwhile, two years earlier, an American civil servant meets with an elderly French couple who had fought in the Resistance during World War II, brokering a deal with a Hollywood director to buy the rights to tell their story. The members of the old couple's family discuss heatedly questions of nation, memory and history.
Irréversible (2002)
Gaspar Noé · 3 critic votes
A woman’s lover and her ex-boyfriend take justice into their own hands after she becomes the victim of a rapist. Because some acts can’t be undone. Because man is an animal. Because the desire for vengeance is a natural impulse. Because most crimes remain unpunished.
The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
Sylvain Chomet · 3 critic votes
Free on The Roku Channel, YouTube Free
When her grandson is kidnapped during the Tour de France, Madame Souza and her beloved pooch Bruno team up with the Belleville Sisters—an aged song-and-dance team from the days of Fred Astaire—to rescue him.
Stranger by the Lake (2013)
Alain Guiraudie · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Metrograph, Strand Releasing Amazon Channel
Frank spends his summer days hopelessly searching for companionship at a popular cruising spot on the shores of a lake in rural France. One day, he meets Michel, an attractive yet darkly mysterious man and falls blindly in love.
Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)
Olivier Assayas · 3 critic votes
Free on The Roku Channel, Pluto TV, Plex · Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, Criterion Channel
A veteran actress comes face-to-face with an uncomfortable reflection of herself when she agrees to take part in a revival of the play that launched her career 20 years earlier.
The Image Book (2018)
Jean-Luc Godard · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Kino Film Collection
In Le Livre d’Image, Jean-Luc Godard recycles existing images (films, documentaries, paintings, television archives, etc.), quotes excerpts from books, uses fragments of music. The driving force is poetic rhyme, the association or opposition of ideas, the aesthetic spark through editing, the keystone. The author performs the work of a sculptor. The hand, for this, is essential. He praises it at the start. “There are the five fingers. The five senses. The five parts of the world (…). The true condition of man is to think with his hands. Jean-Luc Godard composes a dazzling syncopation of sequences, the surge of which evokes the violence of the flows of our contemporary screens, taken to a level of incandescence rarely achieved. Crowned at Cannes, the last Godard is a shock film, with twilight beauty.
Dahomey (2024)
Mati Diop · 3 critic votes
Streaming on MUBI, MUBI Amazon Channel
Thousands of royal artifacts of Dahomey, a West African kingdom, were taken by French colonists in the 19th century for collection and display in Paris. Centuries later, a fraction returned to their home in modern-day Benin. This dramatized documentary follows the journey of 26 of the treasures as told by cultural art historians, embattled university students, and one of the repatriated statues himself.
Barque sortant du port (1895)
Louis Lumière · 2 critic votes
In very bad weather and a stormy sea, a small boat manned by two men is trying to leave the harbor of La Ciotat, while several people are watching them from the nearby pier.
Le Repas de bébé (1895)
Louis Lumière · 2 critic votes
A father, a mother and a baby are sitting at a table, on a patio outside. Dad is feeding Baby her lunch, while Mum is serving tea.
La Fée aux Choux (1896)
Alice Guy-Blaché · 2 critic votes
A brief fantasy tale involving a strange fairy who can produce and deliver babies coming out of cabbages. Note: This is a LOST film; the existing film of the same name is the remake from 1900.
Les Résultats du féminisme (1906)
Alice Guy-Blaché · 2 critic votes
It's a society in which gender roles are switched. Will men stand to be unequal?
Ceux de chez nous (1915)
Sacha Guitry · 2 critic votes
With family connections to some famous French artists, writers, and musicians of the time, Sacha Guitry decided to film the individuals in action, to celebrate the greatness of his culture, threatened by Germany in the ongoing Great War.
Cœur fidèle (1923)
Jean Epstein · 2 critic votes
Free on Darkroom
A naval captain returns and jilts a socialite to take care of his bastard daughter.
La Roue (1923)
Abel Gance · 2 critic votes
A grain miller lost his daughter and converted his mill into a church.
Ballet Mécanique (1924)
Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy · 2 critic votes
Ballet Mécanique is a Dadaist, post-Cubist art film conceived, written, and co-directed by the artist Fernand Léger in collaboration with the filmmaker Dudley Murphy. It has a musical score by the American composer George Antheil.
The Crazy Ray (1925)
René Clair · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A night watchman on the Eiffel Tower wakes up to find the entire population of the city frozen in place.
L'invitation au voyage (1927)
Germaine Dulac · 2 critic votes
A woman enters a nightclub and slowly begins to open herself up.
Finis Terræ (1929)
Jean Epstein · 2 critic votes
On the islet Bannec, off the coast of Brittany, four fishermen have set up camp for three months to harvest seaweed. If processed correctly, the ash of the seaweed can be sold for high prices. It is therefore burnt in several large piles on the island. Problems arise when one of them gets an infected thumb.
La Chienne (1931)
Jean Renoir · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Cashier Maurice Legrand is married to the wretched Adele. By chance, he meets Lucienne, 'Lulu', and makes her his mistress. He thinks he has finally found love, but Lulu is a streetwalker, still in love with her pimp.
The Blood of a Poet (1932)
Jean Cocteau · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a poet’s room, an armless statue abruptly comes to life. It invites the poet to step through a mirror and to discover another world. Strange places and characters present themselves to him. The poet tears himself away from these twisted fascinations and returns, with some difficulty, to his room.
The Seahorse (1935)
Jean Painlevé · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Examines the sea horse, the only fish that swims upright. We watch it use its prehensile tail to wrap around plants and other sea horses. A frontal bulge houses organs including an air ballast. Three fins propel this fish. We see a female place her eggs in a male's pouch where they are fertilized and nurtured until birth in violent contractions. Inside the pouch are nurturing blood vessels. We then follow the growth of an embryo, greatly magnified: we examine its heart beating and its dorsal fin moving. Young sea horses attach themselves to each other. The film ends with images of many sea horses moving on the ocean floor, superimposed on a horse race.
The Lower Depths (1936)
Jean Renoir · 2 critic votes
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, France Channel Amazon Channel
Inhabitants of a flophouse struggle to survive under the harsh treatment imposed by the landlord, Kostyleva. One resident, young thief Wasska Pepel, ends his affair with the landlord's wife, Vassilissa, and takes up with her sister, Natacha. Pepel also befriends the baron, a former nobleman fallen on hard times, but Pepel's attempts at happiness are complicated when he's accused of murder by a spiteful Vassilissa.
Port of Shadows (1938)
Marcel Carné · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, France Channel Amazon Channel
Down a foggy, desolate road to the port city of Le Havre travels Jean, an army deserter looking for another chance to make good on life. Fate, however, has a different plan for him, as acts of both revenge and kindness render him front-page news.
Le Jour Se Lève (1939)
Marcel Carné · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After committing a murder, a man locks himself in his apartment and recollects the events that led him to the killing.
Antoine and Antoinette (1947)
Jacques Becker · 2 critic votes
1947, in France, Antoine and Antoinette, a young couple living in Paris, lead a monotonous existence: he works in a print shop while she is a shop assistant. But one evening, they regain hope: Antoine finds a winning lottery ticket in his girlfriend's handbag. He decides to cash it in, but loses his wallet. What follows is a series of twists and turns that redefine the couple's priorities while forcing them to remain optimistic.
Le Tempestaire (1948)
Jean Epstein · 2 critic votes
Following a premonition, a young woman tries to persuade her fiancé not to go out to sea in his fishing boat, but the boy ignores her and sets out. Soon, a storm occurs, and the girl frantically tries to find out his fate. Eventually, at the advice of her grandmother, she goes to the "Tempestaire", who has the power to speak to the wind and subdue it.
Blood of the Beasts (1949)
Georges Franju · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An early example of ultra-realism, this movie contrasts the quiet, bucolic life in the outskirts of Paris with the harsh, gory conditions inside the nearby slaughterhouses. Describes the fate of the animals and that of the workers in graphic detail.
Afrique 50 (1950)
René Vautier · 2 critic votes
The first French anti-colonialist film, derived from an assignment in which the director was to document educational activities by the French League of Schooling in West Africa. Vautier later filmed what he actually saw: “a lack of teachers and doctors, the crimes committed by the French Army in the name of France, the instrumentalization of the colonized peoples.” For his role in the film, Vautier was imprisoned for several months. The film was banned from public screening for more than 40 years.
Casque d'Or (1952)
Jacques Becker · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
At the end of the 19th century, during a ball in Joinville, on the outskirts of Paris, Georges, a former delinquent working as a carpenter, meets Marie, a young woman connected to a criminal gang.
Hurlements en faveur de Sade (1952)
Guy Debord · 2 critic votes
Debord directed his first film, "Hurlements en faveur de Sade" in 1952 with the voices of Michele Bernstein and Gil Holman. The film has no actual images; instead, it shows bright white when there is speaking and black when there is not. Long silences separate speaking parts. The film ends with 24 minutes of black silence.
Rentrée des classes (1956)
Jacques Rozier · 2 critic votes
In a small village in Provence, on the first day of school, a young boy throws his bag into the river on a bet, and the retrieval of it leads to a thrilling adventure.
The Red Balloon (1956)
Albert Lamorisse · 2 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel, Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, FlixFling, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of its own, on the streets of Paris. The two become inseparable, yet the world’s harsh realities finally interfere.
Toute la mémoire du monde (1956)
Alain Resnais · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Hoopla, OVID
A documentary about the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It presents the building, with its processes of cataloguing and preserving all sorts of printed material, as both a monument of cultural memory and as a monstrous, alien being.
Black Orpheus (1959)
Marcel Camus · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Young lovers Orfeu and Eurydice run through the favelas of Rio during Carnaval, on the lam from a hitman dressed like Death and Orfeu's vengeful fiancée Mira and passing between moments of fantasy and stark reality. This impressionistic retelling of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice introduced bossa nova to the world with its soundtrack by young Brazilian composers Luiz Bonfá and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Léon Morin, Priest (1961)
Jean-Pierre Melville · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Barny, although a Marxist, is intrigued by the mysteries of religion. In confession, she teases a priest, Léon Morin, but he is a young and intelligent man and ready to discuss anything.
The Fire Within (1963)
Louis Malle · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Depressed Alain Leroy leaves the clinic where he was detoxified. He meets friends, acquaintances and women, trying to find a reason to continue living.
Bande à part (1964)
Jean-Luc Godard · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Darkroom
Cinephile slackers Franz and Arthur spend their days mimicking the antiheroes of Hollywood noirs and Westerns while pursuing the lovely Odile. The misfit trio upends convention at every turn, be it through choreographed dances in cafés or frolicsome romps through the Louvre. Eventually, their romantic view of outlaws pushes them to plan their own heist, but their inexperience may send them out in a blaze of glory -- which could be just what they want.
La Collectionneuse (1967)
Éric Rohmer · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A man kidnaps a woman and holds her hostage just for the pleasure of having her there.
Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968)
Alain Resnais · 2 critic votes
Recovering from an attempted suicide, a man is selected to participate in a time travel experiment that has only been tested on mice. A malfunction causes the man to experience moments from his past in a random order.
The Milky Way (1969)
Luis Buñuel · 2 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Plex · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Shout! Factory Amazon Channel, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Two men, part tramp, part pilgrim, are on their way from France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. On their way, they meet a vast assortment of characters—some truculent, some violent, and some bizarre; they experience many adventures—some mysterious, some erotic, some even supernatural.
This Man Must Die (1969)
Claude Chabrol · 2 critic votes
Free on Darkroom
When his young son is killed in a hit and run accident, Charles Thenier resolves to hunt down and murder the killer. By chance, Thenier makes the acquaintance of an actress, Helène Lanson, who was in the car at the time of the accident. He then meets Helène’s brother-in-law, Paul Decourt, a truly horrible individual.
Wind from the East (1969)
Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin · 2 critic votes
The true story of General Smyslovsky and the anti-Communist 1st Russian National Army receiving shelter in Liechtenstein in 1945 and successfully resisting Soviet pressure to be returned for execution in the USSR.
The Wild Child (1970)
François Truffaut · 2 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free · Streaming on MGM Plus, fuboTV, MGM+ Amazon Channel
The true story of Victor of Aveyron. In a French forest circa 1798, an abandoned child — feral, filthy and mentally impaired — is found. Dr Jean Marc Gaspard Itard becomes interested in the case and patiently attempts to civilise the boy.
Just Before Nightfall (1971)
Claude Chabrol · 2 critic votes
A married man who killed the wife of his best friend during a tryst feels compelled to turn himself in.
Little by Little (1971)
Jean Rouch · 2 critic votes
Streaming on OVID
An African travels to Paris to learn about the construction of tall buildings, but is soon taken up with the oddities of French life.
Murmur of the Heart (1971)
Louis Malle · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
This loosely plotted coming-of-age tale follows the life of 15-year-old Laurent Chevalier as he stumbles his way over the burgeoning swell of adolescence in 1950s France. After having his first sexual experience with a prostitute and dodging the lips of a priest, Chevalier contracts a case of scarlet fever. When the fever leaves him with a heart murmur, Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, along with his over-attentive and adulterous mother.
César and Rosalie (1972)
Claude Sautet · 2 critic votes
A young woman becomes entangled with a successful businessman, but her ex tries to win her back, provoking intense jealousy that leads her to reconsider her choice. Ultimately, one man's actions force a resolution to her dilemma.
