Idéale Audience

Master filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) transforms a portrait of the world-renowned museum into a magisterial, centuries-spanning reflection on the relation between art, culture and power.

1774, shortly before the French Revolution, somewhere between Potsdam and Berlin. Madame de Dumeval, the Duke de Tesis and the Duke de Wand, libertines expelled from the puritanical court of Louis XVI, seek the support of the legendary Duc de Walchen, German seducer and freethinker, lonely in a country where hypocrisy and false virtue reign. Their mission is to export libertinage, a philosophy of enlightenment founded on the rejection of moral boundaries and authorities, but moreover to find a safe place to pursue their errant games, where the quest for pleasure no longer obeys laws other than those dictated by unfulfilled desires.

Island of Tahiti. French government official De Roller is a calculating man with impeccable manners, capable of dealing with both high society and the locals he frequents in shady joints.

A cinéma vérité look inside Paris' Crazy Horse, a club that boasts the greatest and most chic nude dancing in the world.

During World War I, in an unnamed country, a soldier named Tamino is sent by the Queen of the Night to rescue her daughter Pamina from the clutches of the supposedly evil Sarastro. But all is not as it seems.

The life of the bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey during a day of bullfighting, from the moment he dresses up to the moment he undresses.

Cio-Cio-San, a young Japanese geisha, seeks to fulfill her dreams through marriage to an American naval officer. Her faith in their future is shattered by his empty vows and the loss she endures touches something deep within us all.

In a quiet village in southern China, Fang Xiuying is sixty-seven years old. Having suffered from Alzheimer's for several years, with advanced symptoms and ineffective treatment, she was sent back home. Now, bedridden, she is surrounded by her relatives and neighbors, as they witness and accompany her through her last days.

Anna teaches violin at a music school, her husband is an instrument-maker. They have a 10-year-old son, Jonas. At school, Anna champions young Alexander, in whom she alone sees great talent. She devotes much energy and attention preparing him for the next stage exam to prove she was right. Soon Anna devotes more time to him than to Jonas, bringing the two boys into rivalry. At the same time her marriage is collapsing, she withdraws increasingly from her own family and starts an affair with her colleague Christian, who is encouraging her to join a quartet. When she fails during their joint concert, the pressure mounts. With Alexander now her vehicle, she drives him ever onwards and upwards. Come the day of the exam, events take a tragic turn...

A film by Frederick Wiseman following the ins and outs of 7 ballets by the Paris Opera Ballet.

Before Dawn charts the years of exile in the life of famous Jewish Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, his inner struggle for the "right attitude" towards the events in war torn Europe and his search for a new home.

This intimately narrated journey from Russia to Rotterdam, via rail, road and Finnish ferry, is a melancholy meditation on divinity, time and place in art, purpose (or its lack) and the loneliness of the soul. Passing through misty snowscapes, half-glimpsed cities and the icy night sea-swell.

The Indomitable Bow is a unique portrait of Mstislav Rostropovich, a formidable personality as well as a complex, deeply political musician constantly engaged in a whirlwind of activities. Including unreleased documents, archive films, interviews and concert performances from this key figure of the 20th century, The Indomitable Bow is a remarkable testimony of the life and work of the legendary Slava

Where are you, João Gilberto? sets out in the footsteps of German writer Marc Fischer who obsessively searched for the legendary founding father of Bossa Nova and last great musical legend of our time, Brazilian musician João Gilberto, who has not been seen in public for decades. Fischer described his journey in a book, Hobalala, but committed suicide one week before it was published. By taking up Marc Fischer's quest, following his steps one by one, thanks to all the clues he left us, we pursue João Gilberto to understand the history, the very soul and essence of Bossa Nova. But who can tell whether we will meet him or not?

A look inside the work of Breaking the Silence, an organization of former IDF combat soldiers who collect and publish testimonies of soldiers who served in the occupied territories. For six months, director Silvina Landsmann, camera in hand, accompanied the staff of the organization. The many hours of footage have been refined into a film that dives into the heart of Breaking the Silence’s work: guided tours of Hebron and the surrounding area, public lectures and house meetings, internal staff meetings and media strategy. All the while the organization is forced to justify its very existence, both internally and to the broader public, and to justify its place in the political debate. The Good Soldier raises questions about Israel’s dynamic mainstream and the challenges of confronting it.

An atypical family portrait, directed by 34-year old Stéphanie Argerich, the daughter of pianists Martha Argerich and Stephen Kovacevich. The filmmaker follows her mother in particular, during concerts and in moments of greater intimacy, searching for answers that might shed light on the private spaces of a family that has always lived in the limelight of the international stage, where gaiety and madness rub shoulders with an absolute and overwhelming passion: music.

La Comédie-Française is the oldest continuous repertory company in the world, founded in Paris in the late 17th century. This is the first time a documentary film-maker has been allowed to look at all the aspects of the work of this great theatrical company. Sequences in the film include sections of plays, casting, set and costume design, administrative meetings and rehearsals and performances of four classic French plays, Don Juan by Molière, La Thebaide by Racine, La Double Inconstance by Marivaux and Occupe-toi d'Amelie by Feydeau. (Zipporah Films)

A portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.

A unique film portrait of the famous Italian pianist. Maurizio Pollini felt himself that the time had come to submit to the probing of the camera, an exercise made all the more necessary because of his usual avoidance of the public eye.

Filmmaker Bruno Monsaingeon visits piano virtuoso Glenn Gould more than ten years after his self-imposed exile from the stage, which results in a mixture of interview and performance.