Noël en Quercy

A filmmaker talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. We also watch four of his short films.

One of the key factors in Italian unification was the overthrow in 1860 of Francesco, the King of Naples and the two Sicilies, who went into elegant but impoverished exile in Rome with his Queen, Maria Sofia. This seriocomic drama follows the deposed royals as they adapt to their new lives. The former king has recognized the political finality of his deposition, but his queen has taken to traveling in men's clothing all over Italy trying to foment an uprising to restore them to the throne. She is also frantic to have a baby, an heir, but the king has become celibate as a kind of homage to his beloved mother; he spends all his time lobbying the Vatican to get her declared a saint.

A project spanning three years of production and research, Lion is a collection of 7 short films exploring the Chernobyl disaster, the nature of radiation, memory, and personal history. Conceptually arranged in to a film “album”, Lion’s seven works navigate atomic fallout and a girl’s adolescence, a dream before death, radiation as a cause and cure for cancer, masculine bravado, feminine obsession, a trip to Chernobyl amongst the death of a matriarch, and the destruction of memory. Composed of seven works, Lion is a series of films created on 16mm and hand processed with darkroom techniques that mimic the effects of radiation on film. Researched in Chernobyl, the series is a product of memories, history, pop culture and technical experiments to create visual representations of invisible forces.

The blind swordsman, skilled in martial arts, named Cheng Xiazi (Xie Miao), accidentally saves Zhang Xiaoyu (Yang Enyou), who has suffered from the destruction of his family. Under the persuasion of the orphan Xiaoyu, Cheng reluctantly keeps him by his side and teaches him skills. Xiaoyu also waits for the opportunity to seek revenge.

Adam is a broken man in the emotional transition as his family crumbles. Through the heartbreak and pain a chance meeting gives hope once more.

A young lonely lion crosses an arid and desert Savannah. He discovers that the only source of water is kept by a tyrannical buffalo.

An innocent young man, Jack, goes on an epic quest to rescue his sister Lula after she has been kidnapped by the violent killer Cut Throat Bill and her gang. To save her, Jack enlists the help of a crafty bounty hunter named Reginald Jones, a grave-digging alcoholic son of an ex-slave, and a street-smart prostitute. The gang tracks Cut Throat Bill into the deadly no-man’s land known as The Big Thicket — a place where blood and chaos reign.

On the edge of the Gobi desert in Northwest China, Lang returns to his hometown after being released from jail. While working for the local dog patrol team to clear the town of stray dogs before the Olympic Games, he strikes up an unlikely connection with a black dog. These two lonely souls embark on a journey together.