La Grande Bouffe (1973)
Marco Ferreri · 2 critic votes
Four friends gather at a villa with the intention of eating themselves to death.
Lacombe, Lucien (1974)
Louis Malle · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In Louis Malle's lauded drama, Lucien Lacombe is a young man living in rural France during World War II who seeks to join the French Resistance. When he is rejected due to his youth, the resentful Lucien allies himself with the Nazis and joins the Gallic arm of their Gestapo. Lucien grows to enjoy the power that comes with his position, but his life is complicated when he falls for France Horn, a beautiful young Jewish woman.
Lancelot of the Lake (1974)
Robert Bresson · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Having failed in their quest for the Holy Grail, the knights of the Round Table return to Camelot, their number reduced to a mere handful. Seeing a rift developing between Lancelot and Mordred, Arthur urges his knights to bury their differences and become friends. However, the king is unaware that Lancelot is having an affair with his queen, Guinevere. Lancelot is torn between his duty to his king and his love for the queen, whilst Mordred is determined to use his infidelity to destroy him.
Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974)
Alain Robbe-Grillet · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kino Film Collection
A young woman is questioned by the police and the judges, suspected of being a modern witch. The girl who shared her apartment has been found dead, and a pair of scissors impaled through her heart, as she lay attached to the bedposts. Apparently, the girl does have powers, to make all people around her fall prey to her spell, glissing progressively into desire, lust, and the unknown.
Duelle (1976)
Jacques Rivette · 2 critic votes
Two enigmatic women separately arrive in Paris, both with a hidden but shared motive. As they navigate the city and their search progresses, various characters become entangled in a conflict, which increasingly comes to take a fantastical turn. These characters too, driven by their own desires, strive for their own goals in the struggle. From Paris, drenched in an otherworldly ambiance, a tale of desire and power emerges through mystery and secrets.
Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976)
Alain Tanner · 2 critic votes
A look at the lives of several men and women in their 30s as they confront the slim gains of the "revolutionary" sixties. Max, a dissatisfied copy editor; Myriam, a redhead into tantric sex; and Marie, a supermarket checker who gives unauthorized discounts to the elderly, search for renewed meaning on a communal farm. The title character, a six-year-old child, is the carrier of their hopes for the future.
A Grin Without a Cat (1977)
Chris Marker · 2 critic votes
Streaming on OVID, DocAlliance Films
Chris Marker’s A Grin Without a Cat is an epic political essay tracing the rise and decline of the global left from the 1960s to the 1970s. Through archival footage and commentary, the film examines revolutionary movements in France, Latin America, and beyond, reflecting on the ideals, failures, and fading hopes of a generation.
Makwayela (1977)
Jacques d'Arthuys, Jean Rouch · 2 critic votes
A group of factory workers in post-independence Mozambique perform a ritual of song describing their work in South African gold mines and decrying the evils of apartheid.
Providence (1977)
Alain Resnais · 2 critic votes
On the eve of his 78th birthday, ailing, alcoholic writer Clive Langham spends a painful and sleepless night mentally composing and recomposing scenes for a novel in which characters based on his own family are shaped by his fantasies and memories, alongside his caustic commentary on their behaviour.
Une sale histoire (1977)
Jean Eustache · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A group of friends listen as one man tells them a story about a time when, in a small cafe, he discovered a peephole into the ladies' bathroom and became addicted to looking through it at female genitals. They ask him questions and come to conclusions about sex. This is a filmed, scripted version. Then, the actual person who this happened to relates the same story; this time, however, it is an unscripted documentary, in which the same things occur as in the scripted one.
Flammes (1978)
Adolfo Arrieta · 2 critic votes
Barbara, a young girl, lives in an old country house with her father and her teacher. One night, she dreams that a fireman enters her room through the window. Having grown, Barbara leaves her father to travel across the world, before coming back to her childhood fantasies: one day, she calls the firemen, and locks herself with one of them in her bedroom.
Le navire Night (1978)
Marguerite Duras · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, OVID
Le Navire Night is a story of love and desire sustained and nourished through sound waves. The film’s voice-over tells the story of a woman, terminally ill with leukemia, living in isolation at her wealthy father's villa, and a man working night shifts at a telephone company. They have never met in person.
The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1979)
Raúl Ruiz · 2 critic votes
Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series' significance.
The Secret Son (1979)
Philippe Garrel · 2 critic votes
A single mother and her eight year old son meets her man from her past after nine years.
Documenteur (1981)
Agnès Varda · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films
After separating from the father of her son, a young French woman tries to find lodging and a fresh start in L.A. for herself and her son.
L'homme atlantique (1981)
Marguerite Duras · 2 critic votes
A woman watches and speaks to a man as he moves through a house by the sea. She observes his presence and tracks his shifting distance from her.
Barres (1984)
Luc Moullet · 2 critic votes
The 1984 short Barres celebrates the ingenious ways one can get onto the Paris Metro without paying.
Favorites of the Moon (1984)
Otar Iosseliani · 2 critic votes
A porcelain table service and a painting from the 19th century pass from hand to hand and deteriorate over time, sealing the fate of different characters who cross paths in Paris.
Our Nazi (1984)
Robert Kramer · 2 critic votes
In Our Nazi, we are plunged into a situation we barely, and only slowly, understand: the filming of Thomas Harlan’s experimental feature Wundkanal (1984), in which true-life ex-SS officer Alfred Filbert, now very old, is ‘put on trial’ for the camera, without him suspecting what is to come or why he is really there. Kramer’s confronting film is an essay about the sticky complicity of everyone present at this event, each bringing their own history, their own political ideology, their own desires to take revenge, to seek redemption or compassion, or just to put their heads down and ‘get the job done’ professionally, or (in the case of Filbert) to be a star, a part of the magnificent, magical, seductive world of cinema, even if it kills him.
The Angel (1984)
Patrick Bokanowski · 2 critic votes
The climbing of an immense staircase made up of the most varied stairs. Symbolic scenes occur on different levels where characters seem to be prisoners of their deeds and of their own folly. The steep staircase leads little by little towards the zones of great light where human beings and nonhuman beings meet.
Max, Mon Amour (1986)
Nagisa Ōshima · 2 critic votes
Streaming on BFI Player Amazon Channel
The wife of a British diplomat in Paris takes a chimpanzee as her lover.
Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987)
Éric Rohmer · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Kino Film Collection
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.
Sound and Fury (1988)
Jean-Claude Brisseau · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Fandor Amazon Channel, OVID, Philo
This drama depicts the misery of neglected children in big cities. 13 years old Bruno is of a good family, but since the death of his grandmother he spends most of his time alone, in a phantasy world, while his mother is away at work. But then he befriends the violent Jean-Roger, who's from a severely disturbed family, where nobody cares what he's doing. In school Jean-Roger drives their teacher into despair just for fun. To separate the two boys, she starts to stimulate Bruno's interests by giving him extra lessons. When Jean-Roger fears loosing his one and only friend, he becomes even more aggressive.
Bitter Moon (1992)
Roman Polanski · 2 critic votes
A passenger on a cruise ship develops an irresistible infatuation with an eccentric paraplegic's wife.
Olivier (1992)
Agnieszka Holland · 2 critic votes
Olivier, the nine-year-old son of Elisabeth and Serge, a country veterinarian, vanishes one afternoon on the way to his grandmother's house. The emotional aftermath of his disappearance sends his father packing and nearly destroys his mother.
Smoking/No Smoking (1993)
Alain Resnais · 2 critic votes
Two actors portray eighteen Yorkshire villagers, who offer several iterations of their lives depending on whether or not they lit a cigarette at a certain point in time.
Léon: The Professional (1994)
Luc Besson · 2 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free · Streaming on Sundance Now, Sony Pictures Core Amazon Channel
Léon, the top hit man in New York, has earned a rep as an effective "cleaner". But when his next-door neighbors are wiped out by a loose-cannon DEA agent, he becomes the unwilling custodian of 12-year-old Mathilda. Before long, Mathilda's thoughts turn to revenge, and she considers following in Léon's footsteps.
Léon G. Damas (1995)
Sarah Maldoror · 2 critic votes
Léon G. Damas (1912–1978) was the first poet to “live Négritude”, according to the Senegalese poet, politician and cultural theorist Léopold Sédar Senghor. Cosmopolitan and always in transit, his writing is a chorus of melodies and imagery imbued with angst and melancholy and strongly influenced by jazz and blues. Punctuated by images of the landscapes of French Guiana and the voice of the artist, the film exemplifies the poetic documentary form to which Maldoror frequently returned.
Irma Vep (1996)
Olivier Assayas · 2 critic votes
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A has-been French filmmaker wants a Hong Kong actress to be the heroine in a rendering of Les Vampires.
Anatomy of Hell (2004)
Catherine Breillat · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A woman employs a gay man to spend four nights at her house to watch her when she's "unwatchable".
Innocence (2004)
Lucile Hadžihalilović · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, AMC+, AMC+ Amazon Channel
At a peculiar all-girls academy, new arrivals, including Iris, are delivered in coffins. Guided by enigmatic teachers, the students dance through enchanted woods by day, while the night unveils sinister lessons that blur innocence and awakening.
Water Lilies (2007)
Céline Sciamma · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Set during a sultry summer in a French suburb, Marie is desperate to join the local pool's synchronized swimming team, but is her interest solely for the sake of sport or for a chance to get close to Floriane, the bad girl of the team? Sciamma, and the two leads, capture the uncertainty of teenage sexuality with a sympathetic eye in this delicate drama of the angst of coming-of-age.
A Christmas Tale (2008)
Arnaud Desplechin · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, Criterion Channel
When their regal matriarch falls ill, the troubled Vuillard family come together for a hesitant Christmastime reunion. Among them is rebellious ne'er-do-well Henri and the uptight Elizabeth. Together under the same roof for the first time in many years, their intricate, long denied resentments and yearnings emerge again.
Summer Hours (2008)
Olivier Assayas · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Philo
After the death of a septuagenarian woman, her three children deliberate over what to do with her estate.
White Material (2009)
Claire Denis · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, AMC+
In the midst of a volatile regime change in a Francophone African state, Maria Vial is fighting to sustain her family’s coffee plantation. With rebels and the army struggling for control, French peacekeeping forces move out, warning the remaining white residents that they’re on their own. But Maria refuses to be driven off the land, even as tragedy looms.
Carlos (2010)
Olivier Assayas · 2 critic votes
Streaming on AMC+ Amazon Channel
The story of Venezuelan revolutionary, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, who founded a worldwide terrorist organization and raided the OPEC headquarters in 1975 before being caught by the French police.
Tomboy (2011)
Céline Sciamma · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Ten-year-old Laure isn't like most girls. She prefers football to dolls and sweaters to dresses. When Laure and her family move to a new neighbourhood, local girl Lisa mistakes Laure for a boy. Indulging in this exciting new identity, Laure becomes Mickaël, and so begins a summer of long sunny afternoons, playground games and first kisses. Yet with the school term fast approaching, and with suspicions arising amongst friends and family, Laure must face up to an uncertain future.
Bastards (2013)
Claire Denis · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, AMC+
Marco returns to Paris after his brother-in-law's suicide, where he targets the man his sister believes caused the tragedy – though he is ill-prepared for her secrets as they quickly muddy the waters.
Eden (2014)
Mia Hansen-Løve · 2 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, The CW, The Roku Channel · Streaming on Shout! Factory Amazon Channel
Paul, a teenager in the underground scene of early-nineties Paris, forms a DJ collective with his friends and together they plunge into the nightlife of sex, drugs, and endless music.
Elle (2016)
Paul Verhoeven · 2 critic votes
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.
BPM (Beats per Minute) (2017)
Robin Campillo · 2 critic votes
Free on Pluto TV, Fandango at Home Free, Plex · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, MUBI, fuboTV
Paris, in the early 1990s: a group of young activists is desperately tied to finding the cure against an unknown lethal disease. They target the pharmaceutical labs that are retaining potential cures, and multiply direct actions, with the hope of saving their lives as well as the ones of future generations.
Raw (2017)
Julia Ducournau · 2 critic votes
Stringent vegetarian Justine encounters a decadent, merciless, and dangerously seductive world during her first week at veterinary school. Desperate to fit in, she strays from her principles and eats raw meat for the first time. She soon experiences terrible and unexpected consequences as her true self begins to emerge.
High Life (2018)
Claire Denis · 2 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, Fandango at Home Free · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, Hoopla
Monte and his daughter are the last survivors of a damned and dangerous mission to deep space. The crew—death-row inmates led by a doctor with sinister motives—has vanished. As the mystery of what happened onboard the ship is unraveled, father and daughter must rely on each other to survive as they hurtle toward the oblivion of a black hole.
Saint Omer (2022)
Alice Diop · 2 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Fandango at Home Free, Plex · Streaming on Kanopy
A novelist attends the trial of a woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. But as the trial continues, her own family history, doubts, and fears about motherhood are steadily dislodged as the life story of the accused is gradually revealed.
A Panoramic View in the Grand Canal (1896)
Alexandre Promio · 1 critic vote
Filmed in 1896 by Alexandre Promio for the Lumière company, this short actuality presents one of the earliest traveling shots in cinema. With the camera mounted on a gondola, the film glides along Venice’s Grand Canal, capturing passing gondolas, bustling waterfront activity, and the city’s iconic architecture from a moving perspective. This simple yet groundbreaking technique introduced audiences to a new way of experiencing motion on screen.
