To film is to believe in the revelation of cinema,
the simplest and most radical revelation:
that the present is transformed into presence,
that an action becomes a story,
that a human becomes a hero,
that a location becomes a place.
In the Makarenko public elementary school in the Paris outskirts,
children want to learn and to be cheered while teachers know they do not only teach,
they also educate.
With care, tenacity and efforts, children are trained to become not only responsible citizens but also human beings.
Claire Simon observes the everyday operations of the gynecological ward in a public hospital in Paris. She meets patients in all stages of life-young and old, cisgender and trans. Unique stories of fertility, gender transitions, and cancer unfold, including the one of the filmmaker herself.
A man involved in a passionate relationship with a celebrated writer Marguerite Duras of 38 years his senior needs to talk. He is fascinated by her and yet he feels he just cannot go on anymore. He opens up, in an attempt to put into words the intensity of his love and he describes it with great clarity. César-winning actors Emmanuelle Devos and Swann Arlaud co-star as Manceaux and Andréa in the film, which is based on a transcript of a 1982 interview between Andréa and writer and journalist Michèle Manceaux.
Garage engines and men A pretty little village in Provence. Yes, I grew up there but it seems to me today that life has somewhat deserted it. Apart from here, at the garage, that everyone, meaning the men, comes to in order to get their cars looked after. What do they do? What do they talk about? A breakdown turns into a puzzle full of suspense. The garage becomes the place for male transmission. There are only men here, and they repair metal bodies.
It's winter in the small village of Lussas, in the Ardèche, and the farmers are are busy pruning their vines. With the support of mayor Jean-Paul Roux, his old school friend Jean-Marie Barbe embarks on a very unique venture: the creation of a subscription-based digital platform platform dedicated to auteur documentaries. This was the birth Tënk, a rural start-up. Alongside Jean-Marie, will the team win the challenge of this economic venture?
Lussas, a small French village in the Ardèche department. Here, fruit is grown, wine is made and documentary films are made. A group of enthusiasts embarked on the construction of a new building, L'Imaginaire, and created a platform dedicated to auteur documentaries, Tënk.
This is a portrait of an age of life: 16/18 years old.
At that age, if we're lucky, we're in high school, here we are in Ivry and we chat between classes, even sometimes during classes. Sitting in the hallway or outside on a bench or on the parapet with a view of the city. The young people talk in pairs or threes and they discover their respective stories, those they inherit, the family, and they talk about their passions and their solitudes.
At this age everyone sees the moment when they will have to leave the family, when it exists... And flee it even more when it is completely broken. Being alone is good and bad. We search, we discuss it.
The Competition begins, significantly, with the image of a locked gate—that of La Fémis, one of the most prestigious film schools in the world, offering hands-on training from working professionals and accepting only 40 students per year from hundreds of applicants. This Wiseman-esque documentary from Claire Simon, one of France’s premiere nonfiction filmmakers, observes the process whereby those lucky 40 are selected—a process that is revealed to be highly personal, idiosyncratic, and subject to the vagaries of taste and personal prejudice.
Funny, penetrating, and surprisingly suspenseful, The Competition offers not only a unique opportunity to see the inner workings of an institution at the very heart of the French film industry but an invitation to look at the assumptions and roadblocks that shape any national film industry, and higher education in general.
As a reachable form of a lost Eden within everyone’s grasp, everybody comes to the Bois de Vincennes to seek refuge in Nature. People from all walks of life have the right to be here: rich, poor, french, foreign, gay, straight, alone or accompanied, old school or hip. The Woods are an island surrounded by the towns that encircle it: a mirage dreamed-up by a fatigued city-dweller. The difficulty of living in the city is left behind. Here we heal, we play, we have fun and we dream. Throughout the seasons, the series of exchanges speak of this utopia that everyone imagines for him or herself.
Paris, Gare du Nord, where anything can to pass here, even trains. We'd like to stay, but we have to hurry... Ismaël, Mathilde, Sacha and Joan, like the thousands of lives that cross their paths, will meet there. Every day, Ismaël is dazzled, fascinated and exhausted by this place. It was on the platform of the RER that he saw Mathilde for the first time. Little by little, they fall in love. They meet Sacha and Joan. Sacha is looking for his missing daughter, Joan spends her life in this station between Lille, London and Paris. The station is like a bubble through which everyone passes: French people, immigrants, emigrants, travellers, ghosts... It's a crossroads where every life passes quickly and disappears.
A film about and in a station... yes, at the Gare du Nord in Paris... The biggest station in Europe, the third biggest in the world... Of course, it is an excessive location, immoderate for a film. It is a wide open place, both modem and old. And the Gare du Nord is an amalgam of 5, 6 stations clustering together: the high-speed RER suburban train station, the metro, the suburban station, the regional trains, the Intercity station, Eurostar and the bus station above the new glass roof. It is the station of DIVERSITY... What does the Gare du Nord do for humans? It's random, of course, at the whim of the success of a film-making encounter with a view to finding out the path that brought this or that person here, to this place in the Station. Their path and not just their daily journey. The path taken by the person to get there, whether they were born in London, Paris, Aubervilies Brazzaville or Tizi-Ouzou. Their life path, their personal geography.
