A working class teenager comes of age in 1910s rural Sweden, moving through a series of jobs and romances that gradually shape his future.
County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.
The third in a series of films featuring François Truffaut's alter-ego, Antoine Doinel, the story resumes with Antoine being discharged from military service. His sweetheart Christine's father lands Antoine a job as a security guard, which he promptly loses. Stumbling into a position assisting a private detective, Antoine falls for his employers' seductive wife, Fabienne, and finds that he must choose between the older woman and Christine.
Now aged 17, Antoine Doinel works in a factory which makes records. At a music concert, he meets a girl his own age, Colette, and falls in love with her. Later, Antoine goes to extraordinary lengths to please his new girlfriend and her parents, but Colette still only regards him as a casual friend. First segment of “Love at Twenty” (1962).
Now in his thirties, Antoine Doinel is a divorced proofreader in love with a record seller. Colette Tazzi, now a lawyer, buys his first published autobiography, leading them to a chance meeting.
A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal, grapple with their own class differences after being captured and held in a World War I German prison camp. When the men are transferred to a high-security fortress, they must concoct a plan to escape beneath the watchful eye of aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, who has formed an unexpected bond with de Boeldieu.
After a fictitious marriage with a Russian emigrant, Cellisten Louka, a Czech man, must suddenly take responsibility for her son. However, it’s not long before the communication barrier is broken between the two new family members.
Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the unpaid back rent. The young man, brother of the protagonist Anni, removes his wristwatch and throws himself from a window out of despair. Shortly thereafter his family is evicted from their apartment. Now homeless, the family moves into a garden colony of sorts with the name “Kuhle Wampe.”
The deep conversation between a Japanese architect and a French actress forms the basis of this celebrated French film, considered one of the vanguard productions of the French New Wave. Set in Hiroshima after the end of World War II, the couple -- lovers turned friends -- recount, over many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two intertwine their stories about the past with pondering the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city.
After long absence, a man returns to his hometown only to find his best friend has become an alcoholic.
The same movie with the same characters, cast and crew as I am Curious (Yellow), but with some different scenes and a different political slant. The political focus in Blue is personal relationships, religion, prisons and sex. Blue omits much of the class consciousness and non-violence interviews of the first version. Yellow and Blue are the colors of the Swedish flag.
While alone in an abandoned television studio, two militants, Emile Rousseau and Patricia Lumumba, have a discourse on language. Referring to spoken word as "the enemy"--the weapon used by the establishment to confuse liberation movements--the two deconstruct the meanings of sounds and images in an attempt to "return to zero" and truly experience the joy of learning.
Two ex-lovers wind up living next door to each other with their respective spouses. Forbidden passions ensue.
Four Parisian women navigate the world of romance and daily life looking to fulfill their dreams.
A committed filmmaker struggles to complete his latest project while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.
In occupied Paris, an actress wed to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs.
Paul, a young idealist trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life, takes a job interviewing people for a marketing research firm. He moves in with aspiring pop singer Madeleine. Paul, however, is disillusioned by the growing commercialism in society, while Madeleine just wants to be successful. The story is told in a series of 15 unrelated vignettes.
Frederic leads a bourgeois life; he is a partner in a small Paris office and is happily married to Helene, a teacher expecting her second child. In the afternoons, Frederic daydreams about other women, but has no intention of taking any action. One day, Chloe, who had been a mistress of an old friend, begins dropping by his office. They meet as friends, irregularly in the afternoons, till eventually Chloe decides to seduce Frederic, causing him a moral dilemma.
October 1918: Karl Liebknecht is released from prison and Berlin workers celebrate his release. Although WWI is almost over, the German Kaiserreich in vain sends its last reserves to the slaughter. The working class is in a rebellious mood; the uprising of Kiel’s sailors against war and militarism sets off a call for revolution led by Liebknecht. On November 9, Liebknecht declares the Free Socialist Republic of Germany. But pro-Kaiser military and right wing Social Democrats oppose him.
Longing for a baby, a stripper pursues another man in order to make her boyfriend jealous.