L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1896)
Auguste Lumière, Louis Lumière · 1 critic vote
A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.
The Cat Playing (1897)
Louis Lumière, Auguste Lumière · 1 critic vote
A kitten plays with a small piece of wood attached to a string.
Village de Namo: Panorama Taken from a Sedan Chair (1900)
Gabriel Veyre · 1 critic vote
The film is a panorama shot-scene lasting just under a minute. The panorama film, as coined by Lumière, is a moving-camera shot--usually accomplished by placing the camera on a moving transport, such as a boat or train.
The Man with the Rubber Head (1901)
Georges Méliès · 1 critic vote
A chemist carries out a bizarre experiment with his own head.
The Impossible Voyage (1904)
Georges Méliès · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Fawesome
Using every known means of transportation, several savants from the Geographic Society undertake a journey through the Alps to the Sun which finishes under the sea.
Léontine's Electric Battery (1910)
· 1 critic vote
Léontine lights up our lives with an electric battery, electrocuting everyone in her path. Her victims include two old ladies (played by men in drag), dancers at a café, workers on a construction site, a group of lackluster conscripts, and the local police force. To add insult to injury, she douses everyone with buckets of water.
Leontine's Boat (1911)
Roméo Bosetti · 1 critic vote
Léontine cannot resist her desire to sail her new toy boat indoors. She plugs up the drains and turns on the faucets, flooding the house as water rains down through the floorboards and collapses the ceilings.
Léontine Flies Away (1911)
· 1 critic vote
Léontine is sent airborne by too many helium balloons and takes a catastrophic joyride across town, while her parents and the townsfolk frantically chase after her. Her journey is depicted with dazzling aerial views.
The Terror (1911)
Albert Capellani · 1 critic vote
An actress returns from the theatre and discovers her apartment has been burglarized; she lights a cigarette and the room catches fire; the burglar saves her life, and she, in return, saves his, and he returns her jewels.
Cunegonde Receives Her Family (1912)
· 1 critic vote
Whilst the master of the house is away, the maid gets a visit from her family. Together, they attack her employer's bourgeois residence with ardent zeal and rustic technology.
Fantômas (1913)
Louis Feuillade · 1 critic vote
A French silent film serial which follows the exploits of the archvillain Fantômas, who commits crimes while eluding Inspector Juve's tireless persecution.
Germinal (1913)
Albert Capellani · 1 critic vote
Based on Emile Zola's novel, an uncompromisingly harsh and realistic story of a coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s.
Protea (1913)
Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset · 1 critic vote
Protéa is the last film directed by Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, one of the early film pioneers in France. The hero of this film is a female spy, an acrobatic Mata-Hari, played by his favorite actress, Josette Andriot, who wore a characteristic costume of a close-fitting black jersey, two years before Musidora achieved cult status with her similar appearance as Irma Vep. This final masterpiece reflects Jasset's popular style: rhythmic action, fantastic realism, rich visuals, an anarchistic philosophy, a disdain for psychology, and an attention to lighting that earned him the nickname “the Rembrandt of the cinema". Although Jasset died shortly after completion, the film had considerable success and Andriot went on to make four more films in the series with other directors.
The Woman of Mystery (1914)
Alice Guy · 1 critic vote
Norma, a dancer, receives many presents from admirers. Among them she finds a peculiar looking box, out of which spring several poisonous snakes. Nelson, a detective, is called upon to solve the mystery.
The Vampires: The Terrible Wedding (1916)
Louis Feuillade · 1 critic vote
War Christmas (1916)
· 1 critic vote
French silent film.
Culprit (1917)
André Antoine · 1 critic vote
At trial the prosecuting attorney makes a startling confession: the defendant is his son whose pitiful fate led him to murder. The attorney left the young man's pregnant mother, and the unwed poor thing had to fight against a hostile world.
Les travailleurs de la mer (1918)
André Antoine · 1 critic vote
Adapted from Hugo's eponym novel, the story concerns a Guernseyman named Gilliatt, a social outcast who falls in love with Deruchette, the niece of a local shipowner, Mess Lethierry. When Lethierry's ship is wrecked on the Roches Douvres, a perilous reef, Deruchette promises to marry whomever can salvage the ship's steam engine. Gilliatt eagerly volunteers, and the story follows both his physical trials and tribulations.
J'accuse (1919)
Abel Gance · 1 critic vote
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Kanopy
The story of two men, one married, the other the lover of the other's wife, who meet in the trenches of the First World War, and how their tale becomes a microcosm for the horrors of war.
Vendémiaire (1919)
Louis Feuillade · 1 critic vote
If you’re already familiar with Louis Feuillade, his little-known opus Vendémiaire may come as a surprise. Unlike the bulk of his work which was characterised as ‘Fantastic Realism’, Vendémiaire is wonderfully down-to-earth realism – or down-to-French-earth realism to be specific. The film itself is divided into four chapters, the titles of which suggest that this is a movie about the cultivation and consumption of wine. But as the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that the cultivation and consumption of wine is an allegory for French culture and French land as a whole, and the real purpose of the film is to persuade the director’s fellow citizens to defend that spirit and those lands at all costs. It’s September 1918 and the war is coming to an end, but here on the Castelviel estate in the south of France the news has not yet arrived and everyone is busy with the grape harvest....
Au Secours ! (1924)
Abel Gance · 1 critic vote
Max accepts a wager that he cannot remain in a haunted castle for one hour (11 PM to midnight) without crying for help. As soon as he arrives he encounters strange and nightmarish visions, but he is nevertheless on the verge of winning the bet when a phone-call brings startling news.
L'Inhumaine (1924)
Marcel L'Herbier · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Kanopy
A famous singer Claire Lescot, who lives on the outskirts of Paris, is courted by many men, including a maharajah, Djorah de Nopur, and a young Swedish scientist, Einar Norsen. At her lavish parties she enjoys their amorous attentions but she remains emotionally aloof and heartlessly taunts them. When she is told that Norsen has killed himself because of her, she shows no feelings. At her next concert she is booed by an audience outraged at her coldness and she decides to visit the vault in which Norsen's body lies.
Anemic Cinema (1926)
Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
A spiral design spins. It's replaced by a spinning disk. These two continue in perfect alternation until the end: a spiral design, a disk. Each disk is labelled and can be read as it rotates. The messages, in French, feature puns and whimsical rhymes and alliteration. The final message comments on the spiral motif itself.
Belphégor (1926)
Henri Desfontaines · 1 critic vote
Belphégor deals with a series of mysterious appearances by a masked-and-robed figure in the Louvre; a security guard is murdered, and a later police trap is foiled when the phantom—“Belphégor” (the name of a legendary demon)—uses knock-out gas. Journalist Jacques Bellegarde of “Le Petit Parisien” (the real-life newspaper which published the original story in serial installments), investigates, and eventually discovers famous detective Chantecoq and his vivacious daughter Colette are also on the case.
Ménilmontant (1926)
Dimitri Kirsanoff · 1 critic vote
A pair of sisters leave the country for the city after their parents are slaughtered in a mysterious axe murder.
Rien que les heures (1926)
Alberto Cavalcanti · 1 critic vote
The life of a great city (Paris) from dawn until dusk, including the beautiful and the ragged, the rich and the poor.
The Three-Sided Mirror (1927)
Jean Epstein · 1 critic vote
A wealthy young businessman consecutively falls in love with a classy English woman (Pearl), a Russian sculptress (Athalia), and a naive working-class girl (Lucie).
Disque 957 (1928)
Germaine Dulac · 1 critic vote
Dulac’s three 1929 "abstract" films, Record 957, Αrabesques, and Themes and Variations, were the results of a long period of reflection by the filmmaker, who sought to create a "pure" or "integral" cinema that would capture the essence of the new medium and owe nothing to the other arts. Each of these three studies was designed to be played silent. The first one, Record 957, is conceived of as a "visual impression […] in listening to Frédéric Chopin's Preludes n. 5 and 6." Its title and its opening shot of lightplay on a spinning record not only announce the film's dominant cyclical motif, but also evoke one of the filmmaker’s major sources of inspiration in Loie Fuller's serpentine dances.
Themes and Variations (1928)
Germaine Dulac · 1 critic vote
I evoke a dancing woman. A woman? No. A bouncing line with harmonious rhythm. I evoke a luminous projection on veils ! Precise matter! No. Fluid rhythms. Why should one disregard, on screen, the pleasure that movement brings us in the theatre? Harmony of lines. Harmony of light. Lines, surfaces, volumes evolving directly, without the artifice of evocation, in the logic of its forms, dispossessed of any overly human sense, allowing an elevation towards the abstract, thus giving more space to sensations and to dreams : integral cinema. —Germaine Dulac
Dans la nuit (1929)
Charles Vanel · 1 critic vote
A quarry worker gets married and lives his marital bliss, until an explosion at his workplace, a mine, disfigures him...
Au Bonheur des Dames (1930)
Julien Duvivier · 1 critic vote
Denise, an orphaned girl, moves to Paris where she hopes to find work at her uncle's store. But the glamorous department store 'Aux Bonheur des Dames' across the street crushes all the little businesses around. She finds a position there.
Daïnah la métisse (1931)
Jean Grémillon · 1 critic vote
After three weeks and a long, hot voyage across the Pacific, an ocean liner finally arrives at its destination, Ecuador. That evening, the event is marked by a masked ball and a magic show.
À Nous la Liberté (1931)
René Clair · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, France Channel Amazon Channel, IndieFlix Shorts Amazon Channel
In this classic French satire, Louis, a convict, escapes from prison and takes on legitimate work, making his way up in the business world. Eventually becoming the head of a successful factory, Louis opts to modernize his company with mechanical innovations. But when his friend Émile finally leaves jail years later and reunites with Louis, the past catches up with them. The two, worried about being apprehended by police, long to flee the confines of industry.
The Red Head (1932)
Julien Duvivier · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A red-haired boy is his mother's punching bag; only his father's presence is a great comfort to him, but this weak man is under the shrew's thumb. His pain is so great he feels suicidal.
Fétiche (1933)
Ladislas Starevich · 1 critic vote
A toy stuffed dog has just been sewn together when it hears a young child ask for an orange. The child's mother explains that they have no money, and so she cannot buy any oranges. The dog is then packed up along with a box full of other toys to be sold, but it soon winds up in the street. The dog picks up an orange from a curb side stand, and hopes to take it home to the child. But that night, before the dog can get back to the child's home, it must face a series of strange and frightening adventures.
Lake of Ladies (1934)
Marc Allégret · 1 critic vote
A handsome but penniless young man takes a summer job as a swimming instructor in a picturesque Alpine lake resort. He falls in love with a young heiress who is staying there with her father, but he also grabs the attention of tomboyish Puck who lives on the other side of the lake and who saves him from drowning one foggy night. Further havoc is caused by the arrival of Eric's old sweetheart whose husband is wanted by the police.
Le Grand Jeu (1934)
Jacques Feyder · 1 critic vote
Pierre Blum, 40, is a writer who had his time of glory in the early 2000s. One evening, on a casino terrace, he meets Joseph Paskin. This mysterious man, charismatic and manipulative, is influential in the world of politics and persuades Pierre to take on a strange mission that takes him back to a past he’d prefer to forget, and puts his life in danger. In the middle of all this, Pierre falls in love with Laura, a young extreme-left activist. But in this world of subterfuge, who can really be trusted?
Good Luck (1935)
Sacha Guitry · 1 critic vote
A girl, Marie, who got engaged to a boy who is leaving for military training (thirteen days) wins two million on the raffle, thanks to an older man, Claude, whom she calls her good luck …
Confessions of a Cheat (1936)
Sacha Guitry · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Life story of a charming scoundrel, with little dialogue other than the star/director's witty narration. As a boy, only he survives a family tragedy when he's deprived of supper (poisonous mushrooms!) for stealing...concluding that dishonesty pays. Through years of dabbling in crime and amusing adventures, two women appear and reappear in his life, a dazzling blonde jewel thief and a stunning brunette gambler. Finally, he meets the mysterious Charbonnier who had saved his life in World War I, leading to the surprising next phase in his career...
César (1936)
Marcel Pagnol · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Leaping forward twenty years, the trilogy continues with the death of Fanny's husband, Panisse, and the discovery of her secret by her son, Césariot. The young man resolves to track down his biological father, Marius, whose life has been fraught with calamity and poverty.
Heartbeat (1938)
Marcel Pagnol · 1 critic vote
A pompous grocer’s assistant in Marseille annoys a visiting film crew so much that they prank him with a phony acting contract; believing it to be real, the “schpountz” heads to Paris for his new career.
La Bête Humaine (1938)
Jean Renoir · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Returning by train to the French port of Le Havre, Jacques Lantier, a tormented railwayman, meets by chance the impulsive stationmaster Roubard and Séverine, his wife.
The Baker's Wife (1938)
Marcel Pagnol · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In this little Provencal village, a new baker, Aimable, settles down. His wife Aurelie is beautiful and much younger than he. She departs with a shepherd the night after Aimable produces his first breads. Aimable is so afflicted that he can not work anymore. Therefore, the villagers, who initially laughed at his cuckoldry, take the matter very seriously (they want the bread) and organize a plan to find Aurelie and to bring her back to the bakery.
