Valérie Donzelli

Isabelle, a beautiful nursing student, is starting her internship at a prestigious hospital. She meets Dr. Philip there, feels atracted to him from the beggining and starts suffering from strange fainting; so he calls her Bambi: her legs don't support her. Patients mysteriously start to dissappear from their rooms; so Bambi and Dr. Philip start a cat vs. mouse paranoid game, in order to catch the probable killer.

Young computer enthusiast Liam runs a website streaming video of his every action captured on a webcam. He lives a reclusive life, temporarily staying in a friend’s apartment in Paris until waitress Alison and her British husband, James, move in.

In Lille, Claire Gauthier is an ordinary married woman with a young daughter that works in an insurance company analyzing losses of insured properties. When the single veterinary Laurent Kessler claims damage in his basement caused by a flooding due to water leakage, Claire resolves the situation favorably for him. The weird Laurent visits Claire in her office successively, inviting her for drinks and lunch, and they get close to each other. Meanwhile, a serial killer is terrorizing Lille, killing women with a scalpel. Claire feels a great attraction for Laurent, who has an unusual behavior in her apartment. When Claire sees a scalpel in the pocket of Laurent's jacket, she fears him, but still loves him.

In a time and place indeterminate a bandit has kidnapped Rixo Lomadis Bron’s daughter. Bron is a wealthy landowner who reigns over the shepherds of the Purple Mountain. The time has come when Rixo Lomadis Bron accuses Manjas-Kebir of killing his daughter and urges all the country’s inhabitants to track down the assassin. It’s the time when Radovan Remila Stoï, the land’s greatest warrior, rises up against this foolhardy act which has every chance of leading to war...

Arnaud nicknamed "Cui Cui" no longer knows which way to look. He is about to marry Anna but he is not sure he really loves her. To make matters worse, he falls in love during the stag party he has with his friends. And Léa, a nightclub singer, is obviously the woman of his dreams. What to do? Cancel the wedding and create a scandal but be able to live with a woman he loves truly and loves him in return? Or be a good boy and not disappoint the company but say farewell to happiness. For four days, Arnaud goes to and fro aimlessly between Anna and Léa, between his eccentric sister and his self-centered mother, between hope and depression.

Not too excited Arthur asks marriage Lola. What should have been a quiet ceremony evolves in something bigger, expensive and overwhelming as family is involved. The organization of the best day of their lives threatens to destroy them.

Jean-François is a psychoanalyst in love with one of his patients. When she decides to stop therapy, Jean-François at last feels free to seduce the woman. Paralyzed when in front of his object of love, Jean-François accumulates blunders of every kind. He hence turns to Julien, one his patients who is in therapy to overcome his compulsive-obsessive flirting disorder. It's a totally absurd initiative on Jean-François's part. But, even so...

In this musical take on everyday life, Adele is devastated after a painful breakup. Her distant cousin, Rachel, finds her a job and suggests that Adele sleep with other men to get over her heartbreak. The search begins, but Adele can’t escape the visage of her former lover….

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.

Un couple se dirige vers un train en partance pour Venise. Sur le quai, Julien annonce à Marie qu’il part en rejoindre une autre et s’en va, la laissant seule à Paris, enceinte. Bouleversée, Marie se refuse à être victime de cette situation. Elle trouve du réconfort dans son travail auprès de ses deux « cow-boys » de patrons, Jean-Jacques et Jean-Loup, qui dirigent un cinéma du quartier latin spécialisé dans les films classiques américains…

Having received a frosty reception when visiting her parents, Martha drags her husband Reymond and infant daughter Lise to Spain, to renew her acquaintance with her estranged sister Marie. After a quarrel, Marthe and her family return to France, where the young mother shows signs of increasing mental instability. Abandoning her family, Marthe goes to town to get drunk and ends up being raped. With Marthe in a psychiatric hospital, Reymond is left to take care of Lise alone whilst struggling to make a living selling second hand clothes in an open-air market. When Marthe leaves hospital, Reymond takes her and Lise to a holiday home in the country. But Martha’s illness is far from cured…

An 18-year-old beauty develops an attraction to an older photographer.

The frustrated loves of Jean Cocteau and Raymond Radiguet at the beginning of the 1920s. The death of Radiguet that sank Cocteau into opium. A story under the influence of drugs. A narrative in the spirit of Cocteau. And all this in a musical.

Jacques, 50-something bachelor painter and great seducer, is about to receive the charming Claire for dinner. Broke but clever, Jacques concocted a sumptuous meal. Everything looks great when, suddenly, a door slams and turns the evening into a fiasco. Jacques will have to change his plans, play the unexpected. However, that evening, it is the unexpected that will play with him.

