French
see all genres ›Cinema was born in France (or at least the public exhibition of motion pictures) and the medium shows no signs of slowing down. France remains the go-to first stop for many film buffs seeking foreign alternatives to commercial formula since French filmmakers have a justifiable reputation for unaffected, intimately-scaled dramas of everyday life.
Discover French Films
Genres / International / European / French
-
The Automatic Moving Company
Historian Donald Crafton credits this 1911 Pathé Frères film THE AUTOMATIC MOVING COMPANY to Romeo Bosetti; it too is an imitation of an earlier work, Emile Cohl's MOBILIER FIDELE, made in 1910 for Pathe's rival, Gaumont. However, Cohl also worked for Pathe in 1911 and the two artists sometimes...Start your free trial to watch -
Autour de la roue
Widely regarded as one of the most innovative productions of the silent era, Abel Gance’s LA ROUE is a film of mythic stature. Poet and novelist Blaise Cendrars shot this illuminating behind-the-scenes footage in the midst of the film’s difficult location work. He captures the elaborate technical setups...Start your free trial to watch -
Avenue de l'Opera
You aren't imaging things. This short, filmed on the aforementioned Avenue de l'Opera in Paris, is backward as intended. As a bit of excessive cleverness, the music (a recent addition) is scored (or, rather, recorded) back-to-front as well. If you'd ever wondered what things were like in the most famous...Start your free trial to watch
-
Avida
Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern, co-directors of the 2005 cult favorite AALTRA, return with AVIDA, another eye-popping dark comedy. The loony French filmmakers appear in leading roles as two of the three men whose plan to kidnap a wealthy woman's dog goes horribly awry. Instead of nabbing the dog, the "kidnappers" are...Start your free trial to watch -
Back to Normandy
BACK TO NORMANDY is a film about the passage of time. In seeking out the cast, Philibert explores how we make connections between past and present, creating our own meaningful and personal narratives. As Phillibert reveals the motivations for the crime of Pierre Rivière, we also learn of the mysterious...Start your free trial to watch -
Baron Münchausen’s Dream
The legendary Baron Münchausen (an actual German aristocrat well-known for his exaggerated stories) has been portrayed many times in dozens of films over the years. In this telling by the equally remarkable Georges Méliès, Münchausen has spent an evening dining with his friends. He retires for the night...Start your free trial to watch
-
The Beaches of Agnès
A reflection on art, life and the movies, THE BEACHES OF AGNES is a magnificent film from the great Agnes Varda, director of CLEO FROM 5 TO 7, a richly cinematic self portrait that touches on everything from the feminist movement and the Black Panthers to the films of husband Jacques Demy (THE UMBRELLAS OF...Start your free trial to watch -
Bestiaire
Fascinating and beguiling, BESTIAIRE is filmmaker Denis Côté's mesmerizing meditation on the relationships between animals and people through the seasons at a Quebec safari park. This strikingly gorgeous work about the act of looking slyly blurs the line between observer and observed (the film opens with art students...Start your free trial to watch
-
Between Calais and Dover
Having just completed a series of films imagining events from the 1897 Greco-Turkish War, including THE SURRENDER OF TOURNAVOS, MASSACRE IN CRETE and SEA FIGHTING IN GREECE, Georges Méliès reapplies the rocking-ship technique from the last of these to a pure amusement. Passengers crossing the English...Start your free trial to watch -
The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ
Over the course of a little more than thirty-three-and-a-half minutes (or essentially a minute for each year of what is conventionally assumed to be the entirety of his life), the full story of Jesus Christ is conveyed by French director Alice Guy. The nativity, the parables, the disciples, the miracles,...Start your free trial to watch -
The Bolivian Diary
Over 40 years ago, on October 9, 1967, Ernesto Che Guevara was executed by the Bolivian army, aided by the CIA. Guevara’s diary, a detailed, personal account of his futile eleven-month attempt to foment revolution in Bolivia, is the basis of this moving portrait. Che’s relationship with the mysterious...Start your free trial to watch
-
Bout de Zan Steals an Elephant
Bout de Zan is a young boy by description and a petty thief by vocation. In this short, he does indeed steal an elephant from a circus. However, an elephant is a bit more than one kid can handle. The elephant has ideas of its own and, soon enough, decides it can do anything a person can do. Perhaps even...Start your free trial to watch
-
The Burglars
Alice Guy's brief THE BURGLARS takes a classic cops-and-robbers set-up and places it upon the roofs of Paris circa late-1800s (albeit a Méliès-like set that approximates the city skyline). Second-story men have considerable difficulties once the French police get involved!Start your free trial to watch -
C'est parti
One morning in a building on the outskirts of Paris, men and women of all ages begin to empty a large office. They threw dozens of files out the window. Among the people, Olivier Besancenot, the famous 35-year-old leader of the French radical left. He and his friends are getting rid of the archives which have been...Start your free trial to watch




