La Comédie-Française

Paris, sum­mer 2020. Actors from “la Comédie-Française”, France’s most pres­ti­gious the­ater, rehearse Christophe Hon­oré’s new play, an adap­ta­tion of Mar­cel Proust’s “The Guer­mantes Way”. When the show is sud­den­ly can­celed, the dra­ma group decides to go ahead with it any­way, in the name of art and for the joy of act­ing together.

Alceste loves Célimène, a flirtatious woman from the Parisian high society. He loathes this world for its hypocritical etiquette but, shaken by a public trial he is called to by this social circle, he must visit Célimène to ask for her help…

Accompanied by a child, the mathematician Galileo observes the firmament with a telescope. Ten years ago, the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned in Rome for having supported the idea of an infinite and centerless universe, based on the work of Copernicus. By dint of observations and calculations, Galileo seeks proofs for his hypothesis of a cosmic system where the Earth is "an ordinary celestial body, one among thousands". From Padua to Venice, the mathematician shakes certainties by confronting the power of a Church which wishes to maintain its absolute power in the "crystal spheres" where Ptolemy has hitherto locked up the world.

For her latest project, commissioned by Arte and starring members of the Comédie-Française, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (A Castle in Italy, Rendez-Vous 2014) shot an idiosyncratic, half-modernized adaptation of one of Chekhov’s greatest, most expansively melancholy plays.

Woman hero Dom Juan lives a life full of excesses and love affairs. When he seduces the nun Elvire, but shows no interest in her a short time later, he gets to deal with her vengeful brothers. Dom Juan and his assistant Sganarelle have to flee and set out on a journey full of strange encounters.

Harpagon, a miserly bourgeois, wishes to marry the young Mariane and marry his daughter Elise to Lord Anselme. He does not know that Cléante, his son, is in love with the young Mariane and that his daughter Elise loves a penniless young man, Valère, whom he has just hired as a steward.

The Forest is both a vibrantly spontaneous and brutally funny family drama, and a glorious tribute to acting and theater - in other words, an Arnaud Desplechin film. With Michel Vuillermoz and Denis Podalydès as the nephew and his friend, Adeline D’Hermy as the niece, and Martine Chevallier in a stunning performance as the sublimely selfish aunt Raissa.

It's the day of Figaro's marriage to Susanna, but first he must help the Countess divert the Count's attention away from Susanna and back to her, while arranging the betrothal of Cherubino and Barbarina.

New York, 1985. Against the backdrop of AIDS - divine punishment inflicted on gays according to puritan America -, angels, who epilogue on the emptiness of the American dream, cross paths with the ghost of the spy Ethel Rosenberg, separating lovers and destitute patients. Prior, suffering from the AIDS virus, loves Louis who is about to leave him. Roy Cohn, man of power, Jewish and homosexual lawyer, anti-Semite and homophobe, lives in denial of his HIV status. Harper takes refuge in drugs to soften her married life with Joe, whose uncertain sexuality clashes with well-established religious beliefs. Following the cancellation of "Angels in America"performances ​​due to the health crisis of 2020, the project became a TV movie: "Angels - Salle Escande" is shot in the privacy of rehearsals.

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Molière’s birth on 15 January 2022, Ivo van Hove reunited with the Troupe for their third collaboration, a production of Le Tartuffe ou l’Hypocrite, the original version in three acts, banned at its premiere in 1664 and reconstructed thanks to the work of ‘theatrical genetics’ overseen by Georges Forestier and Isabelle Grellet.

At Versailles, the last rehearsal of a play, ordered to molière by Louis XIV the king. Staged in their own characters, actors and author display their art's conception. It is, too, the opportunity for them to answer by irony to their detractors.

Silvia’s father grants her permission to meet Dorante, the man she’s promised to in marriage, by pretending to be her servant Lisette, who in turn will play the role of her mistress.

In this contemporary adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s brilliant, eponymous 17th century play, the enigmatic Alcandre is now a hotel concierge who uses the myriad in-house high-tech security cameras to show worried father Pridamant the whereabouts and travails of his son, Clindor. As Pridamant witnesses the conflicting romances involving his estranged son, Corneille’s modernist meta-narrative is transposed to contemporary Paris, underscoring the ambiguous nature of love, wealth and desire in an age of consumerism. (Chicago International Film Festival)

Cyrano has a prominent nose but also a gift with words by which he helps handsome Christian to conquer Roxane. Also in love with the girl he chooses not to reveal to her that every word of Christian comes out of his own heart. In cinema, this ROSTAND classic filmed live from the Comédie Française.