Michael Lonsdale
Birthday: 1931-05-24
Place of Birth: Paris, France
Biography: Michael Edward Lonsdale Crouch (24 May 1931 – 21 September 2020), commonly known as Michael Lonsdale and sometimes as Michel Lonsdale, was a French-British actor and author who appeared in over 180 films and television shows. He is often known in the English-speaking world for his roles as the villain Hugo Drax in the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker, deputy police commissioner Claude Lebel in The Day of the Jackal (1973), The Abbot in The Name of the Rose (1986) and Dupont d'Ivry in The Remains of the Day (1993). Lonsdale was born in Paris, the natural son of British Army officer Edward Lonsdale Crouch and Simone Calderon (née Béraud). He was brought up initially on the island of Jersey, then in London from 1935, and later, during the Second World War, in Casablanca, Morocco. He returned to Paris to study painting in 1947, but was drawn into the world of acting instead, first appearing on stage at the age of 24. Lonsdale was bilingual, and appeared in both English-language and French-language productions. He appeared in a starring role with Roger Moore in the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker. and with Sean Connery, in the 1986 film The Name of the Rose. He would later appear in Munich (2005), a film that also starred another Bond, Daniel Craig. In February 2011, he won a César Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Of Gods and Men. Lonsdale was also the author of ten books. A practising Roman Catholic, he was close to the Emmanuel Community. In his 2016 memoir Le Dictionnaire de Ma Vie, Lonsdale revealed he had fallen for Delphine Seyrig, having met her as a student in Tania Balachova's acting classes at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in 1947. He wrote that "it was her or nothing", which was why he never married. Lonsdale died in Paris on 21 September 2020, aged 89. Description above from the Wikipedia article Michael Lonsdale, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Movies
The Name of the Rose
14th-century Franciscan monk William of Baskerville and his young novice arrive at a conference to f...
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Stolen Kisses
The third in a series of films featuring François Truffaut's alter-ego, Antoine Doinel, the story re...
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Munich
During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a...
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Moonraker
After Drax Industries' Moonraker space shuttle is hijacked, secret agent James Bond is assigned to i...
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Film sur Georges Perec
A two-part documentary made for French TV about Georges Perec, directed by his former partner Cather...
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Hibernatus
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The Last Mistress
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The Bride Wore Black
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Enigma
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My Life Is Hell
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Law Breakers
A judge investigating police corruption finds that the deeper he digs, the more roadblocks he finds....
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The Day of the Jackal
An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill P...
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The Door Slams
Between a whimsical wife, two insolent girls, a son who is engaged in strange chemical experiments a...
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The Old Maid
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Five Times Two
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The Phantom of Liberty
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It Happened in Aden
During a stopover in Aden, a charming actress is kidnapped by an Arab prince....
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Ronin
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Right to the city
Lefebvre's Le Droit à la Ville as visualised by Jean-Louis Bertucelli...
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Agora
A historical drama set in Roman Egypt, concerning philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria and her relation...
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Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud
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The Suspects
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Go West: A Lucky Luke Adventure
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The Bunker
Dramatization depicting the events surrounding Adolf Hitler's last weeks in and around his undergrou...
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The Romantic Englishwoman
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Murmur of the Heart
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The Perfume of the Lady in Black
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Heartbeat Detector
A psychologist discovers troubling links between Nazism and modern-day big business....
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Stavisky...
Biarritz, 1933. Charm and talent help small-time swindler Serge Alexandre, alias Stavisky, to bribe ...
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Titeuf
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Good King Dagobert
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Aloïse
The painful life of a mentally unstable but highly gifted woman is unveiled in this film, based on e...
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No Pockets in a Shroud
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Under a False Name
A mysterious writer is involved in a love affair with his stepson's wife, leading to a web of intrig...
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Of Gods and Men
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Invisible
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Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert
The full soundtrack to Marguerite Duras' 1975 film India Song, about a French ambassador's wife in 1...
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Destroy, She Said
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Actors
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Woyzeck
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Le Furet
From his locksmith's shop, a simple guy dreams of becoming a crime boss, at the wheel of his Cadilla...
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The Passage
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Les Trois Sœurs
A year after the death of their father, life can begin again for Macha, Olga, Irina and their brothe...
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There Once Was a Cop
Campana, a commissar at the drugs bureau of Paris police gets an undercover job in Nice to catch an ...
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Adorable Liar
Juliette is a young woman who just can't help lying. She lies to her sister, Sophie, to Sophie's fia...
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Jeanne, à petits pas
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The Track
Somewhere in rural France, a young English female tourist is sexually assaulted by two men in the co...
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The Buddies
Seven old pals live inseparable lives, dividing their time between hilarious pranks and memorable dr...