The End of the Day (1939)
Julien Duvivier · 1 critic vote
Aged penniless actors are living in a old people's home. They always talk about their past glory or failures. One day Raphael Saint-Clair comes; he has been a famous actor and had a lot of love affairs. Passions come back, and jealousies... A bitter film about aging, failure and the entertainment.
There's No Tomorrow (1940)
Max Ophüls · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Kino Film Collection
Evelyne, a woman of bourgeois origin, now reduced to dancing in a sleazy nightclub, is reunited with her first love, who has become a successful doctor.
Angels of Sin (1943)
Robert Bresson · 1 critic vote
A well-off young woman decides to become a nun, joining a convent that rehabilitates female prisoners. Through their program, she meets a woman named Thérèse who refuses any help because she says she was innocent of the crime she was convicted for. After being released from prison, Thérèse murders the actual perpetrator of the crime and comes to seek sanctuary in the convent.
The Woman Who Dared (1944)
Jean Grémillon · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The strength of a couple's fascination with airplanes and flight is to the detriment of their family.
L'espoir (1945)
André Malraux · 1 critic vote
Spanish Civil War, 1937. A platoon of Republican soldiers plans to stop the advance of the rebel troops by bombing a bridge on the road to Zaragoza, near the city of Linás. With the close collaboration of the peasants of the area, the soldiers try to overcome the continuous bombardments and endure the harsh and tireless opposition of the powerful enemy…
The Vampire (1945)
Jean Painlevé · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After a look at some strange creatures, the narrator and camera take us to the Chaco forest, on the borders of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, where a vampire bat lives, desmodus rotondus, attacking wildlife and domesticated creatures, killing small ones by draining all their blood and killing large ones by leaving a parasite in their bloodstream. Four inches long, with a 12-inch wingspread, we see it walk, approach a victim, pull out a patch of fur large enough for it to engage its teeth, then lap six or seven ounces of blood. Its saliva may be an anesthetic keeping its victims from waking. A stub nose and harelip contribute to its efficiency and its hideous look.
Devil in the Flesh (1947)
Claude Autant-Lara · 1 critic vote
In France during World War I, Marthe waits for her husband, Jacques, while he fights on the front lines. Marthe then begins a tempestuous affair with 17-year-old François, with whom she had a dalliance before marrying Jacques. Jealous François struggles with the fact that Marthe is married, while she tries to prove her devotion to her young, hotheaded lover. Things become even more complex when Marthe becomes pregnant with Jacques' baby.
Quai des Orfèvres (1947)
Henri-Georges Clouzot · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
Paris, France, December 1946. Jenny Lamour, an ambitious cabaret singer, and Maurice, her extremely jealous pianist husband, become involved in the thorough investigation of the murder of a shady businessman, led by Antoine, a peculiar and methodical police inspector.
La Ronde (1950)
Max Ophüls · 1 critic vote
Free on Mometu · Streaming on Criterion Channel, France Channel Amazon Channel, Fawesome
An all-knowing interlocutor guides us through a series of affairs in Vienna, 1900. A soldier meets an eager young lady of the evening. Later he has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid and does similarly with the young man of the house. The young man seduces a married woman. On and on, spinning on the gay carousel of life.
Le film est déjà commencé? (1951)
Maurice Lemaître · 1 critic vote
“A pink moving screen will stand at the entrance to the theatre, in the night. One hour before the screening a projectionist will show Griffith’s Intolerance on this screen. The start of the film will be announced at 8.30 but no one will enter before 9.30. During these 60 minutes of waiting, people on the first floor of the building will shake out very dusty carpets, and someone else will throw ice water on the heads of those spectators waiting for the screening. Some actors who have infiltrated the crowd will insult other actors on the first floor. At this moment only, and to stop the beginning of a scandal, the doors of the theatre will open…”
Olivia (1951)
Jacqueline Audry · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Hoopla, OVID
"Olivia" captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent sent away for a year to a small finishing school outside Paris. The innocent but watchful Olivia develops an infatuation for her headmistress Julie and through this screen of love observes the tense romance between Julie and the other head of the school Cara in its final months.
Venom and Eternity (1951)
Isidore Isou · 1 critic vote
In this experimental film, Isidore Isou, the leader of the lettrist movement, lashes out at conventional cinema and offers a revolutionary form of movie-making: through scratching and bleaching the film, through desynchronizing the soundtrack and the visual track, through deconstructing the story, he aims to renew the seventh art the same way he tried to revolutionize the literary world.
L'Amour d'une femme (1953)
Jean Grémillon · 1 critic vote
Marie, a young doctor, settles down on the Ouessant Island. She will be able to win the diffidence of the local population but she will have to fight for her independence after falling in love with an Italian engineer.
Statues Also Die (1953)
Alain Resnais, Chris Marker · 1 critic vote
Free on Mometu
Commissioned by the journal Présence Africaine, this short documentary examines how African art is devalued and alienated through colonial and museum contexts. Beginning with the question of why African works are confined to ethnographic displays while Greek or Egyptian art is celebrated, the film became a landmark of anti-colonial cinema and was banned in France for eight years.
Diabolique (1954)
Henri-Georges Clouzot · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom, The Roku Channel, Plex · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
The cruel and abusive headmaster of a boarding school, Michel Delassalle, is murdered by an unlikely duo -- his meek wife and the mistress he brazenly flaunts. The women become increasingly unhinged by a series of odd occurrences after Delassalle's corpse mysteriously disappears.
Les maîtres fous (1955)
Jean Rouch · 1 critic vote
Streaming on OVID
The subject of the film was the Hauka movement. The Hauka movement consisted of mimicry and dancing to become possessed by French Colonial administrators. The participants performed the same elaborate military ceremonies of their colonial occupiers, but in more of a trance than true recreation.
Deadlier Than the Male (1956)
Julien Duvivier · 1 critic vote
In the heart of Paris, a restaurateur's mundane life is disrupted by the arrival of his ex-wife's daughter, who claims to be in need after her mother's death. After marrying her, tensions rise when she becomes involved with a young student, leading to betrayal and murder. As secrets unfold, he uncovers the truth about her past and her manipulative nature.
Elena and Her Men (1956)
Jean Renoir · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Set amid the military maneuvers and Quatorze Juillet carnivals of turn-of-the-century France, Jean Renoir’s delirious romantic comedy Elena and her Men stars a radiant Ingrid Bergman as a beautiful, but impoverished, Polish princess who drives men of all stations to fits of desperate love. When Elena elicits the fascination of a famous general, she finds herself at the center of romantic machinations and political scheming, with the hearts of several men—as well as the future of France—in her hands.
The Mystery of Picasso (1956)
Henri-Georges Clouzot · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Criterion Channel
Using a specially designed transparent 'canvas' to provide an unobstructed view, Picasso creates as the camera rolls. He begins with simple works that take shape after only a single brush stroke. He then progresses to more complex paintings, in which he repeatedly adds and removes elements, transforming the entire scene at will, until at last the work is complete.
L'opéra-mouffe (1958)
Agnès Varda · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films
Impressions of the rue Mouffetard, Paris 5, through the eyes of a pregnant woman.
Young Sinners (1958)
Marcel Carné · 1 critic vote
Bob Letellier, a good looking rich kid who studies science, makes the acquaintance of Alain, a cynical and immoral young man. The latter introduces him to the existentialist circles of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Bob is invited to a party and becomes Clo's lover, a rich heiress.
Picnic on the Grass (1959)
Jean Renoir · 1 critic vote
New Europe presidential candidate Etienne Alexis is a scientist promoting artificial insemination for social betterment and therapy to eliminate passion. To celebrate his engagement to a cousin, he hosts an aseptic picnic, where Mother Nature asserts herself. A shepherd's flute conjures a windstorm throwing Alexis together with the luscious Nénette, a farm lass who, although unimpressed with men, wants to have a baby.
Sign of the Lion (1959)
Éric Rohmer · 1 critic vote
An American in Paris lives by sponging off his working friends, and throws a party using borrowed money when his rich American aunt dies, believing firmly in his horoscope.
Les Bonnes Femmes (1960)
Claude Chabrol · 1 critic vote
Four Parisian women navigate the world of romance and daily life looking to fulfill their dreams.
The Hole (1960)
Jacques Becker · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Four prison inmates have been hatching a plan to literally dig out of jail when another prisoner, Claude Gaspard, is moved into their cell. They take a risk and share their plan with the newcomer. Over the course of three days, the prisoners and friends break through the concrete floor using a bed post and begin to make their way through the sewer system – yet their escape is anything but assured.
A Woman Is a Woman (1961)
Jean-Luc Godard · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Longing for a baby, a stripper pursues another man in order to make her boyfriend jealous.
The Human Pyramid (1961)
Jean Rouch · 1 critic vote
Streaming on OVID
Jean Rouch gives a group of black and white teenagers a "what if" question: what if they socialised with each other? The teenagers then improvise their own characters and situations.
The Long Absence (1961)
Henri Colpi · 1 critic vote
Therese, a café owner, mourns the mysterious disappearance of her husband sixteen years earlier. A tramp arrives in the town and she believes him to be her husband. But he is suffering from amnesia and she tries to bring back his memory of earlier times.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1962)
Robert Enrico · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Fandor Amazon Channel, Hoopla
During the American Civil War, a Southerner is about to be hanged from a bridge for sabotage when something unexpected happens.
Sundays and Cybele (1962)
Serge Bourguignon · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom
The tragic story of a young orphan girl who is befriended by an innocent but emotionally disabled veteran of the French Indochina War.
Bay of Angels (1963)
Jacques Demy · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A bank clerk is drawn into the risky world of a gorgeous gambling addict.
Judex (1963)
Georges Franju · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel
Georges Franju's Judex is an arch, playful tribute to the serials of the influential silent filmmaker Louis Feuillade. Franju shuffles through the plot of Feuillade's lengthy serial of the same name, about an adventurer named Judex whose revenge against the corrupt banker Favraux unleashes a complicated series of schemes.
The Nose (1963)
Alexandre Alexeieff, Claire Parker · 1 critic vote
A study in pins of a man who loses his nose which becomes a personality in its own right.
The Knell (1964)
René Vautier · 1 critic vote
At the beginning of the 1960s, in Salisbury (now Harare), in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the government of Ian Smith hanged three black revolutionaries who had nevertheless been pardoned by the Queen of England. René Vautier, with ZAPU (Zimbabwe African Party for Unity), denounces this killing. Expelled by the Rhodesian police (informed by the French secret services), the filmmaker shoots a film in Algeria in the form of an indictment against colonial savagery. The film was first banned in France, then authorized in 1965.
The Soft Skin (1964)
François Truffaut · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Pierre Lachenay is a well-known publisher and lecturer, married to Franca and father of Sabine. He starts a love affair with air hostess Nicole, which Pierre is hiding, but he cannot stay away from her.
Alphaville (1965)
Jean-Luc Godard · 1 critic vote
Streaming on MUBI, Kanopy, MUBI Amazon Channel
Lemmy Caution is on a mission to eliminate Professor Von Braun, the creator of a malevolent computer that rules the city of Alphaville. Befriended by the scientist’s daughter Natasha, Lemmy must unravel the mysteries of the strictly logical Alpha 60 and teach Natasha the meaning of the word “love.”
If I Had Four Dromedaries (1966)
Chris Marker · 1 critic vote
Composed entirely of still photographs taken by Chris Marker across 26 countries, If I Had Four Dromedaries presents a dialogue between three voices reflecting on the meaning of images and travel. Through this photo-essay form, Marker explores the relationship between still and moving images and the act of seeing itself.
Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus (1966)
Jean Eustache · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Daniel needs some money to buy a duffle coat that is in fashion, so he agrees to work for a photographer by dressing up as Santa Claus. He discovers that it is much easier to meet girls when he is in his costume.
The 15-Year-Old Widows (1966)
Jean Rouch · 1 critic vote
Streaming on OVID
Filmed in Paris in 1964, this documentary short follows two fifteen-year-old girls from the city’s 16th arrondissement as they move through leisure, conversation, and social encounters. The film records their views on adulthood, relationships, and the future, capturing a moment of transition between adolescence and adult life.
Far from Vietnam (1967)
Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Agnès Varda, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais · 1 critic vote
Streaming on OVID
In seven different parts, Godard, Ivens, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais, and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War.
Jaguar (1967)
Jean Rouch · 1 critic vote
Streaming on OVID
Jaguar, a kind of road movie on foot, tells of the journey of three friends, Damouré, Lam and Illo, on their way to the Gold Coast where they hope to make a fortune in order to return to their village in a few months.
La Chinoise (1967)
Jean-Luc Godard · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Kino Film Collection
A small group of French students are studying Mao, trying to find out their position in the world and how to change the world to a Maoistic community using terrorism.
The Last Adventure (1967)
Robert Enrico · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel
Two adventurers and best friends, Roland and Manu, are the victims of a practical joke that costs Manu his pilot's license. With seeming contrition, the jokesters tell Roland and Manu about a crashed plane lying on the ocean floor off the coast of Congo stuffed with riches. The adventurers set off to find the loot.
Uncle Janco (1967)
Agnès Varda · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films
While in San Francisco for the promotion of her last film in October 1967, Agnès Varda, tipped by her friend Tom Luddy, gets to know a relative she had never heard of before, Jean Varda, nicknamed "Yanco". This hitherto unknown uncle lives on a boat in Sausalito, is a painter, has adopted a hippie lifestyle and loves life. The meeting is a very happy one.
