Elina Löwensohn

In a contemporary New York City, members of a dysfunctional family of vampires are trying to come to terms with each other, in the wake of their father's death. Meanwhile, they are being hunted by Dr. Van Helsing and his hapless nephew. As in all good vampire movies, forces of love are pitted against forces of destruction.

Tom Flynn, the idealist owner of a left-leaning radical café/bookstore and the quixotic publisher of a hard hitting 911 conspiracy expose, finds himself entangled with a mysterious Eastern European beauty, Kasia, who is on the run from strong hand of a global 911 cover up. In this contemporary take on film noir. When Tom is implicated in the murder of his friend and employee, he is forced to unravel Kasia's complex web of lies. As it turns out, Kasia possesses the smoking gun that proves the identities and methods of the real architects of 911, and Tom Flynn is willing to die to expose the truth. Written by Dave Herman

A young woman prepares a recipe for American-style lobster, which calls for cutting the live lobster into pieces, before throwing it, still alive, into boiling oil. Alone in her kitchen, faced with the two lobsters that are still moving, she tries to kill them as cleanly as possible.

In a world in decay, a woman collects her dead animals and restores them to life by filming them images by image.

According to an English legend, Joan of Arc never died at the stake. Her eyes were seared with hot pokers and she was deflowered by an English stud. She was then sentenced to wander on the battlefields, like a vulture, on the look-out for life and searching for any virgins left alive.

Two actresses rehearse a play during a week-end in a country house. But one of them digs up a strange thing from earth while walking in the woods. A creature the size of a seal, without any holes nor members. The mass of flesh and skin, covered with hair, breathes loudly. The creature becomes an object of lust for both women. The relationship between the two actresses becomes tense. Both women are desperate to own the thing. This leads to a series of burlesque and violent situations. The two actresses have no idea that they have unearthed "Notre-Dame des Hormones"

In Arnarstapi (Iceland), during a cabaret number, a mistress of ceremonies proposes to us a journey into the center of her organs to go and meet the original being. During the journey, the public enters into a trance to reach the ecstasy.

Juliette is frantically running away from a man when a car hits her. Lying in the street, semiconscious and stunned, she commences counting. She knows that if no one helps her by the time she reaches 100, something terrible will happen.

With a heavy haul of 250 kilograms of gold bullion, the grizzled criminal mastermind, Rhino, and his ruthless gang of cutthroats, head to a ramshackle retreat somewhere in the Mediterranean to lay low on a scorching day of July. However, the unexpected and rather unwelcome arrival of the bohemian writer, Bernier, his muse, Luce, along with a pair of no-joke gendarmes further complicates things, as the frail allegiances will soon be put to the test.

From its epic conception to its film death, the fantasized and fictitious portrait of the film-maker Walerian Borowczyk : Boro-in-the-box discovers a cruel and obscene world, crosses commonplace and colorful adventures, from Poland to Paris, caressing erotic birds and organic cameras in a phantasmagorical alphabet primer.

An actress is confronted with her inner demons.

A boobs flasher tells us, a boobs flasher lets us see.

On a Scottish island, a depressive police investigates the disappearance of a girl. The mournful mother is responsible for the disappearance of the inhabitants of the island.

Oana is working. I am watching her. Tonight, the very last file will be closed. She does not want to translate the words of others anymore. She thinks that tomorrow she will start writing her own words. But she will not, I know that…

The old Salammbo lives alone on a northern island, in total destitution. Haunted by her memories, Salammbo is mistreated by the phantom of her youth, which sometimes taunts, sometimes bends her back so that she no longer sees the blue of the sky.

A man besieges the hotel room where the woman he loves has taken refuge.

Traveling through the abyss, underworld dog Rainer recounts the six lives of Conann, perpetually put to death by her own future, across eras, myths and ages. From her childhood, a slave of Sanja and her barbarian horde, to her accession to the summits of cruelty at the doors of our world.

