Ministère de la culture

During the Cold War, the World Chess Championship clashed complete opposites - personal and political.

Dominican friar Etienne de Bourbon visits a 13th-century French village in search of heretics for the Inquisition. Despite the opposition of the local priest and the indifference of the villagers, he finds a seemingly perfect suspect: a young woman who lives in a forest outside the village and cures people with herbs and folk remedies. In the process, he discovers the cult of the greyhound "Saint" Guinefort, and confronts his own troubled past.

Cape Verde, 1964. At the feet of a mighty volcano, the traditional Cape Verdean society is undergoing a steady change. The old land-owning aristocracy is disintegrating. A class of "mulattos" begins to emerge, with a trade-based financial power that threatens the landlords. A new identity arises, a mix of old and new, of African and Portuguese culture, sensual and dynamic. The songs of Cesária Évora follow this inevitable transformation. From the novel by Henrique Teixeira de Sousa.

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.

While two theater groups rehearse plays by Aeschylus, two solitary individuals wander the Parisian streets hustling the populace for cash.

A porcelain table service and a painting from the 19th century pass from hand to hand and deteriorate over time, sealing the fate of different characters who cross paths in Paris.

A Greek-Irish sailor becomes friends with a 10-year-old sampan girl while his freighter is docked in Hong Kong.

Some Argentinians, exiled in Paris, decide to put on a tango-ballet, dedicated to Carlos Gardel, a legendary Argentinian tango star.

Noel Burch’s fascinating and well-made (if at times historically contestable) six-part BBC television series, about early silent cinema in Denmark, England, the Soviet Union, France, Germany, and the U.S., mixes beautiful clips of rare films with various social theories about their significance.

Anna, Joyce, Claude and Lucia are all students under the tutelage of Constance Dumas, a renowned film instructor. Lucia moves in with the other girls. Soon after, she is attacked on the street outside her home and saved by a mysterious stranger.

Documentary on State terrorism during the last military dictatorship in Argentina, made in its aftermath. Invited by the Goethe-Institut to hold a workshop with young film students, Schroeter contrasts the official statements of the regime with the testimony of victims, dissidents and relatives of the disappeared. And trust that their faces and words will resonate much more than a mere representation of violence.

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.

Fifteen young dancers of various origins and horizons. They are touring Crowd, Gisèle Vienne's dance piece on the 90s rave scene. Following them from theatre to theatre, the film documents their work as well as their strange, intimate relationships. As the line becomes blurry, the stage seems to contaminate real life – unless the opposite is happening. Little by little dance grows into a troubling journey into our nights, our parties, our loves.

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.

20 people's paths crisscross one night in violent mid-'90s Belgrade.

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.

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.

Swaying between pleasure and despair, Elric throws himself into his pathological passion for the casino. Meeting Suzie could have saved him, but the young woman also sinks into gambling hell. The couple then start getting involved in the fearsome world of professional cheaters.

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.