Sandrine Bonnaire (born 31 May 1967) is a French actress, who has appeared in more than 40 films including Hollywood movies. Bonnaire was born in the town of Gannat, Allier, in the Auvergne region. She was born into a working-class family, the seventh of eleven children. Her acting career began at the age of 16 in 1983, when she starred in the Maurice Pialat film À nos amours. She played a girl from the suburbs beginning her sexual awakening. In 1984 she was awarded the César Award for Most Promising Actress. Her international breakthrough came in 1986 when she played the main character in Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond), directed by Agnès Varda, for which she won her second César Award. She portrays a vagrant who fails both physically and morally. The film Monsieur Hire directed by Patrice Leconte followed in 1989, along with further work with directors Jacques Doillon and Claude Sautet. In 2004, she starred in another Patrice Leconte's film: Intimate Strangers, which was an arthouse box office hit in the United States. Bonnaire has a daughter, Jeanne, from a relationship with actor William Hurt, whom she met in 1991 during filming of the Albert Camus novel La Peste (The Plague). They acted together in Secrets Shared with a Stranger (1994). Since March 2003 she has been married to actor and screenwriter Guillaume Laurant, with whom she has had a second daughter. Description above from the Wikipedia article Sandrine Bonnaire, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Beneath her eccentric appearance, Captain Marleau is a formidable detective. Her Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap, her character, her unusual appearance, her humor, her unpredictable behavior--Captain Marleau is not your average gendarme. She never rushes an investigation; she becomes the investigation and relentlessly pursues the suspects....
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A young surgeon returns to her hometown to work in the local hospital. The relationship to her ex-lover, a well-known chief-surgeon, flames up again but not with happy consequences. The old friends become rivals in personal and professional fields....
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Lucas, a wealthy, 43 year-old divorced businessman, is irresistibly attracted to Elsa, a 38 year old renowned sculptor from whom he has commissioned a piece to decorate the reception at his office....
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....
Camille arrives in Ouessant, the island of her birth off the Brittany coast, to sell the family home. She spends a last night in the house during which she discovers a secret. In 1963 a man came to work with her father, who was the Jument lighthouse operator. He only stayed two months, but his presence proved to be a disturbing catalyst....
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....
A revolutionary militant, a thug, an underground writer, a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan. But also a switchblade-waving poet, a lover of beautiful women, a warmonger, a political agitator, and a novelist who wrote of his greatness. Eduard Limonov’s life story is a journey through Russia, America, and Europe during the second half of the 20th century....
Upon their release from prison twenty years earlier, Gérard, Ary and Philippe asked themselves if honesty was not the best racket of them all. Today, they are inseparable and scrupulously above board. But Gérard learns he is terminally ill. Their friend’s days being numbered, Ary and Philippe want to offer him one last love story… because, as Gérard likes to say : love is better than life....
After being discharged from a mental institution, a man is tasked by his mother to revive a struggling supermarket in Limoges. He must navigate unexpected responsibilities and the challenges of managing the store's staff....
Because she picked the wrong door, Anna ends up confessing her marriage problems to a financial adviser named William Faber. Touched by her distress, somewhat excited as well, Faber does not have the courage to tell her that he is not a psychiatrist. From appointment to appointment, a strange ritual is created between them. William is moved and fascinated to hear the secrets no man ever heard....
Mangin, a police inspector in Paris, leans hard on informants to get evidence on three Tunisian brothers who traffic in drugs. He arrests one, Simon, and his girl-friend Noria. Simon's brothers go to their lawyer. He springs Noria, who promptly steals 2 million francs that belong to the Tunisians. They suspect her of the theft; her life as well as the lawyer's is in danger. Meanwhile, Noria is playing with both the lawyer and Mangin's affections. Mangin is mercurial anyway: intimidating and bloo...
In just ten films, Maurice Pialat painfully rose to the top of the cinema, draining into his legend a mad demand for truth as much as memorable fury to achieve it. With "L'Enfance nue", his first feature film at the age of 43, the filmmaker immediately made his mark, this "art of making things authentic", according to Chabrol. But throughout an unclassifiable filmography in the form of an autobiography, from a break-up to his fatherhood in wonder, through the agony of his mother, the filmmaker d...
Satan tempts Father Dossignan, who is trying to save the soul of a young girl who killed one of her lovers....
