Essence
Overview:
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Things to Come
Nathalie teaches philosophy at a high school in Paris. She is passionate about her job and particularly enjoys passing on the pleasure of thinking. Married with two children, she divides her time between her family, former students and her very possessive mother. One day, Nathalie’s husband announces he is leaving her for another woman. With freedom thrust upon her, Nathalie must reinvent her life.
Mindwalk
On the French island of Mont Saint-Michel, Jack, a failed presidential candidate, Tom, a poet and Sonia, a physicist, engage in an intellectual conversation about politics, philosophy and life over the course of a single day.
The Last Woman
Psychological drama of the compelling relationship between a young French engineer and the girl he takes into his home after his wife has left him with their baby son.
The Last of England
The artist's personal commentary on the decline of his country in a language closer to poetry than prose. A dark meditation on London under Thatcher.
Come Sunday
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
Out of Love
When Jeanne, a meticulous insurance assessor, is suddenly left to care for her estranged sister’s two children after their mother vanishes, her carefully ordered life begins to unravel. Confronted with unexpected responsibilities, she must balance the fragile task of earning the children’s trust while also tending to her own relationship with her girlfriend, who struggles to adjust to Jeanne’s new role. As grief, uncertainty, and shifting loyalties mount, Jeanne finds herself redefining what family and love truly mean.
Saint Omer
A novelist attends the trial of a woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. But as the trial continues, her own family history, doubts, and fears about motherhood are steadily dislodged as the life story of the accused is gradually revealed.
Maelström
A young woman's life spirals into chaos after she is involved in a hit-and-run accident. Then she encounters a mysterious man named Evian who offers her an opportunity for redemption. Narrated by a fish.
Chaos
A bourgeois couple, modern yet conventional. One night by accident, a young prostitute barges into their lives. Hounded down, beaten up, threatened, she will continue to struggle, with the help of a well off lady, first for her survival-her resurrection-then for her dignity and freedom. Stormy encounters for everyone involved.
Tigertail
A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
Ad Vitam
When he and his pregnant wife are attacked in their home, a former elite agent becomes trapped in a deadly manhunt tied to his own painful past.
The Man Who Sleeps
A young student decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him.
Eleanor the Great
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
Another Day
Garance is a young actress, but not a star. She manages everything as best she can, valiant, cheerful, a soldier, and she finds in alcohol an unconditional fuel, a source of comfort. Garance changes her life and begins an eight-year journey of moves, work, encounters, parties and anxieties, joys and hardships… An intimate, friendly, and sexual revolution. But she consumes, more and more. Until the very possibility of death…
Norman
A teenager pretends to be dying from cancer as a way to cope with the realities of his daily existence and his father's terminal illness.
Omni Loop
Diagnosed with a black hole growing inside her chest and stuck in a loop reliving the last five days of her life, a 55-year-old wife and mother from Miami, Florida decides to solve time travel in order to go back and be the person she always intended to be.
Another World
An executive manager, his wife and his family, at the point when his professional choices are about to overturn all their lives. Philippe Lemesle and his wife are separating, their love irretrievably damaged by pressures of work. A successful executive in industrial conglomerate, Philippe no longer knows how to respond to the contradictory demands of his bosses. Yesterday they wanted a manager, today an enforcer. Now he must decide what his life really means.
Stowaway
A three-person crew on a mission to Mars faces an impossible choice when an unplanned passenger jeopardizes the lives of everyone on board.
Kompromat
Mathieu, a member of the French institute in Irkutsk, is arrested overnight by the Russian authorities. Imprisoned and accused of sexual abuse on his own daughter, he realises he is a victim of a Kompromat. With the help of the FSB, someone has built up a case to frame him. Isolated, he has no one to turn to. Proving his innocence is impossible: the only solution is to escape.
Vanya on 42nd Street
An uninterrupted rehearsal of Chekhov's 'Uncle Vanya' plays out by a company of actors. The setting: their run-down theater with an unusable stage and crumbling ceiling. The play is shown act by act with the briefest of breaks to move props or for refreshments. The lack of costumes, real props and scenery is soon forgotten.