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Free Men
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Out 1
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Successive Slidings of Pleasure
A young woman is questioned by the police and the judges, suspected of being a modern witch. The gir...
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India Song
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Delphine Seyrig, portrait d'une comète
Delphine Seyrig, an extraordinary woman and actress, died on October 15, 1990. From "Last Year at Ma...
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The Man in the Buick
Mr Jo, nicknamed "the man with the Buick", is the darling of the small town of Honfleur. But he is i...
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Mr. Klein
Paris, France, 1942, during the Nazi occupation. Robert Klein, a successful art dealer who benefits ...
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Gentille
As Gentille opens, Fontaine Leglou is walking down a Paris street, and stops to confront a man whom ...
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The Cardboard Village
When a group of African immigrants builds a cardboard village between the pews of a church soon to b...
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Special Section
In occupied France during the WWII, a German officer is murdered. The collaborationist Vichy governm...
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The Pink Telephone
A small industrialist from Toulouse, goes to Paris to negotiate the buyout of his company from an Am...
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Your Money or Your Life
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Snobs!
Four vice-presidents fight among themselves to reach the top post after the president dies. Their wi...
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Les années Lumière
Film montage of documents shot between 1895 and 1900 by the operators of the Lumière brothers....
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Gebo and the Shadow
Despite his age and general weariness, Gebo keeps on working as an accountant to provide for his fam...
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Le revolver et la rose
Eric, a 14-year-old boy, is now almost alone. His mother, faced with her husband's bizarre behavior,...
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The Nail Clippers
The disappearance of some nail clippers in a hotel room puzzles the owners of the capricious object....
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Cygne II
Constructed like an animated painting in a single fixed shot where light, voice, music and movements...
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Adieu
Under threat in Algeria, Ismahel emigrates to France where he wants to live and work, with the hope ...
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Galileo
Challenged by a new student, tutor and theorist Galileo co-opts emerging telescope technology and di...
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Le Renard jaune
Charles Senac, author of a single novel but crowned by the Prix Goncourt, is hated by the regulars o...
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The Games of Countess Dolingen
This complex and puzzling French drama walks the fine wavering line between the fictional and the ve...
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Mauvais Genre
The film's title is a pun, the double meaning referencing both the "wrong genre" and a person with d...
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Sweet Inquest on Violence
After a businessman is captured by kidnappers, his rescue seems incumbent on a group of filmmakers, ...
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Spring
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Le petit Nicolas
At school, Nicolas is falsely accused of misbehaving and is expelled. On school photo day, Nicolas w...
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The Little Misses
Four young girls' love of boys put their newly opened all-services company in peril....
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Crime Does Not Pay
A man walks into a movie theater in Paris and starts watching a film—the same one we're watching, co...
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Dieu sait quoi
A homage to journalist Francis Ponge in a film that its author regarded as “natural.”...
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Kaena: The Prophecy
Compelled by a mysterious force, Kaena, a rebellious, high-spirited teenage girl will defy the High ...
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The Girl with the Cello
A lonely and unsociable man is spying on customers in a department store in Geneva. He gets his eyes...
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Erendira
While Erendira, a beautiful teenage girl, has a surreal mystical vision, her grandmother's house cat...
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The Big Wash
Sickened to see his students always sleeping in class, a teacher with a colleague and an anarchist s...
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Don Juan
Spain in the mid-seventeenth century. A series of bloody wars has ravaged the nation. Don Juan the n...
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The Mystery of the Yellow Room
Joseph Rouletabille, a reporter for a local newspaper, investigates the attempted killing of Mathild...
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A Dirty Story
A group of friends listen as one man tells them a story about a time when, in a small cafe, he disco...
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Caravan to Vaccarès
American Neil Bowman is traveling through France when he meets British photographer Lila. They are h...
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Maestro
Henry, a young actor, finds himself involved in a film by cinema superstar, Cédric Rovere. Charmed b...
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Der Madonna-Mann
Australian geologist Graves meets Juliane in a Hamburg variety show. She mistakes Graves for a kille...
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N: The Madness Of Reason
N recounts the story of the Frenchman Raymond Borremans, who left Europe for Africa in the mid-20th-...
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The Outsider
Machinima-adaptation of Albert Camus book "L'étranger", done in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas....
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The Remains of the Day
A rule-bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by t...
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Jefferson in Paris
His wife having recently died, Thomas Jefferson accepts the post of United States ambassador to pre-...
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The Accuser
In this sardonic comedy, after an executive is killed in a mysterious automobile accident, the Frenc...
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Les grands sentiments font les bons gueuletons
1970s France. In this modern Parisian city suburb, the paths cross of two neighbours living on the s...