Once upon a time in 2012, three brothers lived happily. One day their mom fell into a coma. So Henri, Philippe, and Louis suddenly started wondering about the meaning of their lives and were swamped by a wave of existential doubts. An entirely new situation for this bourgeois trio in their forties, one which opened a door to the novel and indeed the forbidden... and to the big bad wolf!

It is April 1974 and Julie Dujonc-Renens, young feminist journalist and the cunning Joseph-Marie Cauvin, leading reporter for the Swiss radio, have been sent to Portugal to investigate Switzerland’s aid to poor countries. Sparks fly during the bus trip with Bob, sound engineer approaching retirement. The projects financed by Switzerland prove to be calamitous and the workers’ revolution that suddenly breaks out doesn’t help, obliging our heroes to disregard first the radio’s management, and then their own codes of conduct.

Desillussioned by life, Béa decides to commit suicide. She is interrupted by a phone call with a proposal of work for a financial tycoon. Far from the watchful eyes of her boss, she practices fraud, but it seems it gonna last not so long.

A devoted young woman becomes ensnared in a web of sexuality and betrayal in Jean-Pascal Hattu’s consistently unpredictable and finely wrought character study. A vividly realistic psychosexual drama, the film’s sharp emotional honesty heralds a distinct new voice from a promising young director. Hattu soon reveals that Maite’s husband Vincent is in prison for an unspecified crime, and that she has promised to wait for him and attend to his laundry (if not his conjugal needs) during his incarceration. On one of her weekly visits, Maite meets Jean, an oddly inquisitive and boldly flirtatious prison warden, and soon the two commence a joyless affair. Seemingly smitten with Maite, Jean, in a gesture of kindness to his lover, eases up on her husband behind bars; the two become pals and even engage in some homoerotic shower talk. —Robert O’Shaughnessy

A young Frenchman of Arab descent, Djamel, becomes convinced that his long-lost father is a rich factory owner in Grenoble. When the man coldly rejects him, Djamel plots a revenge that will implicate the man's closeted gay son.

Jacques Arnault, head of Sud Secours NGO, is planning a high impact operation: he and his team are going to exfiltrate 300 orphan victims of the Chadian civil war and bring them to French adoption applicants. Françoise Dubois, a journalist, is invited to come along with them and handle the media coverage for this operation. Completely immersed in the brutal reality of a country at war, the NGO members start losing their convictions and are faced with the limits of humanitarian intervention.

Pierre and Maria, a Parisian couple, travel to Spain with their daughter and her friend. When a violent storm hits they must settle for the night in a tiny hotel in a small Andalusian city. This small city has been the scene of a crime of passion. The police search the murderer, an immigrant worker. The whole city is aroused by this murderous act which roused resentment and a dangerous desire for vengeance...

Adèle, a thirty years old woman decides to contact Vidal, a musician she admires. He answers and she’s surprised. Messages are exchanged, a date is arranged. Adèle goes to the met, radiant with joy, but also worried : there’s a detail she forgot to mention, she’s pregnant.

An adventure of three characters: Clarisse, a psychic’s apprentice, Lazare, who works at the Parisian catacombs, and the bronze statue of a lion at the Denfert-Rochereau (in the 14th arrondissement). Clarisse and Laraze meet daily, but one day Lazare disappears and the lion disappears as well!

A story of a very ordinary man who just happens to be necrophile. (He is also like to eat cockroaches.) Problems begins when his pretty orphan cousin came to live with him...

Alfred lives with his mother in a small village keeping chickens and selling eggs at the local market. He doesn't speak, except to his mother and to children. He has a girlfriend of sorts, although she shies away from any physical contact with her. But more than anything, Alfred wants a child. As natural fatherhood is out of the question he takes the next best option, and makes an application to adopt. With a very un-French lack of bureaucracy Alfred's adoptive son arrives, but turns out not to be the bouncing baby he was hoping for. [taken from London Film Festival 2006 catalogue]

Capri

Is there such a thing as strictly feminine cinema? Is it more difficult for a woman than for a man to direct a film? Is gender parity necessary in the industry? Actress and producer Julie GAYET and actor and director Mathieu BUSSON ask these questions to twenty French woman filmmakers, who face a camera together for the first time. After over an hour of lively, informal, spontaneous and funny interviews, it becomes obvious that these issues are still problematic and definitely worthy of a documentary. As Mia HANSEN-LØVE remarks, “In the eyes of the people, a woman’s film is always a woman’s film, while a man’s movie is simply… a movie”.

Samuel goes to Nice to pass the exam of the School of Fine Arts. He is accompanied by Nordine, uncultivated in art who takes some holidays.

Marc works in a slaughterhouse. All day long, he operates a bandsaw. One day an accident occurs: the band breaks, slicing off Marc's left hand. Contrary to his wife's advice, Marc brings the dismembered hand back home.

Roman loves Camille as much as he loves his two daughters. But he is hiding from all of them a serious problem of addiction, which could endanger his dearest. Does love have a chance to survive when trust is broken?

