Spiral

A family portrait in which the director profiles his grandmother, Odette Robert. Eustache includes in the film the conditions of its production — he is seated at the table with her, pours her some whiskey, speaks with the camera operator, manipulates the clapboard at the head and tail of the reels, and even takes a phone call. Robert, who was seventy-one, speaks rapidly and tells the story of her life, starting from her early childhood in villages in the Bordeaux region of France. A shorter version of the film ("Odette Robert") was edited in 1980 to be broadcast on television on TF1. The complete film only gained exposure in 2002, when it was salvaged by Boris Eustache, Thierry Lounas, João Bénard da Costa, Jean-Marie Straub, and Pedro Costa.

This documentary follows seven wine-making families in the Burgundy region of France, delving into the cultural and creative process of making wine. You'll never look at wine the same way again.

When asked to make a documentary about her friend’s mother—a Parisian astrologer named Juliane—the filmmaker sets off for Montmartre with a Bolex to craft a portrait of an infectiously exuberant personality and the pre-war apartment she’s called home for 50 years.

François Hollande, le mal-aimé

This documentary follows the French soccer team on their way to victory in the 1998 World Cup in France. Stéphane Meunier spent the whole time filming the players, the coach and some other important characters of this victory, giving us a very intimate and nice view of them, as if we were with them.

De Charles de Gaulle à Emmanuel Macron, les gardiens de l'empire

Artfully erotic nudity with plush, glamorous décor and sensual, atmospheric lighting: The Crazy Horse, in the French capital’s well-heeled eighth district, has been delighting audiences for 70 years with its special brand of classy Parisian cabaret.

October 2003, Alma and Lila Levy are excluded from the Lycée Henri Wallon in Aubervilliers solely because they were wearing a headscarf. What follows is a deafening political and media debate, justifying in most cases the exclusion of girls wearing head-scarves to school. February 2004, a law was eventually passed by the National Assembly. "A thinly veiled racism" is about this controversy since the affair of Creil in 1989 (where two schoolgirls were excluded for the same reasons) and attempts to "reveal" that maybe what hides behind is the desire to exclude these girls. This film gives them a voice as well as others - teachers, community activists, feminists, researchers - gathered around the group "A School for You-All" fighting for the repeal of this law they consider sexist and racist ... This movie was censured in Septembre 2004 in France.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, l’homme qui avançait à contre-courant

Bordeaux-Paris was the best bike race you’ve never heard of: a midnight start, 550km-long, and ridden behind motorised ‘dernys’, with winners including Jacques Anquetil and Tom Simpson. More than thirty years since Bordeaux-Paris was last raced, pro cyclists Mitch Docker and Sam Bewley are aiming to recreate the infamous 1965 edition. How will they fare at the ‘Derby of the Road’?

September 3rd, 1939. Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germany, only two days after the Wehrmacht invades Poland. This day, the sad date when the fate of the world changed forever, the Phoney War began: eight months of uncertainty, preparations, evacuations and skirmishes.

In David Grubin's NAPOLEON watch Napoleon's rise from obscurity to victories that made him a hero to the French people and convinced him he was destined for greatness. Learn of his love for Josephine Beauharnais, and his rise to Emperor. Witness his extraordinary achievements and ultimately his fall, his final battles, his exile to Elba, and his defeat at Waterloo. For nearly two decades he strode the world stage like a colossus -- loved and despised, venerated and feared. From his birth on the rugged island of Corsica to his final exile on the godforsaken island of St. Helena, NAPOLEON brings this extraordinary figure to life.

A portrait of Pope Pius XII (1876-1958), head of the Catholic Church from 1939 until his death, who, during World War II, and while European Jews were being exterminated by the Nazis, was accused of keeping a disconcerting and shameful silence.

The film follows Michael Moskowitz’s work with a New York-based therapist named Kirkland Vaughns, one of the few African-American Freudian therapists in the United States, while the director reveals her own family’s devastating trauma.

"This 20 minute documentary sheds light on the worst antisemitic riot in American history, which occurred in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991. Triggered by a Hasidic man running a red light and accidentally hitting and killing a young black child, the riot led to attacks on Jews. Stores and police cars were burned and a Hasidic man was killed. David Dinkins, New York’s mayor at the time, allowed the riot to go on for three full days, while the media downplayed the antisemitism at the heart of the violence. The film’s interviews include Rev. Al Sharpton and then-Deputy Police Chief Ray Kelly as well as WSJ Opinion writer Elliot Kaufman. The current wave of antisemitism makes these events newly relevant and worthy of reconsideration" (The Wall Street Journal).

In the mid-1980s, one team dominated the cycling headlines: La Vie Claire. Despite a ferocious internal power struggle between two of the sport’s biggest stars, they racked up more than 100 wins. Wearing their iconic Mondrian jersey, Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond won two of the most infamous Tour de France victories of all time. Bankrolled by the controversial businessman, Bernard Tapie, La Vie Claire rewrote the rulebook on both bike racing and fashion. Dan Lloyd is joined by special guests Pippa York and William Fotheringham to discuss how the team turned a recipe for disaster into a period of complete dominance.

In barely a century, French peasants have seen their world profoundly turned upside down. While they once made up the vast majority of the country, today they are only a tiny minority and are faced with an immense challenge: to continue to feed France. From the figure of the simple tenant farmer described by Emile Guillaumin at the beginning of the 20th century to the heavy toll paid by peasants during the Great War, from the beginnings of mechanization in the inter-war period to the ambivalent figure of the peasant under the Occupation, From the unbridled race to industrialization in post-war France to the realization that it is now necessary to rethink the agricultural model and invent the agriculture of tomorrow, the film looks back at the long march of French peasants.

Each year, every French citizen has a one in 1,300 chance of receiving a summons to jury service from the Ministry of Justice. Ten former jurors recall being selected, hearing evidence, deliberating, and reaching a verdict: an examination of our society’s civil duty to pass judgement on the most serious cases.

Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1933, when the Nazis came into power, until 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed. (A sequel to From Caligari to Hitler, 2015.)

"A Home On The Range" tells the little-known story of Jews who fled the pogroms and hardships of Eastern Europe and traveled to California to become chicken ranchers. Even in the sweatshops of New York they heard about Petaluma where the Jews were not the shopkeepers and the professionals, they were the farmers. Meet this fractious, idealistic, intrepid group of Eastern European Jews and their descendants as they confront obstacles of language and culture on their journey towards becoming Americans. Jack London, California vigilantes, McCarthyism, the Cold War and agribusiness all come to life in this quintessentially American story of how a group of immigrants found their new home, a home on the range.