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Those Facing Us
In a big isolated house, Mikael, a musician, is composing a psalm. A young woman, Linda, comes to re...
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The Itchy Palm
A widow in her fifties,Madame Lacoste ,meets Jean when they both come to put their pussy in a catter...
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Chronopolis
In a gargantuan city lurking in the sky, powerful immortals who have become jaded with eternal life....
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La grande Paulette
This is an attempt to imitate the inimitable, Jacques Tati. Paulette is a life-size blow-up doll. Im...
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Goya's Ghosts
Painter Francisco Goya becomes involved with the Spanish Inquisition after his muse, Inés, is arrest...
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Jean Eustache's Wasted Breath
Ángel Díaz’s documentary The Lost Sorrows of Jean Eustache, concentrates on Eustache as cinematic th...
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Trompe-l'oeil
On photographs taken by Cuchi White of trompe l'oeil painted on the walls of Paris and elsewhere, th...
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The Devil in the Box
Alain Brissot, an executive in a major company, was made redundant following a redundancy plan, but ...
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Scrambled Eggs
Brumaire, the director of public relations at the Élysée, is trying to boost the rating of his gover...
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The Holcroft Covenant
A man who was a confidant of Adolf Hitler dies and leaves a fortune to make amends for his Nazi past...
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Winter
While working on a documentary about the city of Bruges, an artistically frustrated filmmaker must d...
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Bartleby
Adaptation of the classic Herman Melville short story. The narrator, an elderly Manhattan lawyer wit...
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Ève avait l'éclat métallique de l'été
The demoness Sylvie Bréal offers voyeurs a breast to die for. Notable for being the first French fe...
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Souvenir
In 1944, a dashing German soldier and a beautiful French girl fell deeply in love while World War II...
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The First, the Last
Apocalyptic neo-western about two gangsters, a town full of crazy people and Jesus......
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Les Filles au Moyen-Âge
The history of women through the Middle Ages as told to and by little boys and girls and an old man ...
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Out 1: Spectre
Out 1: Spectre begins as nothing more than scenes from Parisian life; only as time goes by do we rea...
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Alone
Jean, the lead character in this psychological journey is torn by a search for his lost childhood, t...
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Papa, the Lil' Boats
In this whimsical French comedy, Cookie (aka Venus de Palma) is a tough, sweet little rich girl, and...
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Bye Bye Blackbird
A period drama set in the early years of the 20th century. Josef, a former construction worker who d...
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The Left-Handed Woman
Mourning for a lost relationship can be every bit as devastating as mourning for someone who has die...
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Autumn
Julien, a movie director, is on the phase of editing his new film, "Juliette sacrifiée". Hurried by ...
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The Risk of Living
A paean to Darwin and his theories, this documentary on the increasing complexity of life forms as t...
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The Ghostly Rental
At the end of the 19th Century, young Fanning finishes his studies in theology at the University of ...
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The Tribulations of Balthazar Kober
Story about the young Balthazar thrown from one remarkable event to the other. On his way through a ...
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Is Paris Burning?
Near the end of World War II, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz receives orders to burn down Paris if it be...
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The Truth About the Imaginary Passion of an Unknown
A very personal interpretation, to say the least, of the passion of the Christ According to St. John...
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The Insomniac on the Bridge
This quickly-filmed avant-garde farce by prolific director Raul Ruiz features an insomniac (Michel L...
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Cela s'appelle l'amour
The theme of Romeo and Juliet is the starting point from which the film spins a web of several stori...
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Noise of Love and War
A couple takes charge of mounting the film of love and war of a filmmaker friend faded away....
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Jaune, Le Soleil
The whole film takes place in a single room where representatives of the two political forces and th...
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Chut !
A small saver discovers the scam that threatens all subscribers to the "Caution foncière". He embark...
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J.R.R. Tolkien: Designer of Worlds
This is a story of a seemingly quiet and unobtrusive man, author of a colossal and partly unfinished...
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Concerto for an Exile
Young Africans in Paris face insecurity and vague future. Should they stay in France, or return to t...
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Hitler in Hollywood
A bio-doc about Micheline Presle changes into a thrilling investigation of the long hidden truth abo...
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The Authentic Trial of Carl Emmanuel Jung
20 years later, the recreation of the trial of a simple man that confesses himself as a war crimina...
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Bazin's Film
A meditation on the passing of time, on a film that was never completed, upon Bazin’s death, on rest...
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You'll Miss Me
In an airport, six destinies, during a short moment, will change, separate and meet. And if these ch...
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Jaloux comme un tigre
Henri has a beautiful wife, Sophie. Unfortunately, suffering from an unhealthy jealousy, he spends m...