A pioneering post-war female film director, an instigator of the New Wave who was honored by Hollywood in her own lifetime, Agnès Varda has become a source of inspiration for a whole new generation of young filmmakers. With movies like Cléo de 5 à 7, Le Bonheur, Sans toit ni loi, Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse, she created a quirky, open to the world, sensitive to the disenfranchised, often silly body of work. Always one finger on the pulse, she shook everything up, including cinema itself which sh...
Jacques Higelin and Sandrine Bonnaire met on a train. A beautiful, discreet friendship was born. The director was inspired to present a different Jacques Higelin, with a tender, intimate look at the singer-songwriter. More than a portrait, the film reveals, through this intense encounter, a multi-talented artist. But also a man of great sensitivity and modesty....
The Russian spy in England, Alex Wilkie, is tasked with infiltrating American intelligence and identifying a mole – our intelligence officer, who transmits intelligence information to the enemy. The hero is forced to overcome incredible obstacles in order to gain the trust of the Americans......
A portrait of the mythical Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni (1924-96), a unique performer who was one of the kings of European cinema....
Elsa Valentin is in the middle of a brutal divorce and custody battle when she is struck by the appearance of a pretty young girl named Lola (Héloïse Cunin). Her interest in the child grows to an obsession, and she finds any possible excuse to be near her. When Lola's mother, Claire, grows unnerved by all this, Elsa admits she believes Lola is her daughter....
A sensitive portrait of Sabine Bonnaire, the autistic sister of the french actress Sandrine Bonnaire....
When the disappearance of children and bloody murders multiply in a small mountain village, an old legend shrouded in sulphur reappears... Commander Guardiano and Captain of the Gendarmerie De Rolan are forced to join forces to uncover the truth....
June 1946: Stalin invites Russian emigres to return to the motherland. It's a trap: when a ship-load from France arrives in Odessa, only a physician and his family are spared execution or prison. He and his French wife (her passport ripped up) are sent to Kiev. She wants to return to France immediately; he knows that they are captives and must watch every step....
Hélène, a housekeeper at a ritzy hotel in Corsica, is devoted to her family but lacks any passion in her own life. When she sees a handsome couple play a passionate game of chess, she becomes inspired to play herself. Hélène's working-class husband and spoiled daughter are soon bewildered by her obsession with chess. They also grow suspicious of Hélène's close relationship with Dr. Kröger, her eccentric American expat tutor....
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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....
Marc is in love with Lucien, who's in love with Suzanne, who's in love with someone else....
In a small Breton town, a 10-year-old girl is found murdered. René, her art teacher, a professional painter, is the last person to have seen her alive. The inspector in charge of the investigation immediately questions him. In this small provincial town where people all know each other and regularly meet at the Bar des Amis, René is increasingly unsettled by the other inhabitants' suspicions and by the inspector's investigation. Children stop coming to him for lessons. His wife, Viviane, a distr...
Pierre is the artistic director of a theater, and when his daughter Manon lets him know that she is coming to see him after a year's absence, Pierre decides to prepare for the meeting. He goes to the theater with his girlfriend Ariane and has the actresses in his troupe act out different aspects of his daughter's character. Unfortunately, this is not adequate preparation, for when Manon does show up, nothing goes quite as he imagined......
A French man spies on a lovely younger woman across the way. When he's spotted by the woman shortly after being questioned by the police about a local murder, the man's simple life becomes more complicated....
A woman becomes trapped in the middle of a feud between two men while attempting to free her younger brother from a life of petty crime....
Le Cou de la girafe (The Giraffe's Neck) is a 2004 French/Belgian film directed by Safy Nebbou....
After biologist Sylvie discovers her brother Paul trying to steal a gun from her lab, he explains that he wishes to avenge the death of their father whom he suspects died at the hands of his business partner....
The epic tale of an American reconnaissance pilot downed in occupied Belgium at the height of World War II. Hidden by resistance fighters, the pilot falls in love with the wife of the man who will save him. When their affair is exposed, an act of betrayal threatens their lives and the entire resistance movement, forcing the pilot to make a powerful choice that could change the course of the war....
