Gérard Desarthe

La Sainte Famille (2017)

The story of a traditional Catholic family in northern France, part of society but subject to all its changes. ...

The Nansen Passport (2016)

On July 5th, 1922, Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat Fridtjof Nansen creates a passport with which, between 1922 and 1945, he managed to protect the fundamental human rights as citizens of the world of thousands of people, famous and anonymous, wh ...

The Ponzi Scheme (2014)

Ponzi, from his arrival in Boston in 1903, to hi death in Rio in 1949. He made himself famous in inventing the first fraud of modern times on a large scale, and inspired Bernard Madoff. ...

Roxana's Hands (2013)

Roxana Orlac, a famous violinist, loses the use of her hands in a terrible lift accident. Her career as a virtuoso seems to be over until Professor Christansen offers her a transplant of two new hands. What he omits to tell her is that the two hands in que ...

Priest Daens (1992)

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns fo ...

Cherokee (1991)

In this detective and crime comedy, the heir to a large fortune is an unknown, and nobody knows him or where he can be found. An occasional musician, Fred plans to pass himself off as that man. It's a goofy idea, but maybe it will work. However, before he ...

The Elegant Criminal (1990)

On 9 January 1836, Pierre Lacenaire goes to the guillotine, a murderer and a thief. He gives Allard, a police inspector, his life story, written while awaiting execution. He also asks Allard to care for Hermine, a lass to whom he has been guardian for more ...

Uranus (1990)

After World War II, a small French village struggles to put the war behind as the controlling Communist Party tries to flush out Petain loyalists. The local bar owner, a simple man who likes to write poetry, who only wants to be left alone to do his job, b ...

Je tue à la campagne (1987)

La Baston (1985)

After doing some time in jail, René has finally said goodbye to his criminal past. But when his son is mortally ill and in desperate need of expensive medical help, René can't refuse the offer to crack a safe in a villa. What René and his pals don't kno ...

Terrorists in Retirement (1985)

Not just another documentary on the French resistance movement, this film focuses on one particular group of underground fighters in France: those from Eastern Europe. Many were Jews and all had fled their native countries before the war broke out. They we ...

Notti e nebbie (1984)

Milan, the last months of WWII. While everything starts to crumble down, RSI police chief Bruno Spada tries to crush the local anti-fascist resistance. ...

A Love in Germany (1983)

In May of 1983, a man turns 49 and, with his 17-year old son, journeys to the village in Baden that he left 40 years before. He wants to discover what happened then, the truth about an affair his mother had with a young Polish prisoner of war, how the auth ...

The Wounded Man (1983)

A fleeting encounter in a train station draws a withdrawn young man into a shadowy world of desire and danger. As obsession deepens, innocence destroyed, and an irreversible transformation begins. ...

Hecate (1982)

Set amid the European community in an unspecified North African country, a colony on the verge of nationalism just before the war. And colonized is what happens to a French diplomat, Julien Rochelle, when he meets the mysterious beauty Clothilde de Wattevi ...

Peer Gynt (1981)

French television adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's five-act play in verse. ...

The Police War (1979)

Fush and Ballestrat are the heads of each department of the French police. Both have the task of combating serious crime and cleaning up the underworld. ...

1788 (1978)

The story of a small village in Touraine between 1788 and 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution, with its lord, its wealthy peasants, and its poor. The wealthy peasants, expelled from the communal pastures by the count, take him to court. Guillaume Coq ...

The Conquistadores (1976)

A young couple: Victor is a musician, Claire is a secretary in a publishing house. Their daily life seems so disappointing, so monotonous, that they begin to spend their time daydreaming, both creating their own imaginary world. At the office, she writes ...

Let Joy Reign Supreme (1975)

A look at 18th-century France, when the depravity of the authorities contributed to social oppression, and the uprisings flared up one after another. ...

France, Incorporated (1974)

In the year 2222, a former drug dealer is kept in a state of hibernation. Reanimated, he tells his story. Leader in the narcotics market, his situation was prosperous until, during a political change, the government legalized its use. ...

The Eyes Closed (1974)

Protagonist is the young actor Yvan. During a tour, he witnesses the inexplicable suicide of one of his fellow actors. Back in Paris he tells Xénie, the ex-lover of the dead actor. Xénie is in love with Yvan, but the latter sinks deeper and deeper into a ...

La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (1974)

Travail du comédien (1974)

We follow the rehearsals and the staging work of Bertold Brecht's play 'Dans la jungle des villes' in 1972 by the company Théâtre de l'Espérance. The three directors: Jean-Pierre Vincent, Jean Jourdheuil and André Engel discuss their joint work of stag ...

The French Calvinists (1972)

A few years after the revocation of theEdict of Nantes, the Camisards, Protestants from the Cévennes region, mostly peasants and silk workers, formed groups following Gédéon Laporte and fought Louis XIV's dragoons. ...

Jaune, Le Soleil (1971)

The whole film takes place in a single room where representatives of the two political forces and their enemy "the Jew" are gathered. A female character establishes the dialogue between these individuals and comments on the ideology of each; Until the fina ...

Bye Bye Barbara (1969)

A chance meeting with an alluring stranger leads a sports journalist down a twisted path of deception. ...

La Question ordinaire (1969)

A woman wants to film a prisoner being tortured. ...

Chicken Soup (1963)

The fiancée of a gangster who has been shot by the police takes an entire police station hostage, armed with a revolver and a bottle of nitroglycerine... ...