Djamila would like to be on the pill because her relationship with her boyfriend has become serious; Zoe ‘s mother gives her condoms but calls her daughter a whore;Helene complaints about being too fertile; Nedjma hides her pills from home because her mother searches her bag ; Adeline wishes she could have kept it, so does Margot. Maria Angela would like to know who she’s pregnant from,while Ana Maria has chosen love and freedom. The advisers are played by very famous actresses. They listen to each patient of the family planning, they wonder how to cope with sexual freedom. In God’s offices you laugh and cry and feel swamped.
24 June, it's almost the holidays and already summer. The teenagers of a village in the south of France, in search of sensuality, are trying their hand at desire. Livia, a solitary 15-year-old rider, prefers to be transported, carried away and consoled by her horse. But when fireman Jean Susini rescues her from a nasty fall, she falls in love. As the hours go by, the teenager begins to pursue this older man with her burning passion. Her desire is devouring her, taking her one step at a time up the ladder of exaltation, consuming her - to what point?
I wanted to make a film about Mimi's life. About someone's life, therefore. To get as close as possible to this singularity in order to encounter the romance of a real life. I was going to discover her by filming her. There, on her island in Nice, or in the mountains, at the whim of the family or unknown places where I filmed her, I waited for her story that I didn't yet know to come back to her, and for her to tell me the scenes that make up her personal novel
Manon is 15. On holiday, she met 17-year-old Greg. He lives in Claviers, a small village in the Haut-Var, and she lives in Paris. Greg and Manon are in love. Portrait of a young man in the world around him when his girlfriend is there, when their story exists and confronts history and geography Ça c’est vraiment toi The film tells the story of young Antoine at the European Parliament in Strasbourg .He’s just finished political science studies and looking for work. He can see himself as parliamentary asistant . He would also like to get back with Cleo who has been working in the audio visual department of Parliament for some time. Cleo doesn't have very good memories of him and the deputies think more about the war raging in Kosovo and the forthcoming European elections than finding a new assistant. During this week of parliamentary session, the young man discovers the theatre of democracy, and of love, and measures the anguish of commitment, whether political or romantic.
The film tells the story of young Antoine at the European Parliament in Strasbourg .He’s just finished political science studies and looking for work. He can see himself as parliamentary asistant . He would also like to get back with Cleo who has been working in the audio visual department of Parliament for some time. Cleo doesn't have very good memories of him and the deputies think more about the war raging in Kosovo and the forthcoming European elections than finding a new assistant. During this week of parliamentary session, the young man discovers the theatre of democracy, and of love, and measures the anguish of commitment, whether political or romantic.
The story of a woman who unwittingly lets her husband thinks she’s pregnant. He doesn’t want the child and she refuses to have an abortion( since she isn’t pregnant).Little by little this belief in her pregnancy repairs the bond with her husband, bolsters her ailing father and delights those around her. Day after day the fiction takes form, and nothing seems able to stop it . With this film I started from a true story which allowed me to concentrate on the story it self and not it’s plausibility. It is as old as the Judgment of King Salomon , but azt the same time it has cropped up in newspapers in different forms over the last ten years. It is both ancient and very modern because it is built around a question touching n ideals: might transcendence come only from our children
Produce at all costs! Save the business at all costs! Even if you don't get paid straight away, keep going at all costs! Find new customers at all costs! New suppliers at all costs! The film tells the story of a small, company ,still in its early days where ready meals are prepared for supermarkets. The boss and employees lead an economic war on a shoe string.
“I was looking to film people who want a weapon, here in France, where it is prohibited. [...] In the armory, we feel this fiction of the passage to action, where the potential buyer tells himself a story, asks himself what he is going to and what he can buy. » (Claire Simon)
Something has happened to Marie, quite a story... but it's not what she thought. She doesn't like going down into the cellar. One day, she saw some squatters, one them with a beard at the far end of the cellar. She was so scared, she closed the door and went to tell the police.
A woman cleans her house, from time to time, when she can, like everyone else. When her hands are busy, she dreams, she makes a wish which she immediately grants in thought.
10 domestic scenes, 10 housework, 10 marital reveries
There is a kind of country tiny so small that it resembles a theater set. It is inhabited two or three times a day by its people.The inhabitants are small as well. Even if they live under certain laws, they repeatedly put them into question, which lead them to fight violently with each other. The country is called “the court” and its people “the children” . When “the children” go into “the court” they discover and feel the power of feelings or human servitude. This is called “ Playtime”
When I go to the doctor, what always surprises me is that he knows something about my life that I don't know. And it's this relationship that I wanted to film, between the doctor, the one who knows, and the patients, who come to ask him how they are. To do this, I met a GP who agreed to let me film him during his consultations. He was about to retire. It was a very important issue for him too.
While looking after little Marie, Irma receives a call from her fiancé, who asks her to join. She left the girl to have her lunch and go to schoolalone.
A modest secretary at the Varan workshops, Patricia dreams of becoming an actress.
The cash flow problems of Simon, son of an emigrant, in a village in Haut-Var. Claire Simon follows him throughout his fairly idle days.
During a vacation day, the filmmaker films her crippled father and the person who takes care of him.
Free adaptation of Faulkner's novel and the excitement (and me') caused by the Patrick Henry and Ranucci affairs.
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