La Rosiere de Pessac (1968)
Jean Eustache · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
This landmark documentary by Jean Eustache, filmed in 1968, hilariously exposes small-town pomposity and naiveté as it chronicles the preparations for an annual contest to crown a village’s most virtuous young woman.
Louis Lumière / conversation avec Langlois et Renoir (1968)
Éric Rohmer · 1 critic vote
Eric Rohmer leads a conversation with Jean Renoir and Henri Langlois on the art of filmmaker Louis Lumière.
Stolen Kisses (1968)
François Truffaut · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The third in a series of films featuring François Truffaut's alter-ego, Antoine Doinel, the story resumes with Antoine being discharged from military service. His sweetheart Christine's father lands Antoine a job as a security guard, which he promptly loses. Stumbling into a position assisting a private detective, Antoine falls for his employers' seductive wife, Fabienne, and finds that he must choose between the older woman and Christine.
The Exterminating Angels (1968)
José Bergamín, Michel Mitrani · 1 critic vote
A group of comedians who travel from village to village witness the old traditions of rural Spain.
The Man Who Lies (1968)
Alain Robbe-Grillet, Martin Hollý ml. · 1 critic vote
A man may or may not have betrayed a resistance fighter during World War II. He has supposedly been shot down by the Nazis and wanders into town. Mourning the death of an unseen comrade, he is taken in by the family of the dead rebel. He engages in a superfluous affair and witnesses the lesbian relationship between the man's sister and a female servant. When passions subside, the family has doubts about the reliability of the man's story.
Woman in Chains (1968)
Henri-Georges Clouzot · 1 critic vote
Gallery director Stanislas bolsters the development of modern art with his collection of surprising works. His newest acquisition is a sculpture by Gilbert, whose wife Josée is captivated by Stanislas. But unbeknownst to her, Stanislas is amassing photographs of a very perverse, disturbed nature.
A Very Curious Girl (1969)
Nelly Kaplan · 1 critic vote
Treated as an outcast and exploited by the villagers of a small town, a young woman liberates herself through sex, which she uses as a tool of economic gain and an instrument of revenge against those who have wronged her.
Détruire, dit-elle (1969)
Marguerite Duras · 1 critic vote
In a secluded hotel circumscribed by a dense forest Max and Alissa Thor meet Stein and Elisabeth. Max, a professor of future history and an aspiring author, is immediately attracted to the brooding wife of industrialist Bernard Alione, Elisabeth, who is recovering from a miscarriage. Stein, a German Jew and potential writer, is infatuated by Alissa, Max's young wife and former student. During their sojourn the guests' identities gradually meld.
Mississippi Mermaid (1969)
François Truffaut · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, MGM Plus, fuboTV
A tobacco planter on Réunion island in the Indian Ocean becomes engaged through correspondence to a French woman he does not know. The woman that arrives does not look like the picture he received, but he marries her anyway.
Z (1969)
Costa-Gavras · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max
A prominent politician is murdered during a demonstration. The government and army are trying to suppress the truth, but a tenacious magistrate is determined to not to let them get away with it.
Peau d'Âne (1970)
Jacques Demy · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A fairy godmother helps a princess disguise herself so she won't have to marry her father.
Piège (1970)
Jacques Baratier · 1 critic vote
A genuine performance film as Bernadette Laffont and Bulle Ogier engage, with reckless abandon, in a flurry of senseless destruction in a house at night. Somewhere between a hallucination and a nightmare. Both the explosive soundtrack and narration that accompanies the mayhem was provided by François Tusques.
Solo (1970)
Jean-Pierre Mocky · 1 critic vote
During an orgy, Some old and wealthy notables are being murdered by a small group of leftist young revolutionaries. Very soon the police are tracking down Virgile Cabral, the leader of the group. Meanwhile, Virgile's brother and only relative, Vincent, a violinist (and a thief), comes back to Paris. They have not seen each other for three years. Vincent does not believe in the revolution. He only tries to live as he wishes to live. But by looking for his hunted down brother, he has no other choice than to be involved in a fight that is not his.
Jo (1971)
Jean Girault · 1 critic vote
A writer accidentally shoots his blackmailer and tries to hide the body.
Le moindre geste (1971)
Jean-Pierre Daniel, Fernand Deligny, Josée Manenti · 1 critic vote
Writer and pedagogue Fernand Deligny influenced a number of artists and French intellectuals. His work on autism influenced Deleuze and Guattari's theory of the rhizome. Francois Truffaut turned to his ideas to complete Les 400 Coups. Throughout the film Deligny plays with the possibilities of the camera to live and think closer to the human subject, offering with Le Moindre Geste a unique film to the world, one of most fascinating in French cinema. Situated [visually] between mountain western and integral neorealism, the film tells the story of two teenagers, escaped prisoners of an asylum, running away through the Cevennes.
Numéro zéro (1971)
Jean Eustache · 1 critic vote
A family portrait in which the director profiles his grandmother, Odette Robert. Eustache includes in the film the conditions of its production — he is seated at the table with her, pours her some whiskey, speaks with the camera operator, manipulates the clapboard at the head and tail of the reels, and even takes a phone call. Robert, who was seventy-one, speaks rapidly and tells the story of her life, starting from her early childhood in villages in the Bordeaux region of France. A shorter version of the film ("Odette Robert") was edited in 1980 to be broadcast on television on TF1. The complete film only gained exposure in 2002, when it was salvaged by Boris Eustache, Thierry Lounas, João Bénard da Costa, Jean-Marie Straub, and Pedro Costa.
Ten Days' Wonder (1971)
Claude Chabrol · 1 critic vote
Free on Amazon Prime Video Free with Ads, Amazon MX Player
Charles Van Horn, son of rich and powerful Théo Van Horn, calls upon his former teacher Paul Régis to help him solve the mystery of his recurring bouts of amnesia.
Nathalie Granger (1972)
Marguerite Duras · 1 critic vote
With little or no embellishment, filmmaker Marguerite Duras offers a simple, often wordless chronicle of a woman's day. She and her friend are seen doing yard work, talking about their families and receiving the occasional visitor. The brightest spot in the day is when a washing machine salesman comes to call.
Out 1: Spectre (1972)
Jacques Rivette · 1 critic vote
Out 1: Spectre begins as nothing more than scenes from Parisian life; only as time goes by do we realize that there is a plot—perhaps playful, perhaps sinister—that implicates not just the thirteen characters, but maybe everyone, everywhere. Real life may be nothing but an enormous yarn someone somewhere is spinning...
Quelque part quelqu'un (1972)
Yannick Bellon · 1 critic vote
People in Paris struggle with loneliness and urban isolation. In the center is Raphaële, a successful architect navigating her fragile relationship with her lover Vincent, a journalist grappling with alcoholism.
Repeated Absences (1972)
Guy Gilles · 1 critic vote
François Naulet turns his bedroom into an island of drugs, loneliness and despair.
The Inner Scar (1972)
Philippe Garrel · 1 critic vote
A composition of symbolic, surreal and almost mystic images.
Un flic (1972)
Jean-Pierre Melville · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, France Channel Amazon Channel
A Parisian police chief has an affair, but unbeknownst to him, the boyfriend of the woman he’s having an affair with is a bank robber planning a heist.
Yellow Sun (1972)
Marguerite Duras · 1 critic vote
The whole film takes place in a single room where representatives of the two political forces and their enemy "the Jew" are gathered. A female character establishes the dialogue between these individuals and comments on the ideology of each; Until the final scene where everyone seems to rally to a common idea.
Blues Under the Skin (1973)
Roviros Manthoulis · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kino Film Collection
Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, THE BLUES UNDER THE SKIN dramatizes the tumultuous relationship of a young couple (Onike Lee and Roland Sanchez) as they struggle to overcome the barriers of poverty and prejudice that keep them from finding happiness together.
The Train (1973)
Pierre Granier-Deferre · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel
Two people, a Frenchman and a Jewish German woman, meet on a train while escaping the German army entering France.
Cock-a-Doodle-Doo! Mr. Chicken (1974)
Jean Rouch, Lam Ibrahim Dia, Damouré Zika · 1 critic vote
The story follows three poultry sellers on a trip across the bush, attempting to deliver a load of chickens to a market in Niamey.
Emmanuelle (1974)
Just Jaeckin · 1 critic vote
Streaming on MUBI, Kanopy
An employee at the French Embassy in Bangkok invites his wife to join him – and enjoy the benefits of their open marriage.
The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
Luis Buñuel · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.
Ali au pays des merveilles (1975)
Djouhra Abouda, Alain Bonnamy · 1 critic vote
Ali in Wonderland unveils the condition of immigrant workers in Paris in the 1970s. It is a cry of anger against exploitation and racism, uncompromisingly raising the role of the French state, the media, capitalism, and colonization in this system of domination that crushes those who suffer it. In this experimental essay on the condition of Algerian migrants in Giscard's France in the mid-1970s, every aesthetic choice has a precise and legible political motivation and gives body and voice to a figure completely absent from the experimental cinema of the time: that of the immigrant worker. Abouda is one of the children of immigrants seen in the film, and not a simple activist serving a cause, which is why the emotion of her experimental gesture, which she throws in the viewer's face, springs from a ferocity inscribed in her body, from an insatiable anger that inhabits her gaze.
Here and Elsewhere (1975)
Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Anne-Marie Miéville · 1 critic vote
Here and Elsewhere takes its name from the contrasting footage it shows of the fedayeen and of a French family watching television at home. Originally shot by the Dziga Vertov Group as a film on Palestinian freedom fighters, Godard later reworked the material alongside Anne-Marie Miéville.
Number Two (1975)
Jean-Luc Godard, Anne-Marie Miéville · 1 critic vote
Jean-Luc Godard mixes video and film in his Grenoble studio, discussing how he secured funding for the film. The action unfolds on two monitors, as a young working-class couple lives in a claustrophobic, high-rise apartment complex and marital discord is set off by the wife’s infidelity.
Six fois deux/Sur et sous la communication (1976)
Jean-Luc Godard, Anne-Marie Miéville · 1 critic vote
The title and subtitle of this French miniseries are “Six Times Two; Over and under the media”. The “six” refers to the fact that there are six episodes; the “two” has a double meaning.
The Last Woman (1976)
Marco Ferreri · 1 critic vote
Psychological drama of the compelling relationship between a young French engineer and the girl he takes into his home after his wife has left him with their baby son.
The Margin (1976)
Walerian Borowczyk · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A businessman leaves his country home, and wife and young son for a business trip to Paris. While there he develops a sexual and spiritual bond with a call girl.
The Memory of Justice (1976)
Marcel Ophuls · 1 critic vote
This exceptional, disturbing, and thought-provoking two-part documentary compares the atrocities committed by the Nazis as revealed during the Nuremberg trials to those committed by the French in Algeria and those done by the Americans in Vietnam. The four-hour epic questions the right of any country to pass self-righteous moral judgements upon the actions of another country.
The Camera: Je or La Camera: I (1977)
Babette Mangolte · 1 critic vote
A subjective account of the act of making still photographs.
Perceval le Gallois (1978)
Éric Rohmer · 1 critic vote
Free on Cineverse
The film chronicles Perceval's knighthood, maturation and eventual peerage amongst the Knights of the Round Table, and also contains brief episodes from the story of Gawain and the crucifixion of Christ.
The Song of Rio Jim (1978)
Maurice Lemaître · 1 critic vote
What is film? The spectator will be able to imagine all possible Westerns and anti-Westerns.
Drugstore Romance (1979)
Paul Vecchiali · 1 critic vote
The independently-minded daughter of lower-middle class French shopkeepers, Brigitte, one of three sisters, refused to marry the father of her child when she became pregnant. In this film, she reminisces about her family life beginning when she was about five years old, up to the present when she is in her early 20s. Of her two sisters, one has a nervous breakdown and the other one becomes something of a baby factory. Colorful anecdotes of her eventful life lend additional depth to her insights.
Fascination (1979)
Jean Rollin · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Shudder, Shudder Amazon Channel, AMC+ Amazon Channel
A runaway criminal breaks into an eerie chateau, taking its two frightened chambermaids hostage. As night falls, a group of mysterious aristocratic women arrive and the criminal begins to realize the women are hiding a sinister secret.
Messidor (1979)
Alain Tanner · 1 critic vote
Two young women from very different backgrounds journey into the countryside seeking respite from unsatisfactory lives and relationships, but ultimately find that there is no way back to the world they once knew.
Série Noire (1979)
Alain Corneau · 1 critic vote
Streaming on BFI Player Amazon Channel
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.
Balcony in Africa (1980)
Anita Fernandez · 1 critic vote
‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎
Les Uns et les Autres (1981)
Claude Lelouch · 1 critic vote
Streaming on France Channel Amazon Channel
The film follows four families, with different nationalities (French, German, Russian and American) but with the same passion for music, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The various story lines cross each other time and again in different places and times, with their own theme scores that evolve as time passes. The main event in the film is the Second World War, which throws the stories of the four musical families together and mixes their fates. Although all characters are fictional, many of them are loosely based on historical musical icons (Édith Piaf, Josephine Baker, Herbert von Karajan, Glenn Miller, Rudolf Nureyev, etc.) The Boléro dance sequence at the end brings all the threads together.
