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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 62 movies from Ministère de la culture
While two theater groups rehearse plays by Aeschylus, two solitary individuals wander the Parisian streets hustling the populace for cash.
Dec 1990
In a French nightclub, choreographed song and dance routines are performed, rather than a streamlined narrative. They tell the story of Parisian culture and politics from the 1920s—1980s. A disparate, anachronistic series of characters, including an ordinary waiter, a Nazi collaborator, resistance fighters, and 1960s student protestors gather to celebrate and satirize 20th century France's icons, demons, and social changes.
Dec 1983
The insane Doctor Enger is obsessed with his plan to build a hospital to cure blind children, and goes on a killing and kidnapping spree with the police in pursuit.
May 1986
The last vestiges of a family that has gone from cherry season to sorrow... Madame Ranevskaya is a spoiled, aging aristocrat who, upon returning from a trip to Paris, must face the loss of her magnificent Cherry Orchard estate after defaulting on her mortgage. In denial, she continues to live in the past, deluding herself and her family, while the magnificent cherry trees are chopped down by the new owner Lopakhin, her former serf, who has his own agenda.
Jan 1982
The death of a prince brings a young woman back to the palace where she was born into servitude. The lingering legacy is brought into light from behind frosted windows and velvet curtains.
Sep 1994
The unborn child of Mamlakat is telling her story. She is 17, beautiful and vivacious, and dreaming secretly of becoming an actress. She lives with her father and brother in a small village in Central Asia. One night she is seduced by an actor from a travelling troupe, who poses as a friend of Tom Cruise, and gets her pregnant. She tries to abort, but her father and brother become determined to find the seducer, setting in motion a cascade of comic adventures.
Sep 1999
Living the mundane existence of a professional bodyguard, always in the shadows of his clients, Ruben decides to make a change that will finally give him a personal connection outside of his solitary world.
Apr 2007
20 people's paths crisscross one night in violent mid-'90s Belgrade.
Aug 1998
Lili is twenty years old, has an English mother, a magician father, a voice from elsewhere and a gift that only children know: the power of her own desire. It all starts with a summer night: that summer, Lili and Bruno will find love.
Nov 1990
Hugo Santiago and writers Juan José Saer and Jorge Semprún move back and forth between Paris and the city of Aquilea in a shadowy fable about exile. The frontier between one city and the other begins to blur after Bandoneonist Rodolfo Mederos is visited by his sister, a member of a guerrilla organization.
Apr 1986
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
Apr 1985
In a fast-paced action film with an international backdrop, an unsuspecting Edith (Mireille Perrier) goes to Frankfurt to work for a German friend who is investigating some illegalities in the transportation industry. After Edith arrives, her friend leaves for Berlin, so Edith goes to stay at the house her friend shares with a second-generation German-Turkish woman. Meanwhile, Gordon (Bruce Thurman) is out photographing some journalists armed with video cameras who are spying on a wealthy honcho in the trucking business. He accidentally follows Edith and photographs her, then ends up saving her from some attackers. The dramatic action intensifies as questions arise about what certain trucks are carrying into Germany, what Edith's friend has to do with exposing the cargo on those trucks, and whether or not Edith will remain an unscathed, innocent by-stander.
Jul 1986
Two boys (Tamir & Amine) awake one morning to find that their father has abandoned their family. Shocked, they begin to misbehave. While surreptitiously watching a movie, they think they see their father speaking to them and steal the film to examine the frames. Their mother (Achta) eventually despairs and sends them to Koranic school. Unhappy, they plan their escape until the eldest boy falls in love with a deaf girl (Khalil).
Sep 2002
Dec 2023
Done in the style of an African folk tale, this film, a collaboration between European and African countries, is said to be among the most elaborate, high tech film in African film. Exquisitely photographed and filled with archetypal figures to create a poetic look at nature's revenge against those who would exploit her. It is set in the forest village of Amanha Lundju, a place where the birth of children is celebrated by the planting of a tree. The trees are considered spiritual twins. But for every tree planted, the rapacious state destroys many more for firewood and lumber.
Nov 1996
A man alone in an empty house somewhere in the Solagne region of France. Despite the pleasent light of spring, the man is prey to anguished thoughts : a brewing storm, the blood of two children, a face glimpsed behind a windowpane, sleepless nights spent waiting for the dawn. The man is Vincet Delaune, a famous novelist. But he is having a hard time finisshing his latedt book. A stone's throw from his house, two little girls were killed. In spite of Vincent's disgust at the crime, he is irresistably drawn to the little abandoned train station where the bodies of the twins were found...
Jun 1985
As an elderly man on his deathbed looks to give his name to one of his newborn grandsons, he's unable to acknowledge any of them. The three boys grow up with no name in the Syrian mountains, as they struggle to survive in a war-torn country.
May 2002
Rock star Billy Jackson is found dead with a bullet in his head, a death classified as suicide. His brother Tom leaves the United States to come to Paris to investigate Billy's former relatives.
Jan 1987
A young man with magical powers journeys to his uncle to request help in fighting his sorcerer father.
Jul 1987
Farid, a teenager of Algerian descent, spends his free time hanging out with the wrong crowds in the suburbs south of Paris while maintaining a secret relationship with illustrator Jean. Both Jean and Farid are unsure about the future of their relationship - Farid wants Jean to move to Algiers with him, but Jean doesn't want to continue being Farid's secret. But when Farid becomes embroiled in a police matter, both his passionate private life and conservative family life hurtle towards one another, with explosive results.
Jun 1986