French Cinema

Claire Denis' fully formed debut offers a child’s-eye-view of racial and sexual tension that bubbles with unspoken desires.

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.

Co-written with Céline Sciamma, Noémie Merlant’s bold film follows three friends as they dispose of the body of an abuser they’ve accidentally killed.

Albert Serra’s hypnotic Palme d'Or-nominated drama about the greed and hypocrisy of colonial power in Tahiti.

Siblings find passion and peril online and in the real world, in this visually electric French drama.

Laure Calamy stars in this involving thriller by Sébastien Marnier, playing an outsider tangled in a web of upper-class family malice.

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

Francois Ozon’s sly and seductive account of teenage girl’s dalliance with high-class prostitution.

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

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

Writer-director Robin Campillo offers an exploration of memory and politics, in this boldly conceived story of boyhood in 1970s Madagascar.

Kristen Stewart plays a celebrity's personal shopper, who keeps receiving strange text messages from an unknown source.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Jean Rollin’s hauntingly poetic horror about a man trying to solve the riddle of a tormenting childhood memory.

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

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