Maud is an architect and a mother. Due to a misunderstanding, she wins the competition to refurbish the parvis of Notre-Dame. Torn between these responsibilities and love issues, she will go through an emotional storm.

Story of two gorgeous, young French boys who begin a passionate relationship that boils over and threatens to destroy both their lives. Shy 18-year-old Mathieu is on summer vacation in the south of France. He spends his days lazily sunning himself at the beach, until he spies the handsome Cédric and falls in love.

A party, musical love stories: head North, on a Northern Soul rhythm.

Antoine, a history teacher in his early 50s, learns that he has become very hard of hearing. Unable to own up to his handicap, he resigns himself to living in his bubble, even though his entourage finds his behavior increasingly odd. His encounter with Claire, widow and mother of a young girl who has stopped speaking, will lead him to open up to the world. 

It’s summer, the heat is overwhelming and the weather is out of whack. A group of friends are enjoying their yearly holiday in their favorite little village, wedged between the sea and the mountains. As usual, they are bored and eat and drink a lot. They do not pay attention to the fire which progresses on the mountain nearby, nor to the world around them. But this year, a mysterious man arrives from the sea and shakes up their seemingly balanced existence...

From the moment they meet - and against their will - Helene and Joachim begin a lovers' dance they are powerless to stop.

Judith leads a double life between Switzerland and France. On the one hand Abdel, with whom she is raising a little girl, on the other Melvil with whom she has two older boys. Little by little, this fragile balance, made up of lies, secrets and back and forth, cracks dangerously. Trapped, Judith chooses to head forward, at the risk of losing everything.

Frankie Wallach, 25-year-old director, is fascinated by her grand-mother Julia, 94 years old, her death camp survivor story and her joyful personality. She wants to immortalize her as an heroine of fiction for her movie but it's without thinking about the other members of the family, who will want to be a part of it. At the Wallach's, everything is... FULL OF LOVE !

A former police officer, Marc Lorca, sees his wife die from a terrible car accident, which occurred while he was driving. Previously alcoholic, Lorca seems to collapse under the weight of guilt. But a former colleague, Marianne Duriez, recently become a police captain, shows him that the accident is not accounted by any negligence on his part. The survey of experts has indeed revealed that the steering axis of the vehicle was sabotaged. Gradually, the suspect list is expanding. Lorca realizes he knows nothing of the past of his deceased wife, who was obviously part of a small extreme left group.

Jours de chance

An ordinary bakery beside a country road. Behind the counter stands Odile, so ordinary it hurts. One day, a gang of bikers stops in front of the bakery. The past will invade Odile's life, bringing with it her most violent memories. This confrontation slowly turns her life on its head.

The movie, for the most part, charts the AIDS epidemic in France from 1980 – present through the microcosm of a family, but particularly through their gay son Nicolas, who narrates the story.

Motus

In what way is the life of a woman with a reliable husband and two nice kids transformed when what she expects most from life is her next orgasm with her lover ?

Ma vie, ma gueule

Simon, a well-known French filmmaker, starts shooting his next film. A story about workers fighting to protect their factory from being relocated. But nothing goes as planned... His producer Viviane wants to rewrite the ending and is threatening to cut the budget; his own crew goes on strike; his personal life is in shambles; and to make things worse, his lead actor Alain is an egocentric jerk. Joseph, an extra who wants to get into the film industry, agrees to direct the making of and shoot the behind-the-scenes. He takes his role very seriously and starts following around the crew, capturing all this mess... What follows is proof that the making of can sometimes be far better than the film itself!

Documentary about the making of Les Chevaliers blancs, the film Lafosse worked on for seven weeks in the Sahara. A shooting period marked by unusual working methods and unexpected challenges.

A mother, herself retired from the police, embarks on an underground exploration of Paris to find her daughter, a missing investigator on a mission.

Clara Sheller is a French television series created by Nicolas Mercier after the idea of Stéphanie Tchou-Cotta that was aired from 18 May 2005 to 3 December 2008 on France 2. The casting was completely changed between the first and second season, but the characters remained the same. The theme song was written by Mirwais and was called "Naive Song". In the US, Clara Sheller aired on Eurochannel in 2009. and on TV5Monde.

Actor-turned-director Valérie Donzelli brings us Nona and Her Daughters, a delightful 30-minute dramedy series on the theme of motherhood. Nona, brought to life by the enchanting Miou-Miou (Going Places, Entre Nous) is a 70-year-old feminist. She’s madly in love with André and finally free of taking care of her daughters — 40-year-old triplets played by Virginie Ledoyen, Clotilde Hesme and Valérie Donzelli, herself. She adores her family, life is beautiful and she’s living it to the fullest… Until the day she discovers that she’s pregnant!

At a top Paris talent firm, agents scramble to keep their star clients happy—and their business afloat—after an unexpected crisis.