A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.
Lyons, France. Michel Descombes is a watchmaker who lives alone with his teenage son Bernard. When the police visit and informs him that Bernard killed a man and is on the run with a girl, Michel realizes that he knew far less about his son than he thought.
Actress Mignon is the toast of Paris until she marries young American engineer John Stanley. He is commissioned to go to work in the Sahara desert, and Mignon accompanies him with their baby. But it isn't long before she is lonely and horribly bored. When a wealthy Russian, Baron Alexis, passes through the camp, he offers to take her away to Cairo. She goes with him, and he surrounds her in luxury. Years pass, but the situation does not bring her happiness.
In a small town in post-WWII France, 16-year-old Janine tries to improve her conditions by any means necessary. Three people—Michel, a married lover; Raoul, a fellow thief; Mauricette, a photographer she meets in prison—will help her learn from her mistakes.
Paris, France, 2001. Octave Parango, a young advertiser working at the Ross & Witchcraft advertising agency, lives a suicidal existence, ruled by cynicism, irresponsibility and debauchery. The obstacles he will encounter in developing a campaign for a new yogurt brand will force him to face the meaning of his work and the way he manages his relationship with those who orbit around his egotistic lifestyle.
Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.
Paris in the early 20th century. Fujiko dreams of becoming a painter despite expectations of marriage, while Chizuru, born into a samurai family, longs to study ballet. Reunited in Paris after meeting as children, they support each other and move toward their dreams.
A French woman falls in love with a Yugoslavian man, not realizing that he is an illegal immigrant.
Paris, Kingdom of France, August 18, 1572. To avoid the outbreak of a religious war, the Catholic princess Marguerite de Valois, sister of the feeble King Charles IX, marries the Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre.
It's night on a Paris bridge. A girl leans over Seine River with tears in her eyes and a violent yearning to drown her sorrows. Out of nowhere someone takes an interest in her. He is Gabor, a knife thrower who needs a human target for his show. The girl, Adele, has never been lucky and nowhere else to go. So she follows him. They travel along the northern bank of the Mediterranean to perform.
Mickey Gordon is a basketball referee who travels to France to bury his father. Ellen Andrews is an American living in Paris who works for the airline he flies on. They meet and fall in love, but their relationship goes through many difficult patches.
When Gabriel and Emilie meet by chance, he offers her a ride, and they spend the evening talking, laughing and getting along famously. At the end of the night, Emilie declines Gabriel's offer of "a kiss without consequences". Emilie admonishes him that the kiss could have unexpected consequences, and tells him a story, unfolding in flashbacks, about the impossibility of indulging your desires without affecting someone else's life.
Isolated bell-ringer Quasimodo wishes to leave Notre Dame tower against the wishes of Judge Claude Frollo, his stern guardian and Paris' strait-laced Minister of Justice. His first venture to the outside world finds him Esmeralda, a kind-hearted and fearless Romani woman who openly stands up to Frollo's tyranny.
The wife of an American doctor suddenly vanishes in Paris. To find her, he navigates a puzzling web of language, locale, laissez-faire cops, triplicate-form filling bureaucrats and a defiant, mysterious waif who knows more than she tells.
A young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of its own, on the streets of Paris. The two become inseparable, yet the world’s harsh realities finally interfere.
Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Though Gerbier escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseilles, France, and exacts his revenge on the informant, he must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis in an atmosphere of tension, paranoia and distrust.
After several years away, FBI agent Henry Durand returns to find his mother, Marty, a much different person: Having long mourned for Henry's father, she is now embracing single life. One day, while Marty, Henry and his new fiancée, Emily, are out for a walk, they meet Tommy, a mysterious stranger with whom Marty then becomes involved. However, through his FBI contacts, Henry learns that Tommy is suspected of being an art thief. As a young federal agent, Henry is given a difficult assignment: spy on his mother and her boyfriend who is suspected of leading a gang of art thieves.
Set during a sultry summer in a French suburb, Marie is desperate to join the local pool's synchronized swimming team, but is her interest solely for the sake of sport or for a chance to get close to Floriane, the bad girl of the team? Sciamma, and the two leads, capture the uncertainty of teenage sexuality with a sympathetic eye in this delicate drama of the angst of coming-of-age.
In 1890 Paris, Moulin Rouge is a nightclub where crippled artist Toulouse-Lautrec feels like he fits in. In the following years, he meets two women who provide an opportunity for him to find true love.
In early 19th-century France, the Marquis de Sade is confined to an asylum where his forbidden writings continue to circulate beyond its walls. As the authorities tighten control, a clash unfolds between the Marquis’ unyielding imagination, the reformist ideals of the Abbé in charge, and the repressive measures of a doctor sent to silence him. Desire, power, and censorship collide in a battle over freedom of expression.