Nearly 3 hours of LGBTQ and Coming-of-Age short films and music videos await you in the debut of Altered Innocence’s cinematic mixtape supreme! Films from established auteurs like Peter Strickland, Cam Archer, João Nicolau, and Yann Gonzalez join fresh new voices such as Alexis Langlois, Shaun Hughes, Caroline Poggi, and Jonathan Vinel. Cruising, dancing, naked wrestling, trans terrorism, first love, bullies, femme fatales, band practice, and more is in store! The short films are: After School Knife Fight (2017); Bunny (2018); Doors Cut Down [En malas compañías] (2000); Gabber Lover (2016); Wild Haggis [Gambozinos] (2013); GUO4 (2019); Hunt [Jakt] (2018); Terror, Sisters! [De la terreur, mes sœurs!] (2019). The music videos are: 'Les vacances continuent' by Perez (2015); 'Niemand' by Kompromat (2019); 'Our Time' by Imperial Teen (2002).

We see a succession of scattered glam images: beat-up figures on lucid papers and dreamlike landscapes, until the (apelike) apparition of a model and her photographer. Together, they will play martyr and demiurge. They will attempt to achieve grace in a world of moving surfaces.

Fragmented memories of a voyeur in 3 chapters: "I grew up" but I’m still falling. "The stalker" who loses his footing. "Memory" and regression.

Unused footage of Bertrand Mandico's film "After Blue (Dirty Paradise)," set to new music by Pierre Desprats.

The end of the world of humanity as seen by Mandico. A time, as much future as current, where “cinema will be will be all other and nothing else”. Where, “it will be the last appointment of the flesh”, where “the energy will be cannibal and the sun will reflect to say nothing”. Pessimistic or optimistic is this cinematic pamphlet on art? In this destroy, and barbaric, jubilant and cinematic transgressive performance, it's up to you to think. Because thus spoke Bertrand Mandico...

On the set of a film in the making, four actresses take turns guiding us. They unknowingly drag us into their damnation.

Histoires courtes, the France 2 program, gives carte blanche to Bertrand Mandico who brings together three of his short films here: Rainer, A Vicious Dog in Skull Valley, Nous les barbares and The Last Cartoon.

A vampire in London is searching for the ideal woman to 'redeem' him.

A girl whose heart beats faster than normal and so loudly that it bothers the neighbors seeks both acceptance and escape.

In Uruguay, where he lives with his wife and son Thomas, Orlando Vargas suffers from pressure from the government. Permanently watched by a policeman, Orlando seems not to care about danger. He decides to leave with his family to go to Josefina, the last village by the sea before Brazil. There, things move faster: on the day of his arrival, Orlando fails to return home.

Des rêves pour l'hiver

A serial killer stalks a woman he befriended after her car broke down.

In the heart of the Danube Delta, superstition and religion are mixed together, like the earth and water that make up the mysterious mud from Tekir’s area, not far away. Chased away from her village because of her mysterious pregnancy, Mara finds herself employed at the Europa Hotel, providing treatment for infertile women using this miraculous mud. As she meets the rich and eccentric Mrs. Lili, Mara questions her beliefs and intuitions. The relationship between the two women is the key of the miracle of Tekir, between magic and power, tradition and modernity.

The film's title is a pun, the double meaning referencing both the "wrong genre" and a person with distasteful motives. Insecure novelist Martial Bok promotes his new sexy novel La Fille de Dos ("Girl Observed From the Rear") with a round of book-signings and talk-shows. When beautiful hat designer Camille buys the book, Martial follows her and spies on her as she reads his book and removes her clothing. It's the beginning of his obsession and also an inspiration. After Martial's live-in girlfriend Lucie establishes contact with Camille for real, Martial is able to type out another sexy manuscript.

A minimalist, atmospheric, meditation on the theme of "Love" or "Amour" that focuses on reconciliation and forgiveness.

Once upon a time there was Louise and her friend, the magician. But his last trick left a bitter taste in her mouth. He disappeared in a curtain of smoke… never to appear again. This is too much for the young woman. Devastated by endless grief, Louise is sent to a psychiatric asylum, resigned to the idea that she will swallow pills till the end of her days. Yet nine months later she gives birth to a child who is likely to have a big problem for his future class pictures, since he’s invisible. But Louise doesn’t care. He’s her angel and, wanting to protect him from this cruel world, she decides to keep his existence a secret. Years later, Louise’s angel has grown up. He even managed to find a girlfriend; Madeleine. The two become inseparable, for Madeleine never judges him. And for good reason: she’s blind.

You have gone, Vasco, you wanted to go far away. But we kept you back, with concrete and kisses, and you tasted the blood of whales. But it was not enough, you wanted to go further, towards the horizon that fascinated you so much. But how far will you go, Vasco?

A young boy searches for a forest on a post-apocalyptic desert planet.