Italy, 1977. Professor Bruschi is a retired widower who lives according to a strict routine he set for himself. An ardent old-style communist, he has always been at odds with the unconventional lifestyle led by his son and his hippieish girlfriend Stella. When their four-year-old daughter is left in his care out of the blue after the two break up, the old professor becomes a sort of father figure to the girl, growing fond of her. However he's once again challenged when Stella also arrives for a ...
In an increasingly crazy world, Lino, who has decided to leave everything behind, will come to realise that, at the end of the day, everything that happens to us is for our own good!...
Unable to forget her first love, Félicité, a simple and kind maid, devotes herself completely to her new master, Mathilde Aubain. As the passing of time doesn't heal her wounds, she gives love to all those who surround her: Mathilde's children, her nephew Victor. But fate seems to always deny her from any love in return. Still she tries to find someone who'll accept her unconditional love....
Claire is a young woman who leads a somewhat formatted life. Pierre is an improviser, but not an actor. Brief encounter, brief romance, doomed or not, who can say? When things like that happen, you act on the spur of the moment....
Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made....
A documentary on filmmaker Claude Lelouch, following him over seven years....
Dimitri joins La Maison, a place where people are welcomed for whom medicine can not do anything anymore. There he meets Suzanne, a volunteer who is dedicated to supporting people at the end of their lives....
Convinced that only she can lead France to victory against the invading English, Jeanne d'Arc leaves her childhood home to plead Charles, heir to the French throne, to allow her to guide his troops on the battlefield....
Jeanne d'Arc has succeeded in lifting the siege on Orléans and Charles VII has been ordained King of France. However, she is injured in her failed attempt to take Paris, weakening her position at court. When she is finally captured and put on trial, she finds both her life and the sanctity of her body at stake....
A young French teenage girl after moving to a new city falls in love with a boy and is thinking of having sex with him because her girlfriends have already done it....
An animated feature-length documentary telling the story of the life of Crulic, a 33 year-old Romanian accused of having stolen a wallet from an important Polish judge. Crulic was brought to the Krakow Detention Center Custody prison. He decided to start a hunger strike from the day he was arrested, demanding a meeting with somebody from the Romanian Consulate....
Three women live together in an old rectory on the seashore. Alda lends her body to a string of carnal relationships but never commits her feelings. Olga, the elder sister, has opted for a reclusive life as the soul of the household. Her daughter, Sigga, is a young adolescent. The house harbors a finely balanced marriage between desire and memory—until Olga’s destiny tips the scales....
Alexander is a young, emotionally-repressed Scot who, upset by his Czechoslovakian mother's death, journeys to Prague to scatter her ashes and track down a piece of film that contains the only existing footage of his family....
A European researcher is abducted by some ill-educated rebels in a North African country. Their reasons are unclear......
Bank manager Frank and writer Patrizia meet by coincidence again and again at the airport. They commute between Dusseldorf and Paris, but behind their travels are two fateful stories. Frank wants to complete the business of his life, Patrizia visits her lover, who is in a coma since a car accident. For both life comes out of joint and they each suffer heavy losses. What connects them is the search for hold, a listener, the need to be needed and the hope that there is a beginning in each end....
Parisian bon vivant, World War II Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband and recluse…Samuel Beckett lived a life of many parts. Titled after Beckett’s famous ethos “Dance first, think later”, the film is a sweeping account of the life of this 20th-century icon....
A war photographer and absent father, who spends more time taking care of his camera than his four daughters, enjoys a happy life in the Alps with his new girlfriend. But his life is turned upside down the day that his best friend tries to reconcile him with his family by telling them a big lie....
In 1972 16-year-old Marie-Claire became pregnant after a rape. With help from her mother Michelle and three other women, she underwent a clandestine abortion. Under a 1920 law, the five women were arrested and charged. Supported by a procession of well-known French (eg Simone de Beauvoir), the five were released and the law was adapted....
In Russia, in 1907, a rich lenient husband of a loose unfaithful woman is brutally murdered. She and her two lovers are suspects, but what about the stranger she met just before the murder? With no friends left, she and the stranger bond....
In a city in South America an outbreak of bubonic plague occurs. While people try to flee and the military close the city, an idealistic doctor decides to stay and help the sick. In the ever-changing circumstances, he puts up a brave fight, being helped by others but also involving them without being able to control the situation....
