French Cinema

Bresson’s hugely influential study of a petty thief in late 50s Paris is one of his most widely acclaimed films.

François Truffaut’s French New Wave landmark is one of the greatest movies about adolescence.

Six-year-old Cléo spends a final summer with her beloved nanny Gloria, in this profoundly moving story of chosen family, duty and innocence lost.

Godard's playful tribute to the Hollywood pulp crime movies of the 1940s, executed with typically Gallic cool.

Director Claire Denis gives a wry account of an artist’s search for love, in this witty black comedy starring Juliette Binoche.

Jean Cocteau’s ravishingly restored 1946 film is a cinematic classic. “Five stars. [This] magical exploration of the fairytale is a compelling and bizarre masterpiece” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

A newly promoted detective is assigned to a young woman’s chilling murder in this deeply arresting crime thriller based on true events.

Agnès Varda’s award-winning study of those living on the margins of French society at the turn of the millennium.

Jean-Jacques Beineix’s story of a volatile, highly sexual relationship was one of the most successful French films of the 1980s.

Bresson’s superb final film and Cannes winner is a Tolstoy adaptation relating how a prank with a forged bank note leads to tragedy.

Eric Rohmer's masterpiece about a woman chasing romance and adventure during a long, hot summer.

Following separation from her money-squandering husband, Alice (Emilie Piponnier) finds herself falling into the world of high-end escorting, challenging her perceptions of life and love.

Ruth Rendell provides the source novel for this delicious tale of deception and identity, from the master of mischievous melodrama, François Ozon.

Eric Rohmer's final collaboration with the great cinematographer Néstor Almendros follows a holidaying teenager as she begins to navigate the adult world.

Olivier Assayas' neo-noir cyber-thriller is a chilling exploration of the nexus between sex and violence available at the click of a button.

François Truffaut’s hugely popular classic depicts one of cinema’s most captivating love triangles

Shockingly explicit, Catherine Breillat’s critically acclaimed Romance is one of the most controversial films of modern cinema.

Kristen Stewart reunites with Olivier Assayas to play an A-List celebrity's personal shopper, who keeps receiving strange text messages from an unknown source.

Olivier Assayas' sexy and stylish ode to the madness of filmmaking, with Maggie Cheung as the Hong Kong movie star playing a Catwoman-style anti-heroine.

Jean-Pierre Melville’s film of Jean Cocteau's controversial novel about a teenage brother and sister and their intense, closeted relationship.

A director struggles to film a difficult sex scene between two actors who happen to hate each other, in Catherine Breillat's witty exploration of intimacy coordination.

Naively idealistic and largely inept both in his dealings with women and in any job, Antoine clumsily courts Christine while working for a private detective agency.

Separated from Christine and uncertain about his latest relationship, Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud) has finally written a novel inspired by his own experiences in this final chapter of François Truffaut’s series.

Happily married Bernard (Gérard Depardieu) has his life is thrown into turmoil when Mathilde (Fanny Ardant) - an old flame - moves into the house opposite.

Mathieu Kassovitz’s landmark mid-90s drama throws a cinematic Molotov cocktail at structural racism, police brutality and media manipulation.

Catherine Deneuve shines as the director and lead actor of a Parisian theatre struggling to survive under the Nazi occupation in Truffaut's wartime drama.

Different worlds collide when a chic young diplomat's wife meets an intriguing adventurer and his hippy friends in Barbet Schroeder's striking second feature.

In this typically ambivalent comedy from Truffaut, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) becomes a father... But is he mature enough for parenthood?

The first feature by Barbet Schroeder (Maîtresse, The Valley), More created a sensation when it was released in 1969, quickly becoming a cult classic and famed for its Pink Floyd soundtrack.

A bittersweet fable about a young man's jealous pursuits; the first film in Eric Rohmer's six-film series, Comedies and Proverbs.

An incontestable masterpiece of silent cinema, Carl Dreyer's deeply moving biopic features one of the most powerful performances ever captured on film.

Alexandre Aja defined a new breed of horror by bringing the American slasher format into French cinema.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic, nail-biting suspense thriller won both The Golden Bear and the Palme d'Or in 1953.

Claude Lanzmann's monumental chronicle of the Holocaust has been acclaimed by many as the greatest documentary ever made.

Claude Lanzmann's monumental chronicle of the Holocaust has been acclaimed by many as the greatest documentary ever made.

Georges Franju’s gorgeous, poetic horror film about a surgeon’s dark obsession with restoring his daughter’s disfigured face.

Jacques Rivette’s biggest commercial hit is an exhilarating combination of theatricality, paranoia and ‘la vie parisienne’, around an entrancing examination of making and watching films.

An outrageous classic of erotic cinema, Walerian Borowczyk’s playful and subversive fantasy finds a horny heiress courting the ravenous desires of a wild beast.

René Laloux and Roland Topor’s surreal, psychedelic sci-fi animation imagines a world in which humanoid creatures are kept as pets by a race of giants.

Gerard Depardieu plays the young innocent who falls for the mysterious maitresse Ariane (Bulle Ogier), a leather clad dominatrix, in Barbet Schroeder’s controversial film.

Truffaut’s Palme d'Or-nominated account of an ill-starred adulterous affair boasts Hitchcockian precision and pitch-perfect performances.

Marcel Carné's masterpiece of French cinema portrays the theatrical milieu of Paris' 'Boulevard du Crime'.

Magical retelling of the Orpheus myth by poet, playwright, artist and filmmaker Jean Cocteau.