A list of French produced or co-produced films released in France in 2009:
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.
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).
Isabelle Yasmine Adjani is a French actress and singer of Algerian and German descent.
Folimage is a French animation studio, based in Bourg-lès-Valence, Drôme, France. It was founded in 1981 by Jacques-Rémy Girerd. The studio produces animation films for cinema and TV. In 1999, the company founded an animation school, La Poudrière, also in Valence. In 2009, Folimage and La Poudrière moved to La Cartoucherie, a former munitions factory in Bourg-lès-Valence.
Claude Berri was a French film director, writer, producer, actor and distributor.
Georges-Henri Denys Arcand is a Canadian filmmaker. During his four decades career, he became one of the most internationally-recognized director from Quebec, earning widespread acclaim and numerous accolades for his "intensely personal, challenging, and intellectual films."
Marcel Paul Pagnol was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. Regarded as an auteur, in 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie française. Pagnol is generally regarded as one of France's greatest 20th-century writers and is notable for the fact that he excelled in almost every medium—memoir, novel, drama and film.
Vanessa Chantal Paradis is a French singer, model and actress. Paradis became a star at the age of 14 with the international success of her single "Joe le taxi" (1987). At age 18, she was awarded France's highest honours as both a singer and an actress with the Prix Romy Schneider and the César Award for Most Promising Actress for Jean-Claude Brisseau's Noce Blanche, as well as the Victoires de la Musique for Best Female Singer for her album Variations sur le même t'aime. Her most notable films also include Élisa (1995) alongside Gérard Depardieu, Witch Way Love (1997) opposite Jean Reno, Une chance sur deux (1998) co-starring with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon, Girl on the Bridge (1999), Heartbreaker (2010) and Café de Flore (2011). Her tribute to Jeanne Moreau at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival during which they sang in duet "Le Tourbillon" became notable in French popular culture. In 2022, she was nominated for the Molière Award for Best Actress for her performance in the play Maman.
Southern France, also known as the south of France or colloquially in French as le Midi, is a defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Marais Poitevin, Spain, the Mediterranean Sea and Italy. It includes southern Nouvelle-Aquitaine in the west, Occitanie in the centre, the southern parts of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in the northeast, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in the southeast, as well as the island of Corsica in the southeast. Southern France is generally considered part of southern Europe because of its association with the Mediterranean Sea.
Jamel Debbouze is a French-Moroccan actor, comedian, screenwriter, film producer and director. Best known for his stand-up comedy sketches, he also worked with director Alain Chabat in several films and other notable French humourists such as Florence Foresti, Fred Testot and Gad Elmaleh. He has starred in a number of box-office successes, including Amélie, Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, Hollywoo and HOUBA! On the Trail of the Marsupilami. He is the founder of the Canal+ television show Jamel Comedy Club.
Yasmina Reza is a French playwright, actress, novelist and screenwriter best known for her plays 'Art' and God of Carnage. Many of her brief satiric plays have reflected on contemporary middle-class issues. The 2011 black comedy film Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski, was based on Reza's Tony Award-winning 2006 play God of Carnage.
The Walls of Malapaga (Italian: Le mura di Malapaga, French: Au-delà des grilles, is a 1949 French-Italian drama film directed by René Clément and starring Jean Gabin, Isa Miranda and Andrea Checchi. It was a co-production made by Francinex and Italia Produzione, produced by Alfredo Guarini from a screenplay by Cesare Zavattini, Suso Cecchi d'Amico and Alfredo Guarini adapted by Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost. The music score was by Roman Vlad and the cinematography by Louis Page. It was made at the Farnesina Studios of Titanus in Rome with sets designed by the art director Piero Filippone and Luigi Gervasi.
The Mystery of Picasso is a 1956 French documentary film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. In it, the painter Pablo Picasso produces 20 drawings and paintings, at first using inks that bleed through the paper on which he is drawing, with the act of creation filmed in real-time from the backside of the easel, and later using oil paints, with Clouzot employing a stop-motion-like effect to depict the development and modification of the works. The film begins with Picasso creating simple marker drawings in black and white, and he gradually progresses to full-scale collages and oil paintings.
The Cinema of Niger began in the 1940s with the ethnographical documentary of French director Jean Rouch, before growing to become one of the most active national film cultures in Francophone Africa in the 1960s-70s with the work of filmmakers such as Oumarou Ganda, Moustapha Alassane and Gatta Abdourahamne. The industry has slowed somewhat since the 1980s, though films continue to be made in the country, with notable directors of recent decades including Mahamane Bakabe, Inoussa Ousseini, Mariama Hima, Moustapha Diop and Rahmatou Keïta. Unlike neighbouring Nigeria, with its thriving Hausa and English-language film industries, most Nigerien films are made in French with Francophone countries as their major market, whilst action and light entertainment films from Nigeria or dubbed western films fill most Nigerien theatres.
Mélanie Laurent is a French actress and filmmaker. The recipient of two César Awards and a Lumières Award, she is an accomplished actress in the French film industry. Internationally, Laurent is best known for her roles in Inglourious Basterds (2009), Now You See Me (2013), Operation Finale (2018) and 6 Underground (2019).
EuropaCorp S.A. is a French motion picture company headquartered in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, and one of a few full-service independent studios that both produce and distribute feature films. It specializes in production, distribution, home entertainment, VOD, sales, partnerships and licenses, recording, publishing and exhibition. EuropaCorp's integrated financial model generates revenues from a wide range of sources, with films from many genres and a strong presence in the international markets.
Pan-Européenne is a French film production and publishing company. Originally only a distribution company, in 1992 it began also a production company, producing Beau fixe. It has produced various films, including Jaco Van Dormael's The Eighth Day (1996) and Mr. Nobody (2009), Jérôme Salle's Largo Winch (2008), and distributed Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects (1995), Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's Sin City (2005).
Thomas Langmann is a French film producer and actor, known for producing The Artist (2011), for which he received an Academy Award for Best Picture as producer in 2012.