The Aviator's Wife (1981)
Éric Rohmer · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Kino Film Collection
A student is devastated when he finds that his girlfriend is cheating on him. In order to find out why she did it, he decides to spy on her and her airline pilot lover. Then he sees the pilot with a blonde woman and he begins to follow them…
A Room in Town (1982)
Jacques Demy · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Set against the backdrop of an increasingly violent strike, a worker falls in love with the middle-class daughter of his landlady.
Les Jeux de la comtesse Dolingen de Gratz (1982)
Catherine Binet · 1 critic vote
This complex and puzzling French drama walks the fine wavering line between the fictional and the very real as it tells the tale of a strangely erotic event in the life of a little girl and the musings of a schizophrenic woman. Also involved is an enigmatic spouse who prepares a surprise for a burglar.
Les Tournesols (1982)
Rose Lowder · 1 critic vote
The film presents a field of sunflowers. The focus is adjusted frame by frame in succession according to a series of patterns on particular plants situated in different parts of the field. The diverse configurations placed on separate frames of the film strip appear, when projected successively, simultaneously on the screen. Thus, filmed one after another at different focal lengths, the sunflowers combine during projection to form one spatiotemporal image. LES TOURNESOLS COLORES is a capricious version of the film. - Film Makers' Coop
Passion (1982)
Jean-Luc Godard · 1 critic vote
While shooting a film, the director becomes interested in the unfolding struggle of a young factory worker that has been laid off by a boss who did not like her union activities.
Ulysse (1982)
Agnès Varda · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
At the sea shore, a goat, a child, and a naked man. This is a photograph taken in 1954 by Agnès Varda. The goat was dead, the child was named Ulysses, and the man was naked. Starting from this frozen image, the film explores the real and the imaginary.
Calamity Jane & Delphine Seyrig, A Story (1983)
Babette Mangolte · 1 critic vote
Delphine Seyrig decided to work on a film project about Calamity Jane to reveal Jane’s sensibility and insight about life in those letters to her daughter. The reading of those letters permits a self-reflection about feminism and motherhood.
Liberty at Night (1983)
Philippe Garrel · 1 critic vote
In the mist of the Algerian events, a man finds a fugitive happiness beside a local woman.
News Items (1983)
Raymond Depardon · 1 critic vote
This documentary follows the daily life of a section of the police station of the fifth "arrondissement" (district) of Paris.
One Deadly Summer (1983)
Jean Becker · 1 critic vote
Shortly after Elle Wieck moves to a small French village, she begins dating Pin-Pon, a quiet young mechanic who has grown obsessed with the beautiful newcomer. But Elle has her own reason for the relationship...
Pauline at the Beach (1983)
Éric Rohmer · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Marion is about to divorce from her husband and takes her 15-year-old niece, Pauline, on a vacation to Granville. There, she meets an old love...
Eponine (1984)
Michel Chion · 1 critic vote
"When I began to write and shoot my film Eponine in 1975, I wanted to consciously ‘test’ this and other concepts of analysis with a film; the character of a mother without a face; the suggestion through sound of an outside world that one never sees (since the film takes place within the walls of a house from which one does not go out); the creation of an imaginary topography. The success of this film showed me that the concepts ‘worked’. Thus, for me, theory is not a dead demonstration. A living theory must be drawn from a personal experience." - Michel Chion
L'Amour à mort (1984)
Alain Resnais · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
Elisabeth and Simon have been deeply in love for two months when Simon momentarily dies, but returns to life. Despite declining further medical tests, the couple are forced to grapple with the possibility of his death. Eventually, they tell their close friends Jérôme and Judith Martignac about the event. The Martignacs are both clerics, and Judith has just been giving a funeral service for a villager who committed suicide, though Jérôme would have nothing to do with suicide...
Détective (1985)
Jean-Luc Godard · 1 critic vote
Streaming on MUBI, MUBI Amazon Channel
Emile Chenal and his wife, Françoise, leaned on boxing manager Jim Fox Warner to cough up the considerable sum of money that he owes them, with both the police and the mob circling the situation. In the same hotel, Inspector Neveu looks into a murder that took place years before, and his storyline overlaps with the arc of the Chenals.
The Children (1985)
Marguerite Duras · 1 critic vote
Based on the lives of four boys, all of different social classes and psychological makeup, this film tries to reflect through them the political history of Argentina during the years leading up to the Malvinas War.
Beau temps, mais orageux, en fin de journee (1986)
Gérard Frot-Coutaz · 1 critic vote
This slice-of-life drama about an elderly couple and their estranged son covers twenty-four fateful hours that begin with the usual daily routine for the retired pair of former teachers (Micheline Presle and Claude Pieplu). Then their son telephones to say he will be coming over with his girlfriend and the normal pattern is changed, as he visits them rarely. While the mother is obsequious to her son when he arrives, past hurts and resentments bubble up during lunch, making it difficult for the son to tell them he is getting married. This is news enough, but the effect that announcement has on the son and his fiancée is unexpected and events later on in the day take a turn for the worse.
Betty Blue (1986)
Jean-Jacques Beineix · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A lackadaisical handyman and aspiring novelist tries to support his younger girlfriend as she slowly succumbs to madness.
Double Messieurs (1986)
Jean-François Stévenin · 1 critic vote
In a routine look at what it means to finally leave adolescence behind — even in one’s mature years — this series of mood swings and sequences focuses on two grown men. Francois (Jean Francois Stevenin, the director) and Leo (Yves Alonso) are old friends, and at one point they decide to go out and search for one of their childhood buddies, the brunt of several of their practical jokes. In true form, the men opt for playing yet another practical joke on their friend, but their plans backfire when his wife Helene (Carole Bouquet) comes into the picture instead. Her presence forces them to reconsider their shenanigans in a new light.
Mauvais sang (1986)
Leos Carax · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Hoopla
Two aging crooks are given two weeks to repay a debt to a woman named The American. They recruit their recently deceased partner's son to help them break into a laboratory and steal the vaccine against STBO, a sexually transmitted disease that is sweeping the country. It's spread by having sex without emotional involvement, and most of its victims are teenagers who make love out of curiosity rather than commitment.
Thérèse (1986)
Alain Cavalier · 1 critic vote
The life of little St. Therese of Lisieux, depicted in minimalist vignettes. Therese and her sisters are all nuns in a Carmelite convent. Her devotion to Jesus and her concept of "the little way" to God are shown clearly, using plain modern language. A sense of angelic simplicity comes across without fancy lights, choirs, or showy miracles.
Au revoir les enfants (1987)
Louis Malle · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.
Resan (1987)
Peter Watkins · 1 critic vote
Peter Watkins' global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people's perception of it, as well as a meditation on the inherent bias of the media, and documentaries themselves.
The Blind Owl (1987)
Raúl Ruiz · 1 critic vote
In Paris, an Arab immigrant working as a projectionist becomes obsessed with a mysterious woman he sees on the cinema screen. Following a visit from a man claiming to be his uncle, his world begins to mirror a macabre and cyclical narrative.
A Tale of the Wind (1988)
Joris Ivens, Marceline Loridan-Ivens · 1 critic vote
It is an autobiographical fiction starring Ivens as an old man who has spent his life trying to "tame the wind and harness the sea" by capturing them on film.
Itinerary of a Spoiled Child (1988)
Claude Lelouch · 1 critic vote
Streaming on France Channel Amazon Channel
A foundling, raised in the circus, Sam Lion becomes a businessman after a trapeze accident. However, when he reaches fifty and becomes tired of his responsibilities and of his son Jean-Philippe, he decides to disappear at sea. However, he runs into Albert Duvivier, one of his former employees. He comes to realise that he has ignored the important things in his life.
Memories of a Tropical Jew (1988)
Joseph Morder · 1 critic vote
In this avant-garde exercise in self-reflection, director Joseph Morder reminisces about his youth in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where his Jewish parents settled after they left Poland. The heat of August in Paris brings forth memories and at the same time the adult Morder is involved in a love affair. There are no scenes from Ecuador here, and none of the images in the film are used to carry the narration; instead they vaguely illustrate what Morder happens to be saying at the moment.
Once More (1988)
Paul Vecchiali · 1 critic vote
Louis is a family man, with a wife and young daughter, who discovers in mid-life that he is gay.
Cézanne - Conversation with Joachim Gasquet (1989)
Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet · 1 critic vote
A landmark work of symbolistic imagery. The words that the filmmakers speak offscreen are imaginary conversation with Cézanne quoted from a critique by Joachim Gasquet. An exchange of memories spanning over 250 years interweaves everything from the philosophy of Empedocles to excerpts from the film Madame Bovary, to extant paintings by Cézanne, to the buildings of the artists’ village at Mont Sainte-Victoire. —ntticc.or.jp
Les sièges de l'Alcazar (1989)
Luc Moullet · 1 critic vote
A French man recalls his moviegoing adventures at a now defunct titular theater as a journalist for the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma during the mid-1950s.
Life and Nothing But (1989)
Bertrand Tavernier · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Hoopla
In 1920, Major Dellaplane, a man of honor and ethics, searches for missing French soldiers. He meets Madame Irène de Courtil, a politically connected Parisian, and their paths cross.
My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days (1989)
Andrzej Żuławski · 1 critic vote
Lucas has invented a new computer language but at the same time he has been informed about his strange terminal illness during which he has been gradually losing his memory. Shortly after that he meets Blanche who acts as a medium in a bizarre traveling show. Dying Lucas follows her to the sea resort where they spend together several days and nights.
Daddy Nostalgie (1990)
Bertrand Tavernier · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A half English, half French screenwriter visits her parents on the Riviera after her father's heart surgery. Once there, she begins to connect with him in a way she never did before, as each member of the family tries to cope with his imminent death.
Europa Europa (1990)
Agnieszka Holland · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.
Zapping Zone (1990)
Chris Marker · 1 critic vote
Chris Marker’s work, "Zapping Zone (Proposals for an imaginary television)" was produced by the Mnam-Centre Pompidou in the framework of the exhibition "Passages de l’Image" in 1990. Composed of 13 television sets, 7 computer stations (Apple II GS), 4 luminous displays containing 80 slides and 10 photomontages, this large interactive installation marked the entry of digital script into the art field at the dawn of the World Wide Web. Up until 2007, and Chris Marker’s last presentation before his death, the artist produced endlessly, building up an archive of 183 disks of work.
Delicatessen (1991)
Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy
In a post-apocalyptic world, the residents of an apartment above the butcher shop receive an occasional delicacy of meat, something that is in low supply. A young man new in town falls in love with the butcher's daughter, which causes conflicts in her family, who need the young man for other business-related purposes.
The Teeth of My Mother (1991)
Jean-Christophe Bouvet · 1 critic vote
Paulette, Jean-Christophe's mother, talks too much; after ten years of struggle Jean-Christophe notices that Paulette talks less, but one night he sees his mother's dentures in a tooth glass. Kind friends explain to him that Paulette has passed from the oral stage to the sadistic oral stage. The mother shows her teeth, I love you, I crunch you, it's sure death...
A Heart in Winter (1992)
Claude Sautet · 1 critic vote
Streaming on France Channel Amazon Channel
Beautiful violin virtuoso Camille has two obsessions: the music of Ravel, and a friend of her husband's who crafts violins. But his heart seems to be as cold as her playing is passionate.
A Tale of Winter (1992)
Éric Rohmer · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
As winter comes, little Bear decides to eat all the snow around him, but soon falls ill.
La Chasse aux papillons (1992)
Otar Iosseliani · 1 critic vote
Two old ladies live in a French chateau. When one of them dies, her sister, who lives in Moscow, inherits the property, which soon ends up in the hands of Japanese businessmen.
Siméon (1992)
Euzhan Palcy · 1 critic vote
The ghost of a music teacher pushes a young mechanic to start a career in music.
The Last Bolshevik (1992)
Chris Marker · 1 critic vote
Streaming on OVID
A documentary on Soviet filmmaker Aleksandr Medvedkin, examining his tumultuous career, the rediscovery of his masterpiece Happiness, and Russia's struggles over the course of the 20th Century.
Je vous salue, Sarajevo (1993)
Jean-Luc Godard · 1 critic vote
A short two-minute rumination on the once volatile situation during the period of the Bosnian War presented in the form of a photo-montage with accompanying text.
Me Ivan, You Abraham (1993)
Yolande Zauberman · 1 critic vote
In 1930s Poland Christian boy Ivan goes to live with a Jewish family to learn a trade. He becomes friends with Abraham, the son of the family. However, anti-Semitism is rife in their environment, and they flee to escape an upcoming conflict. Journeying together, they demonstrate their inseparability.
Cold Water (1994)
Olivier Assayas · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An outer suburb of Paris, 1972. Gilles and Christine, both sixteen, are classmates and lovers who have become frustrated with the aloofness of their families and the general monotony of their lives. When the pair are caught shoplifting, Christine's father ships her off to a home for emotionally disturbed children, temporarily putting space between her and Gilles. Luckily for them, though, she escapes and the couple contemplate running away together.
Li per li (1994)
Pierre Léon · 1 critic vote
Five extraterrestrials like no other are enjoying their last moments on planet Earth. Only one will stay to keep the secrets.
Little Indian, Big City (1994)
Hervé Palud · 1 critic vote
Stephen, an international trader, tracks down his ex-wife Patricia in some Amazonian backwater. He needs her consent to a divorce so that he can marry Charlotte. Unfortunately, he discovers a son he didn’t know he had – Mimi-Siku. The young jungle boy yearns to see Paris so Stephen reluctantly agrees to take him back home with him for a few days. How will Mimi-Siku react to life in the great metropolis?