In July 1942, during the Vel’ d’Hiv’ Roundup of Jewish families in Paris, 13 year old Tauba Birenbaum and her parents, who are Polish Jews, find refuge in a tiny room for the next 765 days. Living conditions are tough and they fear being discovered at any moment. But while her parents sink further into despair, Tauba’s fighting spirit shines through. She finds joy in every little thing, from a piano drawn on the floor, to the views of Paris through an open window. Despite extreme circumstances, ...
Thomas Murray and Amanda have just moved to Paris. He works for a bank owned by Amanda's father Arthur Trevane. Amanda decides that she does not like Paris, so she goes back to London. But trouble begins on a drive through the countryside, where he meets a free spirit whose charms pressure his long-distance marriage....
Brest, the end of the world. A young woman's foot is found near the sea. Alma Schneider, a cop fresh from Paris, leads the investigation. She can only count on the support of César Istria, forensic pathologist and passionate archaeologist. Together, they find the site where the victim is believed to have been buried. But the body they exhume is not that of a woman! It's that of a man, probably a sailor. Not one murder to solve, but two... And the mystery thickens still further when they realize ...
When Lili, 26 years old, poor, single mother of three, is wrongly accused of abuse and the social services take away her children, she collapses. But this is without counting on the luminous meeting of other women. With them, Lili fights to rebuild her family....
A little town in the north of France, 1941. Blanche has three children. She worries about her husband Victor, who often goes out at night. Actually, Victor belongs to the Resistance. Soon, Blanche will be a resistant too. In the network, there is also Germinal, the hairdresser. His daughter Marie knows everything and asks to be part of it... Chronicle of the occupation and of the resistance through the eyes of the women....
When her husband is arrested, all Lucie's bearings seem to crumble. To rebuild her life and give it new meaning, she entrusts her kids to her mother and isolates herself on the coast near Bordeaux. But the kids decide to go look for her....
Two quarreling lovers from opposite sides of the economic scale take central stage in this drama about Veronique and Adrien. Veronique is wealthy and from the provinces, Adrien is impoverished and his ancestors come from Brittany. In spite of their different backgrounds, the two fall in love, marry, and eventually have a baby girl. At just about that time, Veronique decides to go back to school, and Adrien becomes both mother and father to their baby. Unable to cope with Veronique's new-found in...
At 92 years old, Madeleine decides to set the date and conditions of her death. By telling her daughter Diane and her son Pierre, she hopes to prepare them as gently as possible but it comes as a shock, and their minds are set ablaze. Until the end, Madeleine will keep her dignity, wits, and passion for life as a course of conduct, so she can give them all, and in particular Diane, a touching “final lesson”....
In the 1970s, the house of Plessis welcomes young pregnant minors. Even though these unborn children are the fruit of love or rape, in this institution, a single slogan: put these girls in the right way. But the day when the revolt rumbles, the mechanism fails... A story deliberately based on real events....
Simon Granderath has been found dead in his appartment. His only daughter, Monika Besse, who lives in Luxembourg, arrives to arrange the funeral and settle his estate. She wishes to get back to Luxembourg and to her normal life as quickly as possible. However, she quickly realizes that in fact, she hardly knew her father, and tries to trace the various stages and encounters that made up his life. Much later, she realizes that the search for the identity of her father has actually become a sear...
Mélanie, 16 years old, lives with her mother. She likes going to school, her friends, playing the cello, and she wants to change the world. But when she meets a boy on the Internet and falls in love with him, her world changes as she is gradually recruited by Daesh. Sonia is 17 years old, and she almost did something irrevocable to “guarantee” her family a place in paradise. These teenage girls might be called Anaïs, Manon or Leila, and one day they all might go some way down the recruitment pro...
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....
Edith, a 45-year-old textile factory worker, sees her life turned upside down by the company’s downsizing measures. Estranged from her son and without any other ties, rather than go into unemployment, she decides to leave her life behind and follow her work at the factory which has been relocated in Morocco....
An African high school teacher flees his war-torn country for France, where he falls in love with a Frenchwoman who offers a roof for him and his family....
Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff,...
18 years after the making of the film "Vagabond", director Agnès Varda created this documentary which includes interviews with the cast....
A devastated mother's desperate search for her daughter....