An abandoned seaside resort. The shooting for a fantasy film about the end of an era wraps up. Two women, both members of the film crew, one an actrice, the other a director, Apocalypse and Joy, are on the verge of concluding their love affair.

An epileptic director trying to make a film about the life of famed Romanian actor Elina Löwensohn discovers that her real-life subject bears little resemblance to the star she idolized.

On After Blue, a virgin planet where only women can survive in the midst of harmless flora and fauna, a hairdresser and her teenage daughter hunt a notorious killer by the name of Kate Bush.

Two policemen interrupt a secret ceremony: a woman being disembowelled at the bottom of a garden to let out her inner beauty. This situation is presented in a variety of ways and all possibilities are explored.

Short film about female ecstasy.

Ablou is a young man prisoner of a dream and a park. He meets strange characters who try to lock him up a little more in this long sleep.

The adventures of Rak, who after his dismissal begins to reflect on the meaning of the word work and on the act of working.

Niemand

Octavia Foss wants to stage a female version of Conan the Barbarian in the theater. She makes a pact with a dog-headed demon to achieve her goals.

A man wakes up in an alley, bleeding and with no memory of who he is. He stumbles into a coffee shop and is befriended by a charitable ex-nun who is failing in her attempts to write marketable pornography.

In order to escape her isolation, wheelchair-bound Christine makes a life changing journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains.

Romaine, a tall thirty-year-old woman, has not found herself yet. She has been living for several years with her boyfriend Justin. When, overnight, the latter drags her after him to Canada in order to start a new life, she blows smoke. Not only does she hate surprises but she is scared to death of taking the plane. Once in Montréal Airport, she dumps Justin after confessing to him things he would rather not have heard. Her Far North adventures can start...

The true story of Saartje Baartman, a black South African worker who moves to London with her master in the early 19th century. Although she dreams of being an artist, once in Europe she is exploited as a sideshow attraction due to her large buttocks and genitalia.

In the Warsau ghetto of 1943, one man's struggle to keep his family together leads him to the ultimate crisis of faith and one final chance at redemption.

J'étais à Nüremberg

Excerpts from performances of Hal Hartley's play "Soon", a production inspired by the 1993 events in Waco, Texas involving the religious sect called the Branch Davidians and their collision with the US Federal Government.

Françoise returns to her native Brittany to teach at her alma mater to find that the past of this very particular place still exerts an inexorable pull. A rapturous ensemble piece about the tricks of time and memory, Suite Armoricaine is a work of grand themes and small, surprising details, bursting with ideas and emotion.

When down-on-his-luck photographer Horace meets Jane, a young streetwalker with a sordid lifestyle, they quickly fall in love and embark on a chaotic relationship of highs and lows. However, Jane's growing drug addiction and Horace's own personal demons threaten to tear them apart in this emotional romantic drama.

Ziggy is a freedom loving Parisian often in debts and usually misunderstood by fellow citizens. Though there's a pretty unique karma he has it when seducing girls due to his carelessness. But on the contrary all the girls disappear after moments spending with him, realizing he's still waiting for "Coppola" to come back to Paris.

A film based on Jacques Chessex' novel of the same title; featuring André Wilms as Chessex and Bruno Ganz as Arthur Bloch, Swiss Jew killed by Swiss Nazis.

A heroic-fantasy musical.

Louis II de Barrière has been petrified in the ice since the dawn of time. We find him in a forest, luckily he is alive ! Three witch sisters try to defrost it and unravel its musical mystery. We are propelled with them in a colorful and surreal fairy tale.

In Provence, a Summer evening. Malo is 26, heartbroken, and still feeling the euphoria of three days on a motorcycle from Brest. On the top of a hill where the view goes on and on and the fragrances of plants cast a spell, he meets a septuagenarian with an irresistible charm. A strong mistral is forecast, but first there is an invitation.

Dennis is a handsome and bookish college student. His brother, Bill, is a roughhewn ladies' man and thief. Together they search for their dad, confront their expectations of each other, themselves, and their attitudes towards women.

After having a nervous breakdown, a popular talk-show host confronts his ex-girlfriend who is dating a cross-dresser.

This short film was packaged on video with Hartley's featurette "Surviving Desire." It affectionately examines the lives of a group of "young, middle-class, white, college-educated, unskilled, broke, drunk" Brooklynites who would love to make something of their lives -- assuming they can pay the rent first.

