Cahiers du Cinéma is a French film magazine co-founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs—Objectif 49 and Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin.
French cinema consists of the film industry and its film productions, whether made within the nation of France or by French film production companies abroad. It is the oldest and largest precursor of national cinemas in Europe; with primary influence also on the creation of national cinemas in Asia.
Olivier Assayas is a French film director, screenwriter and film critic. Assayas is known for his eclectic filmography, consisting of slow-burning period pieces, psychological thrillers, neo-noirs, and comedies. He has directed French, Spanish, and English-language films with international casts. The son of filmmaker Jacques Rémy, Assayas began his career as a critic for Cahiers du Cinéma. There he wrote about world cinema and its film auteurs, who later influenced his work. Assayas made several short films, and made his feature debut with Disorder in 1986.
Serge Daney was a French movie critic. He was a major figure of Cahiers du cinéma which he co-edited in the late 1970s. He also wrote extensively about films, television, and society in the newspaper Libération and founded the quarterly review Trafic shortly before his death. Highly regarded in French and European film criticism circles, his work, remained little known to English-speaking audiences until recent translations. A first book-long interview, Postcards from the Cinema, was published in 2007 and a collection of his writings prior to 1982, The Cinema House and the World, was published in 2022.
Purple Noon is a 1960 crime thriller film starring Alain Delon, alongside Marie Laforêt and Maurice Ronet; Romy Schneider, Delon's girlfriend at the time, makes a brief cameo appearance in the film. Directed by René Clément, the French/Italian international co-production is loosely based on the 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. The majority of the film's dialogue is spoken in French, although there are brief sequences in Italian and English.
Bruno Dumont is a French film director and screenwriter. To date, he has directed ten feature films, all of which border somewhere between realistic drama and the avant-garde. His films have won several awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Two of Dumont's films have won the Grand Prix award: both L'Humanité (1999) and Flandres (2006). Dumont's Hadewijch won the 2009 Prize of the International Critics for Special Presentation at the Toronto Film Festival.
Dany Boon is a French actor, film director, screenwriter and producer.
Welcome to the Sticks is a 2008 French comedy film directed and co-written by Dany Boon and starring Kad Merad and Boon himself. The film is the highest-grossing French film of all time at the box office in France.
Esther Kahn is the first English-language film by the French director Arnaud Desplechin. It premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival where it competed for the Palme d'Or, but was not distributed to the United States for two years until it played in New York City in 2002. It stars Summer Phoenix as Esther and Ian Holm as her friend and teacher, Nathan Quellen.
Sins of Madeleine is a 1951 French drama film directed by Henri Lepage and starring Madeleine Lebeau, Henri Vilbert and Yves Furet. It was shot at the Epinay Studios in Paris. The film's sets were designed by the art director Claude Bouxin.
Une souris chez les hommes is a French comedy film from 1964, directed by Jacques Poitrenaud, written by Michel Audiard and Francis Ryck, starring Dany Saval and Louis de Funès. The film is known under the titles: "A Mouse with the Men", "Un drôle de caïd", "O Tesouro Oculto" (Portugal), "Bei Oscar ist 'ne Schraube locker", "Due uomini in fuga... per un colpo maldestro" (Italy).
Stranger by the Lake is a 2013 French thriller drama film written and directed by Alain Guiraudie. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where Guiraudie won the award for Best Director. The film also won the Queer Palm award, and was mentioned on multiple top-ten lists of the best films of 2014.
Jealousy is a 2013 French drama film co-written and directed by Philippe Garrel, starring Louis Garrel and Anna Mouglalis. It was screened in the main competition section at the 70th Venice International Film Festival. It is the first installment in Garrel's trilogy of love, the second being In the Shadow of Women (2015) and the third being Lover for a Day (2017).
Monelle is a 1948 French drama film directed by Henri Decoin and starring Louis Jouvet, Renée Devillers and Dany Robin. It was shot at the Billancourt Studios in Paris and on location in the city. The film's sets were designed by the art director Emile Alex
Les Créatures is a 1966 fantasy drama film written and directed by Agnès Varda that recounts a story of a couple who have just moved to a new town and been in a car accident. The wife, Mylène Piccoli, loses her voice in the accident and communicates through writing. The husband, Edgar Piccoli, is a science fiction writer working to produce his next book.
Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc is a 2017 French musical film directed by Bruno Dumont. It was screened in the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. It was followed two years later by the non-musical sequel Joan of Arc, which premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, written and directed by Dumont and with Lise Leplat Prudhomme reprising her role. The script is an adaptation of the play The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, written in 1910 by the Catholic author Charles Péguy.
The following is a list of the top 10 films chosen annually by the critics of Cahiers du Cinéma, a French film magazine. The magazine started the lists in 1951, but did not publish a list from 1952 to 1953 and from 1969 to 1980.
Corinne Maury is a French lecturer in film studies as well as a film director.
The Little Zouave is a 1950 French comedy drama film directed by Gilles Grangier and starring François Périer, Dany Robin and Marie Daëms. It was shot at the Billancourt Studios in Paris and on location in the city. The film's sets were designed by the art director Raymond Druart.
The Empire is a 2024 apocalyptic science fiction comedy-drama film written and directed by Bruno Dumont. The international co-production between France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Portugal premiered on 18 February 2024 at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, where it competed for the Golden Bear. It was theatrically released in France on 21 February 2024.
