Films/By Country

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  Baby Love

  France, 2008, 90 min.

  Manu, a 40-something gay pediatrician, is determined to have a child, against the desires of both his long-time partner Phillippe and French law. While same-sex unions are legal in France, gay adoption is not. This timely, bittersweet dramedy highlights the struggle of one man’s desperate attempts to become a father. …

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  The Beaches of Agnès

  France, 2008, 109 min.

  One of the leading lights of the Nouvelle Vague, filmmaker Agnès Varda has created an this inventive, eloquent memoir in her 80th year, assuring audiences that her creative powers are far from dimming. Using photographs, vintage footage, and present-day sequences, Varda weaves a fascinating portrait of a creative life lived to the fullest. …

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  No Age performs “The Bear”

  France, 1989, 94 min.

  Psychedelic mushroom trips and budding companionship are woodland fun at its finest for orphaned bear cub Douce and the ornery Bart, but the invasive fear of being hunted drives our four-legged protagonists forward in this Jean-Jacques Annaud film. Los Angeles art-punk duo No Age will add their musical interpretation by performing original music during the screening. …

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  Beauties at War

  France, 2008, 89 min.

  The provincial town of Charmoussey is about to be annexed by its larger, snootier neighbor, Upper Charmoussey. In this farcical underdog fable, the town pins its hope of survival on winning the local beauty pageant, and it’s up to the town’s prodigal son, a failed TV actor, to redeem himself and coach the amateur contestants to success. …

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  Black

  France, 2008, 110 min.

  A funky riff on the theme music from 2001: A Space Odyssey opens Black, a new crime thriller from France. The catchy redux leads to a bank robbery that goes quickly awry, a maniacal, island-dwelling millionaire who’s slowly turning into a snake, a volatile and crazy Russian general, witches, witch doctors, bare Nubian breasts, gunfire, machete-wielding wrestlers, and two ... …

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  Bluebeard

  France, 2009, 80 min.

  In this highly stylized and literary adaptation of the French fairy tale is about a nobleman with a penchant for marrying women who mysteriously disappear. Catherine Breillat captures the pleasure to be had both in being frightened, and in facing one’s fears head-on. …

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  Daddy Cool

  France, 2008, 94 min.

  Philippe Tallec returns to France after 15 years to look after his teenage daughter. But he’s out of his depth and she’s got other things on her mind—namely boys. A family-friendly comedy about a father and daughter learning to love and live with each other. …

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  Final Arrangements

  France, 2008, 100 min.

  Struggling musician Gabriel reluctantly accepts a position in the funeral business, but is unable to admit to what he does for a living. Michel Delgado’s darkly funny feature debut wrings wry laughs out of potentially macabre material as Gabriel clashes with a bitter co-worker and finds himself attracted to a beautiful client. …

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  A French Gigolo

  France, 2008, 102 min.

  Judith is a chic, successful, single woman in her 50s, who prefers the no-strings-attached services of male escorts. But when she meets the charming, good-natured Marco, she becomes drawn into a complicated romantic triangle with the troubled young man and his wife in this candid exploration of the relationship between love, desire, and economic reality. …

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  French Roast

  France, 2008, 9 min.

  In a fancy Parisian Café, an uptight businessman discovers he forgot to bring his wallet and bides his time by ordering more coffee. …

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  The Girl from Monaco

  France, 2008, 95 min.

  With the glittering hills of Monaco as a backdrop, the film starts out as a light, love-triangle romantic comedy about a lovelorn Parisian lawyer, a sexy TV weathergirl, and the lawyer’s overprotective bodyguard. However, things take a darker, satirical turn as the level of obsession ratchets up. …

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  Give Me Your Hand

  France, 2009, 80 min.

  A pair of identical twin brothers decide to walk to their mother’s funeral and run into a series of increasingly strange and erotic encounters with people along the way. While technically a road movie, this atmospheric film is more of an analysis about sexuality, symbiotic love, rivalry, and jealousy between siblings. …

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  God's Offices

  France, 2008, 115 min.

  Women of all ages, ethnicities, religions, and backgrounds meet in the waiting room of a busy family planning clinic in Paris. They’ve come in search of advice, birth control, abortion, or just a listening ear. Featuring a stellar cast of veteran French actresses, God's Offices is about the very business of life itself. …

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  Inju, the Beast in the Shadow

  France, 2008, 105 min.

  This elegant suspense thriller, based on a novel by the great Japanese crime writer Edogawa Rampo, is a tale of intellectual and erotic obsession that pits callow French novelist Alex Fayard against a diabolical Japanese mastermind. …

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  Khamsa

  France, 2008, 110 min.

  Franco-Tunisian writer-director Karim Dridi’s latest is a poignant tale reminiscent of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. Thirteen-year-old Khamsa flees his foster family for the Marseilles Gypsy camp where he was born. Embraced by his old friends, Khamsa's innocence begins to vanish when they involve him in a series of increasingly serious crimes. …

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  Kimjongilia

  France, 2009, 75 min.