Travolta and Me (1994)
Patricia Mazuy · 1 critic vote
In the late 1970s, a French teenage girl is obsessed with the then popular American movie heartthrob John Travolta.
Wild Reeds (1994)
André Téchiné · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, France Channel Amazon Channel
As the Algerian War draws to a close, a teenager with a girlfriend starts feeling homosexual urges for two of his classmates: a country boy, and a French-Algerian intellectual.
JLG/JLG – Self-Portrait in December (1995)
Jean-Luc Godard · 1 critic vote
Director Jean-Luc Godard reflects in this movie about his place in film history, the interaction of film industry and film as art, as well as the act of creating art.
Nelly and Mr. Arnaud (1995)
Claude Sautet · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, BFI Player Amazon Channel, France Channel Amazon Channel
Nelly leaves her lazy, unemployed husband to work for retired judge Mr Arnaud, forty years her senior, after he offers to clear her bills for her. While she types his memoirs the two develop a close friendship, but Arnaud becomes jealous when Nelly begins dating his good-looking young publisher.
The Son Of… (1995)
Maurice Pialat · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A self-centered man with many diversions occasionally visits his 4-year-old son and the boy's mother.
A Summer's Tale (1996)
Éric Rohmer · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Awaiting his girlfriend Léna’s arrival at the Breton seaside resort of Dinard, Gaspard befriends — and flirts heavily with — two other women, the companionable ethnology student Margot and the sensual townie Solène, making for a rather complicated situation when Léna finally arrives.
La Belle Verte (1996)
Coline Serreau · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
As part of an intergalactic coalition, a well-meaning space alien volunteers to bring a message of self-actualization and harmony with nature to the one planet rejected by all her peers as incorrigible: Earth.
My Sex Life... or How I Got into an Argument (1996)
Arnaud Desplechin · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Paul Dedalus is at a crossroads in his life. He has to make several decisions; should he complete his doctorate, does he want to become a full professor, does he really love his long-standing girlfriend, or should he re-start with one of his other lovers?
La Vie de Jésus (1997)
Bruno Dumont · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Twenty-something Freddy is becalmed in a podunk French village where the only sign of life is the local amateur brass band and youth aimlessly roaming around the countryside on scooters. He has an intense sexual connection with his girlfriend but has no joy or passion to give her. When she falls for a handsome Arab youth a tragedy unfolds.
The Fifth Element (1997)
Luc Besson · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Netflix, AMC, Netflix Standard with Ads
In 2257, a taxi driver is unintentionally given the task of saving a young girl who is part of the key that will ensure the survival of humanity.
Late August, Early September (1998)
Olivier Assayas · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A book editor juggles relationships with two women while coping with his best friend's terminal illness.
Le Dîner de Cons (1998)
Francis Veber · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, France Channel Amazon Channel
For Pierre Brochant and his friends, Wednesday is “Idiots' Day”. The idea is simple: each person has to bring along an idiot. The one who brings the most spectacular idiot wins the prize. Tonight, Brochant is ecstatic. He has found a gem. The ultimate idiot, “A world champion idiot!”. What Brochant doesn’t know is that Pignon is a real jinx, a past master in the art of bringing on catastrophes...
Time Regained (1998)
Raúl Ruiz · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, OVID
In early 1920s France, an author, lying on his deathbed, looks at various photographs and is flooded with memories of the people and events that have shaped his life.
Humanité (1999)
Bruno Dumont · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a quiet little French town, two detectives are tasked with investigating the brutal rape and murder of a preteen girl.
It All Starts Today (1999)
Bertrand Tavernier · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In a mining town which has been blighted by economic downturns, an elementary school headmaster struggles to obtain social services on behalf of his students.
Pola X (1999)
Leos Carax · 1 critic vote
A writer leaves his upper-class life and journeys with a woman claiming to be his sister, and her two friends.
La vallée close (2000)
Jean-Claude Rousseau · 1 critic vote
My films are like that: in a room, but looking out onto an open sky. [...] I can’t really say it except to repeat that Bresson note, ‘that without a thing changing, everything is different.’ The film exists. The fiction is set up, and we believe in it. The justness of the agreement leads us to believe it, because everything plays equally at being a sign. That’s the arrangement of the elements. It’s an act of faith. La vallée close is just this: elements treated above all as if in a documentary that, without being changed, portray the story and reveal between them the elements of fiction. But above all seen as they are, insignificant. And then in the relations they set up, they can satisfy our desire for a story. -- Rousseau
Lumumba (2000)
Raoul Peck · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, OVID
The true story of the rise to power and brutal assassination of the formerly vilified and later redeemed leader of the independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Using newly discovered historical evidence, Haitian-born and later Congo-raised writer and director Raoul Peck renders an emotional and tautly woven account of the mail clerk and beer salesman with a flair for oratory and an uncompromising belief in the capacity of his homeland to build a prosperous nation independent of its former Belgian overlords. Lumumba emerges here as the heroic sacrificial lamb dubiously portrayed by the international media and led to slaughter by commercial and political interests in Belgium, the United States, the international community, and Lumumba's own administration; a true story of political intrigue and murder where political entities, captains of commerce, and the military dovetail in their quest for economic and political hegemony.
Origins of the 21st Century (2000)
Jean-Luc Godard · 1 critic vote
Commissioned by the heads of the 2000 Cannes Film Festival to make an opening-night short commemorating cinema as it enters its second full century, Godard instead offers up a 17-minute barrage of re-edited footage of wars and Nazi atrocities, interspersed with clips of Maurice Chevalier in "Gigi" and Godard's own "À bout de souffle."
The Town Is Quiet (2000)
Robert Guédiguian · 1 critic vote
A dark tale of working-class life in Marseilles, a city in crisis. Interesting characters include a hard-bitten but compassionate fish market worker with a drug addicted daughter and a moody bartender with a shocking secret life.
Fat Girl (2001)
Catherine Breillat · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max
Anaïs is twelve and bears the weight of the world on her shoulders. She watches her older sister, Elena, whom she both loves and hates. Elena is fifteen and devilishly beautiful. Neither more futile, nor more stupid than her younger sister, she cannot understand that she is merely an object of desire. And, as such, she can only be taken. Or had. Indeed, this is the subject: a girl's loss of virginity. And, that summer, it opens a door to tragedy.
Intimacy (2001)
Patrice Chéreau · 1 critic vote
Free on The Roku Channel, Shout! Factory TV, Plex · Streaming on Kanopy, Fawesome
Failed musician Jay abandoned his family and now earns a living as head bartender in a trendy London pub. Every Wednesday afternoon, a woman comes to his house for graphic, almost wordless, sex. One day, Jay follows her and learns about her. This eventually disrupts their relationship.
Va savoir (2001)
Jacques Rivette · 1 critic vote
After finding love and success in Italy, French actress Camille returns to Paris, the city she fled three years ago. She secretly dreads confronting her ex-boyfriend Pierre. Her new lover Ugo also has a secret, as he’s meeting with the intriguing Dominique while on his quest for an unpublished manuscript.
Demonlover (2002)
Olivier Assayas · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max
A French corporation goes head-to-head with an American web media company for the rights to a 3-D manga pornography studio, resulting in a power struggle that culminates in violence and espionage.
Sailboats and Poppies (2002)
Rose Lowder · 1 critic vote
Little is necessary for everything to appear differently. The date, the hour, the weather, the space's layout, one's glance or presence of mind . . . can make everything change. The boats sail out of the Vieux port in Marseille to be amongst the poppy fields.
The Story of Marie and Julien (2003)
Jacques Rivette · 1 critic vote
Julien is a clockmaker with destructive impulses who decides to blackmail Madame X, a rich, attractive woman who traffics in stolen antiques. What he doesn’t know is that she has an even more dangerous secret that leads him to Marie, with whom he had fallen in love a year earlier.
A Visit to the Louvre (2004)
Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub · 1 critic vote
A visit to the Louvre in Paris commentated by an actor reading Cézanne.
Illumination (2004)
Pascale Breton · 1 critic vote
Since he first saw Christina, his grandmother’s nurse, Ildutt has set out on a desperate and pointless quest to become normal. Since returning from a fishing trip in Scotland that sent him off the deep end, Ildutt has hidden out in the highlands in a crazy state. Now he wants to get well. He’s prepared to do anything to win Christina over. He’ll start seeing his psychiatrist again and clean up his act. But he’s also ready to follow a weird guru’s teachings that risk turning his world upside down again. Sometimes Christina seems real, sometimes she seems like something out of a fairy story and sometimes she’s like a ghost. She intermittently reappears in Ildutt’s life, and slowly becomes more real to him. Ildutt is no longer lost in the cosmos; he’s firmly on earth, beside the slopes of the Lorient river. He has a cousin, a grandmother, a few friends, an old Mercedes convertible – and a bass guitar that he’ll eventually start playing again.
Kings and Queen (2004)
Arnaud Desplechin · 1 critic vote
Shortly before her wedding, art gallery director Nora travels from Paris to Grenoble to visit her preteen son, Elias, who is spending time with her aging professor father, Louis, recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. During her stay, she reaches out to her former lover, Ismaël, a viola player and father figure to Elias who has been committed against his will to a mental hospital. Ismaël, however, has his own problems to sort out.
Notre musique (2004)
Jean-Luc Godard · 1 critic vote
A three-chapter (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise) meditation on the city of Sarajevo in the wake of the Bosnian war, on Palestine and Israel, and on war itself.
Triple Agent (2004)
Éric Rohmer · 1 critic vote
The Popular Front wins elections, the Spanish Civil War begins, and Hitler and Stalin are manipulating and spying. The brilliant exile, Fiodor Voronin, a general at 20, is the deputy at the White Russian Military Union, probably slated to replace the aging Général Dobrinsky soon. Fiodor's Greek wife, Arsinoé, paints and stays away from politics, befriending Communist neighbors. Her health declines; the attentive Fiodor arranges care and, against the backdrop of Stalin's Great Purge, considers his options. He plays a chess game in which love of country, love of Arsinoé, ideology, petty jealousies, and the machinations of power roil in matters of life and death.
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)
Jacques Audiard · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A ruthless real estate agent discovers a passion for piano and auditions with help from a young virtuoso, but the pressures of his corrupt career threaten to derail his musical aspirations.
Andalucia (2006)
Alain Gomis · 1 critic vote
Yacine is in his 30s, of Algerian origins, and has come to Paris looking for inner peace. A playful and poetic quest leads him via all kinds of strange encounters to an increasingly surrealist world and to Andalusia: a state of mind.
The Duchess of Langeais (2006)
Jacques Rivette · 1 critic vote
At a Spanish cloister, a celebrated French general of the Napoleonic Wars recognizes the voice of one of the nuns and recalls how, five years ago, she was the Duchess of Langeais, and he her most persistent suitor.
Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006)
Douglas Gordon, Philippe Parreno · 1 critic vote
Halfway between a sports documentary and an conceptual art installation, "Zidane" consists in a full-length soccer game (Real Madrid vs. Villareal, April 23, 2005) entirely filmed from the perspective of soccer superstar Zinedine Zidane.
2 Days in Paris (2007)
Julie Delpy · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, YouTube Free · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Fawesome
Marion and Jack try to rekindle their relationship with a visit to Paris, home of Marion's parents — and several of her ex-boyfriends.
Mafrouza (2007)
Emmanuelle Demoris · 1 critic vote
A shantytown built inside the antique necropolis of Alexandria. An archaeological visit leads us to meet a few people, taking the time to be really close to them. Each encounter reveals a new novel. And we discover how people survive daily, with an incredible strength for life and a crazy capacity for happiness, that enables them to grin and bear the harshness of the materials conditions.
Steak (2007)
Quentin Dupieux · 1 critic vote
George is the scapegoat of his classmates. One day he cracks and shoots them. His best and only friend Blaise is accused in his place and sentenced to 7 years in a psychiatric hospital. At the day of his release, Blaise realizes he only has one family: his best friend George. But he does not want to hear about his childhood friend, as he tries to integrate with the “Chivers” a gang whose members wear red jackets and boots, drink milk, drive sport trucks and play an incomprehensible and violent game that mixes cricket and mental arithmetic.
The Secret of the Grain (2007)
Abdellatif Kechiche · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel
In southern France, a Franco-Arabic shipyard worker along with his partner's daughter pursues his dream of opening a restaurant.
Lady Jane (2008)
Robert Guédiguian · 1 critic vote
After having perpetrated a serious crime, Muriel, François and René, childhood friends born in the working-class streets of Marseille, go their separate ways, until, 15 years later, they meet again when another crime is committed.
Martyrs (2008)
Pascal Laugier · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV
A young woman’s quest for revenge against the people who kidnapped and tortured her as a child leads her and her best friend, also a victim of child abuse, on a terrifying journey into a living hell of depravity.
Stella (2008)
Sylvie Verheyde · 1 critic vote
Paris, 1977. Eleven year old Stella knows poker better than grammar when she starts the year at a prestigious new school. There, she discovers the possibilities of a whole new world outside her parents' bar.
The Class (2008)
Laurent Cantet · 1 critic vote
Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.
