The Great Breath

To live and to love at the age of 18, immersing yourself in the carefree summer days and nights, losing your best friend suddenly, and realizing that nothing lasts forever. It’s a time of decisive encounters in order to be reborn.

Roberto goes to Marseilles to give a hand to his friend Xavier, wrongly imprisoned following a frame-up organized by his associate Villanova. Roberto sets out to seduce Villanova's mistress, but when Villanova is killed, Roberto ends up leader of the band...

Almost 19-year-old Marius feels himself in a rut in Marseille, his life planned for him by his cafe'-owning father, and he longs for the sea. The night before he is to leave on a 5-year voyage, Fanny, a girl he grew up with, reveals that she is in love with him, and he discovers that he is in love with her. He must choose between an exciting life at sea, and a boring life with the woman he loves. And Fanny must choose between keeping the man she loves, and letting him live the life he seems to want.

When he learns of the death of his older brother Richard, Thomas sets out for Marseilles to identify the body. Having collected his brother’s possessions, he returns to their home town, hoping to recall their earlier life together. Here, Thomas insinuates himself into the company of Richard’s friends, whilst keeping his own identity a secret. As he does so, he begins to bring his brother back to life, although not all the memories are pleasant ones...

A dark tale of working-class life in Marseilles, a city in crisis. Interesting characters include a hard-bitten but compassionate fish market worker with a drug addicted daughter and a moody bartender with a shocking secret life.

Faced with the insistence of his brother Joseph, whom he has not seen for 25 years, Paolo resolves to give up his calm and harmonious life in Canada, to return to Marseilles at the bedside of his rugged father. He left, therefore, with his son under his arm, determined not to linger in that city which he had fled years before, after a tragedy. He does not imagine that the affection of his newfound family, his love affair with a young woman and the joyful and simple solidarity of the Marseillais will reconcile him with this city he would never have wanted to leave...Marseillle.

Sarah seems to have the world at her feet. She's young, bright, pretty, free spirited yet hard working, with a real passion for life. Then, in just one day, she loses her job, is told she will have to move out of her apartment, and discovers she is seven months pregnant.

A union pensioner and his wife are robbed, but find that merely getting the assailants brought to justice is not enough for their consciences.

Elias and Teddy have always been friends. At age 23, they hang out, deal some drugs, and think they are the kings of their very small world. And then one day, for sure, they will leave Limoges for Marseille. Their encounter with Mona is going to speed things up.

A Canadian sailor becomes a fugitive for love after a night with a woman in Marseille.

The fiancée of a gangster who has been shot by the police takes an entire police station hostage, armed with a revolver and a bottle of nitroglycerine...

Marseille describes an interlude in the life of young Berlin photographer Sophie. Wanting a change, Sophie does an apartment swap, so she can go photograph the city of Marseille, and most of all get away from Berlin.

A film adaptation of the classic Alexandre Dumas novel. Edmond Dantes is falsely accused by those jealous of his good fortune, and is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the notorious island prison, Chateau d'If. While imprisoned, he meets the Abbe Faria, a fellow prisoner whom everyone believes to be mad. The Abbe tells Edmond of a fantastic treasure hidden away on a tiny island, that only he knows the location of...

The story of the struggle of an autistic girl and her brother trying to survive without their parents.

Transferred home after a traumatizing combat mission, a highly trained French soldier uses her lethal skills to hunt down the man who hurt her sister.

Bill Baker, an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma, travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison, who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.

In 1930s Marseilles two small-time crooks decide to join forces when they meet while brawling over a woman. Starting with fixed horse races and boxing matches, they soon find themselves doing jobs for the local gangster bosses. When they decide to go into the business for themselves, their easy-going approach to crime starts to change.

A gangster escapes jail and quickly makes plans to continue his criminal ways elsewhere, but a determined inspector is closing in.

A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he attempts to persuade a girl to run away to Italy with him.

In 2014, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited to make a film for the MarseilleFID, Marseille International Film Festival. Since he was not familiar with Marseille, he decided to make a film as tourist, capturing the beautiful Mediterranean sunshine in the late summer of that year. He also invited famous French actor, Denis Lavant, to appear alongside Lee Kang-Sheng playing Xuanzang. "Journey to the West" was invited to be the opening short film at the Berlin International Film Festival the same year.