The Wake is the title of a large-scale multimedia project, the main element of which is an eight-hour long silent movie. The film is based on Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (London 1939), a limit-transgressing, perhaps even limit-dissolving book that not only transgresses the limits of what literature is and is capable of, but inscribes transgressions on almost all conceivable levels. It is at the same time dream book, history book and necrology. It is almost impossible to determine whether we are dealing with a long poem, a prose narrative or a piece of drama.

A teacher goes the distance to help a new student whose family is threatened with deportation.

Jacques Mayano, a French journalist who has lived a traumatic experience, is recruited by the Vatican to be part of a task force that must investigate the veracity of a supernatural apparition allegedly happened in a small French village.

After a freak accident changes his perspective on life, a Parisian filmmaker meets a stranger who brings him to a commune that's populated by free-spirited women.

Roméo and Juliette are two young actors. They fall in love at first sight, move in together and make a baby. A love story and the founding of a home like millions of others. Except that their little boy, Adam, behaves abnormally. The young parents try hard to persuade themselves that everything is okay but, with the passing of time, they cannot delude themselves anymore: their son has a problem. From now on, war is declared. A war against illness. A war against Death. A war against despair.

Two actresses rehearse a play during a week-end in a country house. But one of them digs up a strange thing from earth while walking in the woods. A creature the size of a seal, without any holes nor members. The mass of flesh and skin, covered with hair, breathes loudly. The creature becomes an object of lust for both women. The relationship between the two actresses becomes tense. Both women are desperate to own the thing. This leads to a series of burlesque and violent situations. The two actresses have no idea that they have unearthed "Notre-Dame des Hormones"

A man returning from a tour of duty is mistaken for his brother by debt-collecting gangsters, while the brother goes on a killing and kidnapping spree with a loose-cannon convict.

15 jours ailleurs

A poor miller gets tricked by the Devil and accidentally sells his daughter for a bit of gold. But Satan can't take her because she's too pure and has wept on her hands. So Satan orders the miller to cut her hands off. It's the beginning of the young girl's journey towards freedom.

Island of La Réunion, in the beginning of the 20th century. Five teenagers commit a savage crime. As punishment, a Dutch captain takes them to a supernatural island with luxuriant vegetation and bewitching powers.

Road trips through Los Angeles, famous verses in the Poetry Lounge and love in times of the pandemic: Rendezvous with an old flame, fourty years later. After Jaurès (2012), Vincent Dieutre presents another tender autofictional piece in the Forum.

Arrived in an abandoned place or emerged from a society at a standstill, men and women organize themselves in their own way, borrowing what they find on the spot and in the memory of what surrounds them, the theater and the people... In the superb mineral setting of the Boulbon quarry, Philippe Quesne, inspired by a work by the painter Jérôme Bosch, orchestrates a joyful retro-futurist epic to meet the worlds to come, between environmental science fiction and contemporary western.

While creating SHE IS CONANN, Bertrand Mandico also filmed two short films simultaneously to create an entire "Barbarian Cycle" that brings you deeper into the world that Mandico has created. Presented in this program are: Rainer, A Vicious Dog in a Skull Valley (26min); Apocalypse After (35min); and We Barbarians (27min).

Old Nat Moyer is a talker, a philosopher, and a troublemaker with a fanciful imagination. His companion is Midge Carter, who is half-blind, but still the super of an apartment house. When he is threatened with retirement, Nat battles on his behalf. Nat also takes on his daughter, a drug dealer, and a mugger in this appealing version of a really 'odd couple'.

In a near future where artificial intelligence reigns supreme, human emotions have become a threat. To get rid of them, Gabrielle must purify her DNA by going back into her past lives. There, she reunites with Louis, her great love. But she’s overcome by fear, a premonition that catastrophe is on the way.

The workaholic head of the compliance section of a New York bank flies to Monaco to investigate unusual deposits from an offshore bank and meets a down-on-his-luck international film star who has become embroiled in criminal activities.

Men and women search for intimacy and meaning in their lives.

18-year-old Lina arrives in Paris for her studies. She comes to look for what she has never found in Lebanon, her country of origin: a certain form of freedom. The survival instinct as the only baggage, she sails from one Paris to another to the rhythm of her romantic encounters.