Artemis' Knee (2009)
Jean-Marie Straub · 1 critic vote
Mourning the death of his partner and collaborator Danièle Huillet, Straub finds tender mercy in music and nature. Out of the abyss, Kathleen Ferrier sings “The Farewell” from Gustav Mahler’s “The Song of the Earth”, (which the composer wrote in 1909 after the death of his daughter) and Heinrich Schütz’s Lament on the Death of His Wife. The landscape also provides solace: the mountain grove where Endymion pines for his beloved Artemis, “a wild thing, untouchable, mortal,” appears to embody the Japanese concept of ‘mono no aware’ — a wistful acceptance of the fleeting beauty of things.
Atlantiques (2009)
Mati Diop · 1 critic vote
The odyssey of Senegalese friends who attempt a life-threatening boat crossing.
Mademoiselle Chambon (2009)
Stéphane Brizé · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Kino Film Collection
Véronique Chambon (Sandrine Kiberlain), a single schoolteacher and Jean (Vincent Lindon), discover an unexpected bond that causes them to question the direction of their lives. They move in different social circles but their relationship develops and their lives begin gradually to unravel.
Wild Grass (2009)
Alain Resnais · 1 critic vote
A quirky woman who spends her free time as a pilot has her purse stolen; a mysterious man finds her wallet, and they embark on a peculiar romance.
Dear Prudence (2010)
Rebecca Zlotowski · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Film Movement Plus
After the death of her mother, 17-year-old Prudence finds herself living alone in her Paris apartment. Then she meets Maryline, a rebel of her own age, who introduces her to the thrills of motorcycle racing on the biker circuit at Rungis. Prudence’s newfound lease of freedom becomes complicated when she falls for a boy Franck who wastes no time in taking advantage of her naivety...
Film Socialisme (2010)
Jean-Luc Godard · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise, numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday... Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.
From His Apartment (2010)
Jean-Claude Rousseau · 1 critic vote
The continuing demand for high standards is what sets Rouseau's work apart. What makes this film distinctive is the way Rousseau explicitly returns to the source of his creative inspiration. So here he is at home reciting «Bérénice» to himself, whilst going about his household chores. It verges on the comical: There are repeated shots of him obstinately trying to turn off a dripping tap, or the jubilant close up of bare feet carried away in performing a dance step or two. Combining art with life in such a way, that nothing is compartmentalised, nothing lost - that is the goal.
Goodbye First Love (2011)
Mia Hansen-Løve · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, AMC+
A 15-year-old discovers the joys and heartaches of first love with an older teen, but in the ensuing years, cannot seem to move past their breakup.
Nana (2011)
Valérie Massadian · 1 critic vote
Nana is 4 years old and lives in a stone house beyond the forest. Back from school, a late afternoon, all she finds is silence in the house. A journey into the darkness of her childhood. The world from her height.
The Artist (2011)
Michel Hazanavicius · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, TCM
Hollywood, 1927: As silent movie star George Valentin wonders if the arrival of talking pictures will cause him to fade into oblivion, he sparks with Peppy Miller, a young dancer set for a big break.
Impressions (2012)
Jacques Perconte · 1 critic vote
A film about the magic power of nature. A journey to the heart of impressionistic Normandy. A colorful stroll in search of light and time.
Rust and Bone (2012)
Jacques Audiard · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Hulu
Put in charge of his young son, Ali leaves Belgium for Antibes to live with his sister and her husband as a family. Ali's bond with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, grows deeper after Stephanie suffers a horrible accident.
3x3D (2013)
Jean-Luc Godard, Edgar Pêra, Peter Greenaway · 1 critic vote
A triptych of short stereoscopic films by Peter Greenaway, Jean-Luc Godard and Edgar Pêra. Includes "The Three Disasters" by Godard, "Cinesapiens" by Pêra and "Just in Time" by Greenaway.
Sheep (2013)
Marianne Pistone, Gilles Deroo · 1 critic vote
Streaming on MUBI Amazon Channel, FilmBox+
The film opens in October 2007 with Aurélien Bouvier, known as "Mouton" (Sheep), who is 17 years old. It was his destiny that the young Mouton would live his simple life as a seaside restaurant employee for three years and that he would be torn away from this life after a tragic night at the Sainte-Anne ball.
Mercuriales (2014)
Virgil Vernier · 1 critic vote
This story takes place in a far distant time, a time of violence. All throughout Europe, a war was spreading. In a city there lived two sisters...
Occidente (2014)
Ana Vaz · 1 critic vote
Streaming on DocAlliance Films
In a spellbinding, textural blend of 16mm and HD video, Ana Vaz refracts the colonial history of Brazil and Portugal through objects, gestures, and contemporary customs.
P'tit Quinquin (2014)
Bruno Dumont · 1 critic vote
A murder mystery that opens with the discovery of human body parts stuffed inside a cow on the outskirts of a small channel town in northern France.
Evolution (2015)
Lucile Hadžihalilović · 1 critic vote
Free on The Roku Channel · Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, AMC+ Amazon Channel
11-year-old Nicolas lives with his mother in a seaside housing estate. The only place that ever sees any activity is the hospital. It is there that all the boys from the village are forced to undergo strange medical trials that attempt to disrupt the phases of evolution.
Love (2015)
Gaspar Noé · 1 critic vote
Murphy is an American living in Paris who enters a highly sexually and emotionally charged relationship with the unstable Electra. Unaware of the seismic effect it will have on their relationship, they invite their pretty neighbor into their bed.
Maman(s) (2015)
Maïmouna Doucouré · 1 critic vote
The 8-year-old Aida lives in an apartment in the Parisian suburb. The daily life of Aida and the whole family is overwhelmed when her father comes back from Senegal, their country of origin. Actually, he did not come back alone. He returned with the young Senegalese Rama whom he introduced as his second wife. Aida is very sensitive to her mother's distress. She decides then to get rid of the new visitor.
Divines (2016)
Houda Benyamina · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
In a ghetto where religion and drug trafficking rub shoulders, Dounia has a lust for power and success. Supported by Maimouna, her best friend, she decides to follow in the footsteps of Rebecca, a respected dealer. But her encounter with Djigui, a young, disturbingly sensual dancer, throws her off course.
Frantz (2016)
François Ozon · 1 critic vote
Free on JustWatch TV, Darkroom, YOW.tv · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, Hoopla
In the aftermath of WWI, a young German who grieves the death of her fiancé in France meets a mysterious French man who visits the fiance’s grave to lay flowers.
La folle histoire de Max et Léon (2016)
Jonathan Barré · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Fandango at Home Free, Filmzie · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Fandor Amazon Channel, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
In this WW2 epic comedy – in the vein of “La Grande Vadrouille” – our two heroes, Max and Léon, two lazy and partier pals, will try by all possible means to avoid going in the battle zone… This will lead the duo to demented and wild adventures.
Lumière! (2016)
Thierry Frémaux · 1 critic vote
A collection of restored prints from the Lumière Brothers.
Paris 05:59 (2016)
Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Xumo Play, Plex Channel
Théo and Hugo meet in a club and form an immediate bond. Once the desire and elation of this first moment has passed, the two young men, now sober, wander through the empty streets of nocturnal Paris, having to confront the love they sense blossoming between them.
Personal Shopper (2016)
Olivier Assayas · 1 critic vote
Free on Pluto TV, Plex Channel · Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, fuboTV
Maureen, mid-20s, is a personal shopper for a media celebrity. The job pays for her stay in Paris, a city she refuses to leave until she makes contact with her twin brother who previously died there. Her life becomes more complicated when a mysterious person contacts her via text message.
The Red Turtle (2016)
Michaël Dudok de Wit · 1 critic vote
The dialogue-less film follows the major life stages of a castaway on a deserted tropical island populated by turtles, crabs and birds.
Happy End (2017)
Michael Haneke · 1 critic vote
A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.
Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno (2017)
Abdellatif Kechiche · 1 critic vote
Amin, an aspiring screenwriter living in Paris, returns home for the summer, in Sète, South of France. It is a time of reconnecting with his family and his childhood friends. Together with his cousin Tony and his best friend Ophélie, he spends his time between the Tunisian restaurant run by his parents, the local bars and the beaches frequented by girls on holiday.
Speak Up (2017)
Amandine Gay · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
The movie focuses on our common identities : “woman” and “black”, whilst highlighting the diversity of Afropean diasporas. This documentary explores the intersections of discrimination, art and blackness.
Shoah: Four Sisters (2018)
Claude Lanzmann · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Cohen Media Amazon Channel
Since 1999, Claude Lanzmann has made several films that could be considered satellites of Shoah, comprised of interviews conducted in the 1970s that didn’t make it into the final, monumental work. He has just completed a series of four new films, built around four women from four different areas of Eastern Europe with four different destinies, each finding herself unexpectedly and improbably alive after war’s end.
I Lost My Body (2019)
Jérémy Clapin · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
A story of Naoufel, a young man who is in love with Gabrielle. In another part of town, a severed hand escapes from a dissection lab, determined to find its body again.
Papichaلللللاات (2019)
Mounia Meddour · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Fandango at Home Free, Plex · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, Fandor Amazon Channel
Nedjma, an 18-year-old student passionate about fashion design refuses to let the tragic events of the Algerian Civil War keep her from experiencing a normal life. As the social climate becomes more conservative, she rejects the new bans set by the radicals and decides to put on a fashion show.
Tomorrow Tripoli (2019)
Florent Marcie · 1 critic vote
Free on Fandango at Home Free
In the early days of the Libyan revolution, when the eyes of the world were on Benghazi, a small group of insurgents were defying the dictatorship at the other end of the country, in the Nafusa Mountains. Cut off from the rest of the world, under siege from Gadaffi’s troops, these mountain people nevertheless managed to inflict a series of setbacks on the regime, driving its forces all the way to the gates of Tripoli. From guerrilla warfare in the jebel to the shores of the Mediterranean, "Tomorrow Tripoli" relates the combat of these men swept up by the revolutionary whirlwind.
Summer of 85 (2020)
François Ozon · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Fandango at Home Free, Plex · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, Hoopla
What do you dream of when you're 16-years-old and in a seaside resort in Normandy in the 1980s? A best friend? A lifelong teen pact? Scooting off on adventures on a boat or a motorbike? Living life at breakneck speed? No. You dream of death. Because you can't get a bigger kick than dying. And that's why you save it till the very end. The summer holidays are just beginning, and this story recounts how Alexis grew into himself.
Anaïs in Love (2021)
Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet · 1 critic vote
Free on The Roku Channel, Fandango at Home Free, Xumo Play · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Magnolia Selects Amazon Channel
A young woman struggling to stay on top of everything in her life meets a married publisher and begins an affair with him.
Annette (2021)
Leos Carax · 1 critic vote
Free on Amazon Prime Video Free with Ads, Amazon MX Player · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
In present-day Los Angeles, controversial stand-up comedian Henry McHenry and internationally renowned opera singer Ann Defrasnoux form the façade of a happy couple in the spotlight. Ann gives birth to a baby girl named Annette, who possesses an exceptional gift that will change all of their lives forever.
Bergman Island (2021)
Mia Hansen-Løve · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, Criterion Channel
An English-German filmmaking couple retreat to Fårö for the summer to each write screenplays for their upcoming films in an act of pilgrimage to the place that inspired Ingmar Bergman. As the summer and their screenplays advance, the lines between reality and fiction start to blur against the backdrop of the Island's wild landscape.
Vortex (2021)
Gaspar Noé · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, OVID
Lui, a struggling author with a heart condition, and his wife Elle, a retired psychiatrist, find their idyllic life shattered when Elle begins to succumb to the effects of dementia.
Incredible but True (2022)
Quentin Dupieux · 1 critic vote
Free on The Roku Channel
Alain and Marie moved to the suburb house of their dreams. But the real estate agent warned them: what is in the basement may well change their lives forever.
Return to Seoul (2022)
Davy Chou · 1 critic vote
After an impulsive travel decision to visit friends, Freddie, 25, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. Freddie suddenly finds herself embarking on an unexpected journey in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Justine Triet · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
A woman is suspected of her husband's murder, and their blind son faces a moral dilemma as the sole witness.
Last Summer (2023)
Catherine Breillat · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
One summer, a French teenager who has been living with his mother in the city moves in with his estranged father’s family in the countryside, where he clashes with his stepmother.
The Beast (2023)
Bertrand Bonello · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
In the near future where emotions have become a threat, Gabrielle finally decides to purify her DNA in a machine that will immerse her in her past lives and rid her of any strong feelings. She then meets Louis and feels a powerful connection, as if she had known him forever.
Emilia Pérez (2024)
Jacques Audiard · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Rita, an underrated lawyer working for a large law firm more interested in getting criminals out of jail than bringing them to justice, is hired by the leader of a criminal organization.
Misericordia (2024)
Alain Guiraudie · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
Jérémie returns to his hometown for the funeral of his former boss, the village baker. He decides to stay for a few days with Martine, the man's widow. A mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbor and a priest with strange intentions make Jérémie's short stay in the village take an unexpected turn.
The Substance (2024)
Coralie Fargeat · 1 critic vote
Streaming on MUBI, MUBI Amazon Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A fading celebrity decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.
The Ice Tower (2025)
Lucile Hadžihalilović · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Shudder, Kanopy, AMC+
Jeanne, a 15-year-old orphan, witnesses the shoot for a film adaptation of the fairy tale The Snow Queen, and she becomes fascinated by its star, Cristina, an actress who is just as mysterious and alluring as the Queen she is playing.

Loading…

movie (and chill).

Essential French Cinema

More collections