Savoring Paris

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to choose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

Young provincial Charles arrives in Paris to stay with his cousin Paul while studying law. Paul is a decadent, bohemian pleasure-seeker who shows the meek, diligent Charles the thrills of city life. When Charles falls for Florence, one of Paul's acquaintances, relationships begin to shift.

Copenhagen, Denmark, 1962. When a high-ranking Soviet official decides to change sides, a French intelligence agent is caught up in a cold, silent and bloody spy war in which his own family will play a decisive role.

This story starts in 1980 in Paris as the memories of Andrei Borodin, a Soviet agent, take the action back to 1943 during the Teheran meetings of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. A high-ranking Nazi officer developed a plan to assassinate the three world leaders in order to undermine the Allied forces. He commissioned the German agent Max Richard to carry out his plan, but it failed miserably due to the quick action and thinking of Andrei. While in Teheran, Andrei met a French woman, Marie Louni, living in the city and they had a brief but intense affair. Nearly four decades later, the Nazi officer has been captured - but not for long. Freed by terrorists, the officer is hunting down the German agent who failed to carry out the planned assassinations. Max lives at Françoise, a young French woman, who hides him.

In a chaotic 19th-century Paris teeming with aristocrats, thieves, psychics, and courtesans, theater mime Baptiste is in love with the mysterious actress Garance. But Garance, in turn, is loved by three other men: pretentious actor Frederick, conniving thief Lacenaire, and Count Edouard of Montray.

A love story told only through the hands.

The story takes place in 1917. Véronique is a young woman of 35 years, nurse at the military hospital of Besançon. She suddenly learns of the murder of her husband, the mysterious Count Vorski, whom she has not seen for fourteen years. Her research will also lead her to the track of her father and son whom she believed to have died in a shipwreck, already a long time ago. From clue to clue, here we are in Brittany, on this island with a name so ill-fitting... Brutal deaths, enigmatic words written... by whom? A frightening prophecy, the superstitious terror of the island's inhabitants, and suddenly, Veronica d'Hergemont can no longer leave this island. She's stuck alone. Almost alone...

Cécile teaches English at the Collegium in Bruges. She has a boyfriend, Thomas, a student at the Beaux-Arts. Cécile lives with Mrs. Hanka, who reads horoscopes and surrounds herself with natal charts. She says she's known a lot about people for 30 years.

1911. Lenin organizes the first Bolshevik party school near Paris, in the small town of Longjumeau. Through a chain of historical parallels and associations, this time is intertwined with the events of the Paris Commune, the October Revolution and the political struggles of the post-revolutionary years.

Rendezvous in Paris

Fifteen-year-old Suzanne seeks refuge from a disintegrating family in a series of impulsive, promiscuous affairs. Her fulsome sexuality further ratchets up the suppressed passions of her narcissistic brother, insecure mother and brooding, authoritarian father.

Romain, 31, a fashion photographer with terminal cancer, elects to die alone, preparing others to live past him rather than prolong the inevitable with chemotherapy or be smothered in sympathy by those who know him.

Depressed Alain Leroy leaves the clinic where he was detoxified. He meets friends, acquaintances and women, trying to find a reason to continue living.

In 1942, in an occupied Paris, the apolitical grocer Edmond Batignole lives with his wife and daughter in a small apartment in the building of his grocery. When his future son-in-law and collaborator of the German Pierre-Jean Lamour calls the Nazis to arrest the Jewish Bernstein family, they move to the confiscated apartment. Some days later, the young Simon Bernstein escapes from the Germans and comes to his former home. When Batignole finds him, he feels sorry for the boy and lodges him, hiding Simon from Pierre-Jean and also from his wife. Later, two cousins of Simon meet him in the cellar of the grocery. When Pierre-Jean finds the children, Batignole decides to travel with the children to Switzerland.

Second part of the romance between father and son. In this installment Alex introduces his new girlfriend to Gonzalo, who cannot hide his jealousy.

When a recently fired policeman falls in love with a French prostitute, he doesn't want her to be with other men, so he creates an alter-ego in order to become her only customer.

Laura and Carlos love each other as if every day was the last, and perhaps that first love intensity is what will tear them apart a year later.

A recently retired man embarks on a journey to his estranged daughter's wedding, only to discover more about himself and life than he ever expected.

Set against Paris' oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, while it was closed for repairs, this film is a love story between two young vagrants: Alex, a would be circus performer addicted to alcohol and sedatives and Michele, a painter driven to a life on the streets because of a failed relationship and an affliction which is slowly turning her blind.

Jerry Mulligan is an exuberant American expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend Adam is a struggling concert pianist who's a long time associate of a famous French singer, Henri Baurel. A lonely society woman, Milo Roberts, takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, but is interested in more than his art.