Fresh out of jail, Ulysse has only one idea in mind: making money. Confronted by his depressed mother, Gabrielle, the bills that never stop piling up and his desire to live his life to the full, he makes a plan. With his best friend, David, he travels from rave to rave, selling a mixture of water and Ketamine from their food truck. Together, they hit the road......
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Inept policemen try to stop an amoral young duo on a spree of robbery and murder in France....
An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Agnès Varda’s last film sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls "cine-writing," traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing....
On the night of November 13, 2015, a woman who lives behind the Bataclan and a man who happens to pass by help the injured as they flee the terrorists and the hell of the attack. A few days later, they are contacted by the people they rescued, who want to meet the strangers who helped them that night. The man and the woman meet again. Is the passion they feel real? Or is it just the romantic illusion they invented to compensate for the trauma they experienced together? From hospital rooms to caf...
Christmas 1999, in a peaceful little village in the Ardennes. The life of a young boy named Antoine will soon be devastated by three tragic events : the death of a dog, the vanishing of a child, and a big ravaging storm....
Jeanne works as an auxiliary in a maternity in Marseilles. Day and night, Jeanne and her colleagues fight to help mothers and their babies against the lack of staff and constant management pressure. Jeanne lives with her 18 year-old daughter, Zoé. When a tragedy occurs at the maternity and Zoé leaves to study in Paris, Jeanne’s secret past suddenly resurfaces and forces her to assert her life choices....
Spring 2004, a house with a large garden welcomes filmmaker Claude Chabrol. He is about to celebrate his 54 films and 74 years of age. Thomas Chabrol, the filmmaker's son, as the perfect butler, is checking the table. "Figu", Claude's film sutler, plunges a lobster into the cauldron... The great merry-go-round can begin!...
Following a near-death experience France's leading chef throws himself into a quest seeking the flavor that has confounded his life since he was defeated by a Japanese chef's bowl of noodles as a young man....
France, 1963. Anne is a bright young student with a promising future ahead of her. But when she falls pregnant, she sees the opportunity to finish her studies and escape the constraints of her social background disappearing. With her final exams fast approaching and her belly growing, Anne resolves to act, even if she has to confront shame and pain, even if she must risk prison to do so....
After shooting to fame with Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960), actor Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996) starred in more than 160 films in his nearly half-a-century career. Directors Mario Canale and Annarosa Morri look into the melancholic charm of one of the most famous Italian actors through interviews with his two daughters, Barbara and Chiara; directors Fellini and Luchino Visconti; actresses Claudia Cardinale and Anouk Aimee; and in archival footage of Mastroianni himself. The subject...
Exclusively created with period engravings, this animated feature explores the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the ensuing Paris Commune revolution in 1871....
Two brothers set fire to a barn while drunk, inadvertently causing the death of a sleeping wanderer. One of them takes all the blame for the incident and spends ten years in prison....
A $10-million diamond rip-off, a stolen identity, a new life married to a diplomat. Laure Ash has risked big, won big. But then a tabloid shutterbug snaps her picture in Paris, and suddenly, enemies from Laure's secret past know who and where she is. And they all want their share of the diamond heist. Or her life. Or both....
Angele kills the bank robber who has taken her as hostage and deposits the money. The police and a privat eye of the insurance compnay are suspicious. Leslie, the girlfriend of the robber, attracts Angele and they start a journey to the mountains. Do they become real friends?...
This short musical film is a rereading of “La lettre à David” taken from “César et Rosalie” by Claude Sautet. A tribute to cinema, to actresses, to film music....
Director Agnes Varda and composer Joanna Brusdowicz discuss the music they created for Varda's film 'Sans Toi Ni Loi' [Vagabond], and the dolly shots that the music accompanies during the film....
Actor Jane Birkin talks about her friendship with director Agnes Varda, and about their work on 'Jane B. Par Agnes V.' and Kung-Fu Master!'....
Le Nouvel Hiver is a slightly disillusioned reflection on the state of the world (the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the USSR, the Gulf War), the events of which are the thread of this year's Notebooks (1 January 1991 to 31 December 1991). Of course, these Notebooks are far from this sinister current events because life is elsewhere, in creation and in a quest for the absolute. And then, Le Nouvel Hiver takes us into surprising encounters (with Ken Loach, Brigitte Lahaie) and transports us ...