Paris, 1894. Who is Fanni, who claims to be voluntarily locked up in a women-only mental institution? Searching for her mother among the multitude of so-called 'madwomen', Fanni discovers a community of modern heroines who defy her expectations, along with the unexpected friendship of fellow patients. The sumptuous and renowned 'Party of Fools' of the asylum is in preparation. Politicians, artists, and socialites will flock to it. It’s her last hope of escaping the closing trap.

After the death of his parents, Jimmy uproots his life to live with his grandparents in Black Hawk, Nebraska.

Norman Reedus stars as Harry Odum, a henpecked, 18-year-old momma's boy in Youngstown, Ohio, who -- with his violent temper -- impresses a local boss of the Jewish Mafia. Soon he's found his calling as a hit man alongside his crack addict partner Arnie Finklestein (Adrien Brody), and he discovers that his rage and complicated psychosis fuel his murderous abilities. Harry also falls for the organization's limping, Hungarian-born maid Iris (Elina Lowensohn), a romance complicated by Harry's Oedipal, sexual relationship with his domineering mother Kate (Deborah Harry).

Young Frenchwoman Mathilde searches for the truth about her missing fiancé, lost during World War I, and learns many unexpected things along the way. The love of her life is gone. But she refuses to believe he's gone forever — and she needs to know for sure.

Dahlia Williams and her daughter Cecelia move into a rundown apartment on New York's Roosevelt Island. Dahlia is in the midst of divorce proceedings, and the apartment, though near an excellent school for her daughter, is all she can afford. From the time she arrives, there are mysterious occurrences—and there is a constant drip from the ceiling in her daughter's bedroom…

Many years after her notorious husband, Henry Fool, fled after killing a neighbor, Fay Grim receives a visit from CIA agent Fulbright, who tells her that Henry is dead, but that some of his journals have been unearthed in France. She sets forth on a globe-trotting odyssey that soon leads to the discovery that he is alive, and his journals are more than they appear to be.

The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.

In the summer of 1979, gay porn producer Anne sets out to film her most ambitious film yet, but her actors are picked off, one by one, by a mysterious killer.

Seances, co-created with the National Film Board of Canada, presents a wholly new way of experiencing film narrative. By dynamically generating a series of film sequences in unique configurations, potentially hundreds of thousands of new stories are conjured by code. Each will exist only in the moment—no pausing, scrubbing, or sharing—offering the audience one chance to see the generated film. This project, co-created by the ever imaginative Guy Maddin, is a visual discourse on the impact of loss within film. All the sequences pay homage to lost silent films from the early day of cinema. Seances is nostalgic but it is also frequently hilarious. Part of the joy and sadness of Seances is that many possible narratives are created but they can be only viewed once before they disappear forever.

In France, the single translator Diane Siprien adopts an Asian baby named Liu-San in a foundation directed by Sybille Weber. Years later, a weird mark appears on the boy's chest and Diane and Liu share their dreadful nightmares. Diane is assigned for a three-day job in Germany and she leaves Liu with her friend Sybille. However, while going to the airport, Diane finds Liu hidden in the backseat and startles with an eagle flying toward the windshield, crashing her car. Liu falls into a coma and his digital recorder records the boy speaking in an unknown dialect. When Diane searches the translation and the origins of Liu, she is surrounded by mysterious murders. She discovers that the dialect is from the mystic Mongolian Tseven tribe and that Liu is a powerful Observer; further, he is in danger, threatened by sorcerers that need the boy for their Council of the Stone..

The same situation is played out in different cities (New York, Berlin and Tokyo). A lover has to choose whether to commit to a partner who is returning home. In each case there are other people involved, an ex-partner and someone else in a "permanent" relationship, what do they choose to do?

The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.

A submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon, and a battalion of child soldiers all get more than they bargained for as they wend their way toward progressive ideas on life and love.

A stand-up comedian and his three offbeat friends weather the pitfalls and payoffs of life in New York City in the '90s. It's a show about nothing.

The wrenching plight of two Bosnian sisters and their descent into the dark world of enforced prostitution. Their journey is intersected by a British journalist struggling to uncover a conspiracy by American peacekeepers and the machinations of an international charity organization.

24 short films by 24 female writers, performed by 24 women actors, all based on women’s real life experiences of sexism, harassment and violence. A diversity of female voices and talent from across Europe come together for a series that tackles head on the everyday brutality experienced by women. Conceived by Nathalie Masduraud and Valérie Urrea.