Perspective Films

Guatemala, 2018. The country is riveted on the trial of the military officers who started the civil war. The victims’ testimonials keep pouring in. Ernesto, a young anthropologist at the Forensic Foundation, identifies people who have gone missing. One day, through an old lady’s story, Ernesto thinks he has found a lead that will allow him to find his father, a guerillero who disappeared during the war.

This is the story of the relationship between a rebellious young city girl, Adriana, and an old misanthrope, Bernard, in a remote valley in the Mercantour, a place of powerful natural beauty. Initially filmed according to the principles of a thriller, the film gradually transforms into a motionless journey evoking an initiatory tale: from renouncing petty hatreds, we move on to total immersion in an emblematic snowy landscape ruled by a white wolf. The encounter between these two lonely souls will lead each of them to a form of redemption: for Adriana, it will be through artistic creation.

Djibril is in his early twenties, his pockets are empty, the girl he loves didn’t want a child of him, his mother is too symbiotic and his mixed-raced father never left Africa to meet him, his desires are as strong as the abysses that haunt him. Without a warning, he leaves the idyll deep in the countryside and flees to Marseille to meet an old friend and his son, find a job in the port city in full reconstruction, dream of leaving for Africa in the footsteps of his own story, and ours.

In a peripheral neighbourhood, where the rural and urban worlds meet, the houses of the first migrants who arrived after the post-war period coexist with the new blocks of the dormitory city, where the latest wave of migration is concentrated. This humble corner is now an authentic global village. Good Valley Stories is a sum of constructs, of social, generational and identity, urban and ecological conflicts, but it is also a calm and humanistic look at today’s world.

In 2005 Beverly Charpentier declared an oath of allegiance to French writer Catherine Robbe-Grillet. In doing so she gave up her freedom for the rest of her life. The Contract portrays two strong women's unconventional love story, two women who have chosen to explore their love in a unique way, without compromise.

Songsa is 15 years old when his family decides to send him to Phnom Penh to sell clothes in a tuk tuk. Phearum borrowed money to buy a taxi in order to support his family. Thy, 20, has a dream: buying a big motorbike. When their paths cross, a new road merges.

Dadaist poet, Russian and cosmopolitan artist, creator and publisher of some of the most beautiful books of the 20th century, Ilia Zdanevitch, aka Iliazd, is a little-known but major figure of modern art. Almost half a century after his death, Ilia, a young Russian agitator, sets out on his trail.

A filmed correspondence with Annie Le Brun, contemporary poet and essayist. This film weaves, on the landscapes which constituted me, places of the limit, the edge, the end, the routes connecting me to her and to her literary imaginaries: the amorous revolt, the usefulness of the desertion of the roles which are attributed and lyricism as the last defense against death.

It's a man and his place, the father in a housing estate. It's after his death. Something has been found. Not a secret, but the underside of days, recorded with obsessive precision. A daily struggle with material life and the passing of time.

Memorial Day, 1993. When 13-year-old Kyle Vogel discovers the World War II footlocker belonging to his grandfather, Bud, everyone tells Kyle to put it back. Luckily, he ignores them. Although Bud has never talked about the war, he finds himself striking a deal with his grandson: Kyle can pick any three souvenirs, and Bud will tell him the stories behind each one. Memorial Day not only takes us on a journey into Bud's complicated wartime past, but also into Kyle's wartime future. As the two men share parallel experiences in combat, they come to realize how that magical day on the porch shaped both of their lives. 

December 1919. The American government deports 249 anarchists and radicals on the “Soviet Ark”. Five years later, this same ship becomes the set of Buster Keaton’s slapstick comedy “The Navigator”.

Following an urban redevelopment project, Géro is about to be evicted from his home and his small theatre, where he no longer plays since he lost his voice. A nephew he barely knows suddenly settles in his home. He wants to write.

The drag queens of the La Sirène à Barbe cabaret put on a grandiose show of song, circus and dance, the likes of which Dieppe has never seen before. Erwan, a local fisherman, is spellbound. He ventures into their world of joy and celebration and discovers, behind the costumes of the stage characters, tormented, lonely, over-sensitive human beings ready to do anything to carry this project as far as possible. It's a portrait of a small port town inhabited as much by gloomy daily lives as by extraordinary destinies.

‘You have no choice about being here, you’ll have no choice about when you leave’ proclaims a woman in Xiaolu Guo’s latest film, a documentary about the personal and physical journeys of the people of London’s East End. Herself an immigrant to the area, Guo’s sensitive character studies hint at an affinity with the push and pull of feelings of alienation, a theme she has previously explored as a filmmaker (She a Chinese, LFF 2009) and novelist (A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers). This empathy is also apparent in her playful stylistic approach that layers Warhol-esque news reports, archival material and a soundtrack including Linton Kwesi Johnson and Fela Kuti, to comment on the human cost of capitalism. The resulting film is both a penetrating portrait of a frenetic place that feels deeply authentic, and a powerful piece of protest film.

Laura, in her thirties, lives alone on the outskirts of a big city. She learns that her father is in a coma, following a serious traffic accident. She decides to visit him regularly at the hospital: the opportunity finally presents itself to settle accounts, perhaps even to take revenge... But life is unpredictable and Laura's desire for revenge will lead to a reunion troubling with her family and her past. She will come out of it reconciled, with herself and with life.

Soldier Nathan died during World War I. A strange collector imprisoned his shadow and gave him a new chance: a second life against 10000 captured shadows. It is love that guides him, as his purpose is to meet Sarah again, the woman he fell in love with before he died. But then he discovers that she's already in love with someone else, jealousy clouds his mind and pushes him towards a bitter decision, not without consequences.

An intimate and revealing autoethnographic documentary about uprootedness, motherhood, love of film, friendship and freedom. Two filmmakers who have been best friends since childhood, both part of the Cuban diaspora, share their intimate and emotional journey while they try to find themselves and each other in a foreign land.

Paris. Nedjma, a teenager living with her mom and sister, spends the summer with her squad. She sees her life turned upside down when she meets Zina, coming from the opposite gang. They are rivals in broad daylight, but lovers in secret.

What remains today of the Rite of Spring? An intimate and political portrait of a choreography/er that takes us on a journey through a world where the body becomes an uprising.