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Mad Enough to Kill
Julie Ballenger has spent five years in a psychiatric clinic. Leaving the clinic apparently cured, s...
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The Trial
The surreal tale of an unassuming man who is accused of a never-specified crime and shambles through...
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L'ordre du jour
Martin raises alone his son Jonas. Road works Ministry, which employs him, is upset by fighting for ...
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To Each His Own Cinema
Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brou...
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The Colour of Words
This afterword to India Song (Duras' celebrated 1975 film) is organized in several parts. It begins ...
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Veilleurs dans la nuit - Une journée monastique à l'Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux
...
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The Immoral Moment
Michel Jussieu, a film producer, returns one morning to the cabaret where he forgot his sweater. He ...
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A Whale That Had a Toothache
Bernardette is feeling bored in a country house. She decides to send weekend invitations to a lot of...
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Earthen Man
From the construction of a sculpture "life size" in the earth, the director Boris Lehman imagines a ...
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Vroum-vroum
A family in a car that seems to be speeding through the night. We learn that the father, a pharmaceu...
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Rosenn
A famous English writer, Lewis Lafoly, forty and languidly elegant, meets Rosennn Auroch, a young an...
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Order of the Daisy
Matou is an innocuous, gentle-looking man. He is married to a formidable, even a frightening woman, ...
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Judoka-Secret Agent
Marc is a French secret agent whose only weapons are judo and karate. With the help of his sidekick ...
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A Bullet in the Gun Barrel
Back from Indochina, Tony and Dick, two French soldiers, are now in possession of more than 20 milli...
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Serious as Pleasure
Two men and a woman live quite happily together in a romantic liaison. The woman is probably wealthy...
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Le Fantôme de Laurent Terzieff
Laurent Terzieff was more than a good actor, after having been a real "star" in the cinema, through ...
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The Stud
Veterinary surgeon William Chaminade is having a peaceful holiday in the South of France when he is ...
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Is Dead - Portrait incomplet de Gertrude Stein
The life and work of Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), an American writer who lived in France for more tha...
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Degas and I
Between dance and drawings, Arnaud des Pallières relates different moments of Degas’s life and unvei...
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Inside 'Moonraker'
Documentary looking at the production of the James Bond movie 'Moonraker'. Narated by Patrick Macnee...
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The Mysteries of Paris: Jacques Rivette's Out 1 Revisited
In June 2015, forty-five years after OUT 1 was made, the filmmakers went to Paris to interview cast ...
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The Abbey of Crime: Umberto Eco's 'The Name of the Rose'
A German TV documentary that chronicles the daily rehearsals, the filming and all the behind the sce...
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A Monkey's Tale
Kom is from a tribe of monkeys who live in a canopy. He rejects elders' authority as well as the sup...
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Rendez-vous manqués
To relieve her boredom, a lonely woman embarks on adventures that turn out to be disappointing....
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The Visit
Bobo and Michael Lonsdale are alone in the Château de Versailles. Together, they are walking around ...
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Une jeunesse
After the birthday party of his wife Odile, Louis accompanies a friend to the station. When the trai...
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La Fenêtre
Two suicides take place in the same room of a hotel in Paris. The police investigate the reason why ...
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Mersonne ne m'aime
After a feminist is found murdered in her own home, a police detective investigates the crime with t...
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Les Mains d'Andréa
Andrea works as a healer. One evening, he decides to quit, but the next night, he meets a long-lost ...
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The Separation
On March 21, 1905, the hemicycle of the Palais-Bourbon resounded with the first session of a crucial...
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Speaking of Buñuel
Surrealist master Luis Buñuel is a towering figure in the world of cinema history, directing such gr...
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The Boulugres
Herbert, a Candide-like idealistic teenager, wants to become a doctor to help humanity, but his pare...
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Billy Ze Kick
Billy Ze Kick is name of a fictional serial killer in a bedtime story that a police inspector reads ...
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Les Écrans déchirés
What happens to the actors when they are left to their own devices? How to tear the screen of conven...
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Sculpt
Sculpt depicts an international market organized around new shapes and experiences, all the more sou...
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Behold a Pale Horse
Manuel Artiguez, a famous bandit during the Spanish civil war, has lived in French exile for 20 year...
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The Life of Mirrors
The Life of Mirrors is one of the sections of the exhibition Luis Miguel Cintra - Small Theatre of t...
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Zoo Story
A TV film of the play by Edward Albee. Mild-mannered, complacent Peter is startled when an aggressiv...
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Emile Reynaud
The 8th short film as part of the Magica series dealing with pre-cinema. Fictionalised documentary a...
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The Memory of the Eye E.J. Marey
The 11th short film as part of the Magica series dealing with pre-cinema. Documentary on the work of...
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