French Cinema

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

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

Mia Hansen-Løve’s stylish and transcendent story of house music is one of the great films about dance culture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Juliette Binoche, Chloë Moretz, and Kristen Stewart star in this moving drama about a veteran actor struggling as the allure of her fame fades.

Juliette Binoche and Guillaume Canet lead the cast in Olivier Assayas’ wryly comic look at the quandaries of the publishing world.

“The revolution is not a dinner-party.” Jean-Luc Godard's mix of mordant satire, pedagogical treatise, political tract, and pop-artwork.

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

Isabelle Huppert plays a plantation owner clinging to her land as civil war creeps ever closer, in Claire Denis' mesmerising rumination on the effects of colonialism.

Claire Denis’ moody and atmospheric thriller about an absent brother returning to the fold to investigate his family’s murky secrets.

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

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

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

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

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.

Robert Bresson’s riveting tale of a Gestapo prisoner determined to regain his freedom, based on real events.

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.

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

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

Catherine Breillat's rigorously intellectual exploration of sexuality, about a woman who employs a gay man to spend days watching her naked.

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.

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.

A man suspected of a crime enlists a woman to prove his innocence in Truffaut’s Hitchcockian inspired serio-comic romantic thriller.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Walerian Borowczyk presents four stories of sexual taboos throughout the ages, in his highly controversial classic of 1970s erotic cinema.

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.

A nightclub pianist conceals a secret past in Truffaut’s second feature - a breezy New Wave concoction of genre pastiche, playful stylistic tricks and romantic reverie.

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.

A French boarding-school friendship threatened by Nazi hatred in Malle's elegant tale of World War Two.

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.

Julien Tavernier plans the perfect murder of his boss. Having emerged from the scene of the crime, he returns to retrieve a vital piece of evidence but finds himself trapped in a lift, increasingly desperate to escape before the police arrive.

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

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

Newlyweds begin their life together on a working barge in this luminous romance, the only full-length feature film by director Jean Vigo.

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.

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.