Raised in a brothel, then wrested from the only life she knew by her father, so they could join the circus, Edith Piaf spent her teen years on the streets. She is finally "rescued" by a crime figure who gives her career a start and, ultimately, by her international success and final illness. Always frail, sickly, malnourished, and wildly temperamental, she was often on drugs or alcohol and was always in search of true love. Middleweight boxer, Marcel...

Best selling comic book artist Joann Sfar delivers an inventive biography of famed French singer Serge Gainsbourg. Born Lucien Ginsburg to Russian-Jewish parents, Sfar follows him from his childhood in Nazi-occupied Paris, his transition from painter to jazz musician to pop superstar and his many relationships including Juliette Greco, Brigitte Bardot, and Jane Birkin while employing a witty surrealistic style and a soundtrack that acts like a time...

Famed author Marianne Winckler goes undercover to investigate the exploitation of the working class in Northern France. She eventually lands a job as a cleaner on the cross-channel ferry and develops close connections with the other cleaning women, many of whom have extremely limited resources and income opportunities. As she learns more about the plight of these workers, Marianne struggles with her deception toward them and tries to rationalize that...

A reflection on art, life and the movies, THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS is a magnificent film from the great Agnès Varda (*Cleo From 5 to 7*), a richly cinematic self portrait that touches on everything from the feminist movement and the Black Panthers to the films of husband Jacques Demy and the birth of the French New Wave. Nominated for the Allan King Documentary Award at the **Toronto International Film Festival.** Winner of the Best Documentary Film...

For the last 40 years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed some of the major events of our recent history; international conflicts, starvation and exodus.

It's 1891, Gauguin has exiled himself to Tahiti in order to rediscover his painting, far from the moral, political, and visual codes of civilized Europe. He goes deep into the jungle, managing solitude, poverty, and sickness. He meets Tehura, who will become his wife, and the theme of his greatest paintings.

Versailles, August 1715. Back from hunting, Louis XIV feels pain in his leg. A serious fever erupts, which marks the beginning of the agony of the greatest King of France. Surrounded by a horde of doctors and his closest counselors who come in turns at his bedside sensing the impending power vacuum, the Sun King struggles to run the country from his bed. Official Selection at the **Cannes Film Festival** and at the **Toronto International Film Festival**....

Edmond Rostand is not yet thirty but already has two children and too much anxiety. He has not written anything for two years. In desperation, he offers the great Constant Coquelin a new play, a heroic comedy, in verse, for the holidays. There’s one problem: it is not written yet. Ignoring the whims of actresses, the demands of his producers, the jealousy of his wife, the stories of his best friend’s heart and the lack of enthusiasm of all those...

The French editor of Elle magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he'd only visited in his mind.

The French editor of Elle magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he'd only visited in his mind.