The cinema of France comprises 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.
Léon: The Professional is a 1994 English-language French action-thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson. It stars Jean Reno and Gary Oldman, and features the film debut of Natalie Portman. The plot centers on Léon (Reno), a professional hitman who reluctantly takes in twelve-year-old Mathilda Lando (Portman) after her family is murdered by corrupt Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Norman Stansfield (Oldman). Léon and Mathilda form an unusual relationship as she becomes his protégée and learns the hitman's trade. The film was released in France by Gaumont through Gaumont Buena Vista International on 14 September 1994 and received mostly positive reviews from critics.
Luc Paul Maurice Besson is a French filmmaker. He directed or produced the films Subway (1985), The Big Blue (1988), and La Femme Nikita (1990). Associated with the Cinéma du look film movement, he has been nominated for a César Award for Best Director and Best Picture for his films Léon: The Professional (1994) and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999). He won Best Director and Best French Director for his sci-fi action film The Fifth Element (1997). He wrote and directed the sci-fi action film Lucy (2014) and the space opera film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017).
Gaumont SA is a French film and television production and distribution company headquartered in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Founded by the engineer-turned-inventor Léon Gaumont (1864–1946) in 1895, it is the oldest extant film company in the world, established before other studios such as Pathé, Titanus (1904), Nordisk Film (1906), Universal, Paramount, and Nikkatsu.
La Femme Nikita, also called Nikita in France, is a 1990 French-language action thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson. The film stars Anne Parillaud as the title character, a criminal who is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering policemen during an armed pharmacy robbery. Her government handlers fake her death and recruit her as a professional assassin. After intense training, she starts a career as a killer, where she struggles to balance her work with her personal life. She shows talent at this and her career progresses until a mission in an embassy goes awry.
Marc Shmuger is an American entertainment executive and film producer. From 1998 to 2009 he was working for Universal Pictures, where he became chairman in 2006. From February 2016 to December 2017 he was the CEO of EuropaCorp.
Relativity Media, LLC is an American independent media company founded in 2004 by Lynwood Spinks and Ryan Kavanaugh. The company brokered film finance deals and later branched into film production and other entertainment ventures. The company was commercially successful prior to bankruptcy.
Colombiana is a 2011 French English-language action thriller film co-written and produced by Luc Besson and directed by Olivier Megaton. The film stars Zoe Saldaña with supporting roles by Michael Vartan, Cliff Curtis, Lennie James, Callum Blue, and Jordi Mollà. The film is about Cataleya, a nine-year-old girl in Colombia whose family is killed by a drug lord. Fifteen years later, a grown Cataleya seeks her revenge.
The Cité du Cinéma or Studios of Paris is a film studio complex originally supported and founded by the film director and producer Luc Besson, located in Saint-Denis, in the northern suburbs of Paris, in a renovated power plant, commissioned in 1933 to power the Parisian metro. The studio complex is intended to be a competitor of Cinecittà in Rome, Pinewood in London and Babelsberg in Berlin. It was inaugurated on 21 September 2012. In February 2022 Tunisian-French film producer Tarak Ben Ammar finalized a deal to purchase Studios de Paris.
Lucy is a 2014 English-language French science fiction action film written and directed by Luc Besson for his company EuropaCorp, and produced by his wife, Virginie Besson-Silla. It was shot in Taipei, Paris, and New York City. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Choi Min-sik, and Amr Waked. Johansson portrays Lucy, a woman who gains psychokinetic abilities when a nootropic, psychedelic drug is absorbed into her bloodstream.
Method Animation is a French animation studio owned by Mediawan through its Kids & Family division founded in 1998 by Aton Soumache. The studio produces CGI and 2D animated shows. It came together in 2014 as the culmination of a merger of Dimitri Rassam's Chapter 2 and Alexis Vonarb's Onyx Films. In 2018, Mediawan obtained a majority stake in Method Animation through its acquisition of ON Kids & Family and ON Entertainment.
Studio Chizu is a Japanese animation studio based in Suginami, Tokyo, Japan. It was co-founded by Mamoru Hosoda and Yuichiro Saito in 2011. Studio Chizu has won three Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year awards. The image in their logo is a reference to Makoto Konno, the main character of the Hosoda-directed 2006 film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a 2017 space opera film written and directed by Luc Besson, and produced by his wife, Virginie Besson-Silla. It is based on the French science fiction comics series Valérian and Laureline, written by Pierre Christin, illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières, and published by Dargaud. It stars Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne as Valerian and Laureline, respectively, with Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu and Rutger Hauer in supporting roles. Besson independently financed and personally funded the film. With a production budget of around $223 million, it is both the most expensive European and the most expensive independent film ever made.
Kursk is a 2018 disaster drama-thriller film directed by Thomas Vinterberg, based on Robert Moore's book A Time to Die, about the true story of the 2000 Kursk submarine disaster. It stars Matthias Schoenaerts, Léa Seydoux, Peter Simonischek, August Diehl, Max von Sydow, and Colin Firth. It was the last film featuring von Sydow to be released before his death in March 2020.
Anna is a 2019 action thriller film written, produced and directed by Luc Besson. The film stars Sasha Luss as the eponymous assassin, alongside Luke Evans, Cillian Murphy, Helen Mirren, and Alexander Petrov.
Mediawan S.A. is a French media conglomerate and audiovisual international production and distribution group. It was founded on December 15, 2015, by Xavier Niel, Matthieu Pigasse and Pierre-Antoine Capton under the legal form of a special-purpose acquisition company ("SPAC") with the purpose to acquire assets and operations in the media production and distribution business in Europe. Their ambition for the company was to become "one of the largest platforms for European content".
Our Struggles is a 2018 Belgian-French comedy-drama film directed by Guillaume Senez. It was screened in the Critics' Week section at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. It received seven nominations at the 9th Magritte Awards and won five, including Best Film and Best Director for Guillaume Senez.
Olivier Delbosc is a French film producer. He previously co-headed Fidelité Productions before launching his own production company Curiosa Films.
Dogman is a 2023 English-language French action thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson and starring Caleb Landry Jones, Jojo T. Gibbs, Christopher Denham, John Charles Aguilar and Grace Palma. Set in New Jersey, it depicts a man who was abused by his father and loves dogs.
€35.3 million (2021)