  N.C. Heikin’s documentary gives long overdue voice to those who’ve suffered under Kim Jong-il’s reign. Though the film maintains a furious tone, it is far from homogenous as it playfully mixes interviews, dance performances, propaganda films, and animation. The result is a devastating indictment of one of the world’s worst dictators and a call for justice …

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  Lost Paradise

  France, 2008, 10 min.

  In this modern parable of Adam and Eve, a couple spends a passionate night in a cheap hotel, only to find afterwards that clothes make all the difference. …

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  Melodrama Habibi

  France, 2008, 98 min.

  Bruno, a French one-hit-wonder crooner, is slouching into a grudging retirement from music when he gets an offer to sing for a fan in Lebanon. Though he’s never played in Lebanon before, Bruno jumps at the chance. This crowd pleaser celebrates how music shapes our memories, both real and imagined. …

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  Mesrine: A Film in Two Parts (Part 1)

  France, 2008, 110 min.

  This two-fisted, two-part epic charts the remarkable 20-year crime spree of Jacques Mesrine, France’s public enemy number one. Mesrine, winner the César Award for Best Film and Sound, charts the notorious criminal’s dodgy past brutal honesty and gripping, unsentimental realism. The kinetic production works its retro settings, sharp performances, and superb international locations for a huge …

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  Mesrine: A Film in Two Parts (Part 2)

  France, 2008, 132 min.

  This two-fisted, two-part epic charts the remarkable 20-year crime spree of Jacques Mesrine, France’s public enemy number one. Mesrine, winner the César Award for Best Film and Sound, charts the notorious criminal’s dodgy past brutal honesty and gripping, unsentimental realism. The kinetic production works its retro settings, sharp performances, and superb international locations for a huge …

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  Modern Life

  France, 2008, 88 min.

  As small family farming disappears from the French countryside, the people who have worked the land for generations refuse to give up and let their livelihoods crumble around them. Director Raymond Depardon shares his affection and respect for these troubled families through striking images that divulge the naked truth of the situation. …

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  OSS 117: Lost in Rio

  France, 2009, 100 min.

  Twelve years after his adventures in Cairo, agent OSS 117 is back for another mission at the end of the world. He teams up with a sexy Mossad agent to capture a Nazi blackmailer. Lost in Rio features a jubilantly retro score and a flair for using 1960s vocabulary to revisit colonial arrogance. Recommended for ages 13+. …

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  OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

  France, 2006, 99 min.

  See how it all began for Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, aka agent OSS 117, France’s answer to James Bond, Maxwell Smart and Austin Powers. In this special outdoor screening, see the first in this hilarious series of spy-spoof films as OSS 117 goes undercover in Cairo to investigate the murder of a fellow agent. Winner of the SIFF 2006 Audience Award. Ages 13+. …

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  A Pain in the Ass

  France, 2008, 84 min.

  The latest comedy from Francis Veber pairs a cold-as-ice assassin and a would-be suicide case to create an unlikely friendship as the men’s disparate lives cross paths at a hotel. Complete with slamming doors, slapstick humor, and mistaken identities, this is classic farce that only the French can truly pull off. …

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  Séraphine

  France, 2008, 121 min.

  Winner Best Actress, Yolande Moreau - SIFF 2009 Golden Space Needle Audience Awards
  This transcendent biopic charts the life of self-taught primitivist artist Séraphine de Senlis, who worked as a maid in early 20th-century France, and painted with everything she could find in her spare time. The film recounts the artist’s rise and fall, from wide acclaim during World War II to her drift …

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  Stella

  France, 2008, 102 min.

  Wryly-philosophical Stella, whose parents run a boisterous working-class bar, lands, by a fluke, in an exclusive Paris high school. Though well versed in soccer, mixology, and pop music, Stella soon realizes she lacks the requisite knowledge to survive on this alien planet. From director Verheyde’s childhood memories, Stella is a moving yet unsentimental glance into a young woman's journey. …

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  Summer Hours

  France, 2008, 102 min.

  This gorgeous return to form from Assayas, depicting a family’s efforts to come to terms with the death of its popular matriarch, is a beautiful, naturalistic, insightful, and very moving exploration of the passing of time and the transience of art, familial relationships, and traditions. …

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  The Wedding Song

  France, 2008, 84 min.

  Unfolding against the dramatic backdrop of the Third Reich’s occupation of Tunis in 1942, this sensual and sexually frank film centers on teen friends and neighbors whose cultures and religions collide. As political and social tensions mount, Jewish Myriam and Muslim Nour find historical circumstances and family obligations altering each of their wedding plans. …

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  Welcome

  France, 2008, 116 min.

  A smoothly crafted, emotionally affecting drama driven by powerful performances, Welcome focuses on illegal immigrants trying to reach England from Calais, and the risk taken by the French people who help them despite threats from the police. Winner of Berlin International Film Festival’s Ecumenical Jury and Label Europa Cinemas awards. …

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  With a Little Help from Myself

  France, 2008, 92 min.

  Sonia (Félicité Wouassi in a tour-de-force performance), an African immigrant living in the projects outside Paris, just wants to watch her daughter get married, but the cops arrest her son and her husband gambles away their savings in this darkly comic, deeply sympathetic portrait of a harried working mother. …