Gossenreiter (2015)

When Brazil Was Modern

Brazilian architecture in the 20th century influenced generations of architects worldwide. But there was a time when choosing an architectural style also meant choosing a vision for the country, amidst political power struggles.

Île de la Réunion - L'incroyable route qui défie l'Océan

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Belmondo, le magnifique

With more than 70 films and 160 million cumulative tickets in France, Jean-Paul Belmondo is one of the essential stars of French cinema.

Wiener Barock - Der Architekt dreier Kaiser

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Folkhemmets Estetik

Documentary about the architecture of the Swedish housing boom in the 1960s and how it's viewed today.

Paname: The Ghost of the Great Frenchman

Ferdinand de Lesseps, known as “The Great Frenchman”, will embark in the greatest adventure of his life: To unite the Pacific and Atlantic oceans through a Canal in the Isthmus of Panama – without knowing that this will cost him his reputation, thousands of innocent lives and the biggest financial scandal of all time, up to that point: the famous “Scandal of Panama”. Today, the French capital is known as “Paname”.

Les Invalides: La construction d'un symbole

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Older, Stronger, Wiser

In this short documentary, five black women talk about their lives in rural and urban Canada between the 1920s and 1950s. What emerges is a unique history of Canada’s black people and the legacy of their community elders. Produced by the NFB’s iconic Studio D.

Arne Jacobsen’s Modern Denmark

Danish documentary about the disobedient schoolboy with a talent for painting, who became one of Denmark’s greatest architects. His ideas were ahead of their time and often received criticism, but today, 50 years after his death, Arne Jacobsen's schools, town halls and libraries are still with us, and they define modern Denmark.

Towards the South, A journey around earthen architecture and André Ravéreau

Across two countries, France and Algeria, and five cities, Mohamed Gholam takes us south to tell us about the earthen and vernacular-inspired architecture of André Ravéreau. Passing through Lyon, Marseille, Algiers, and Djelfa, this adventure will take us to Ghardaïa, in the Algerian desert. The documentary presents the following buildings: L'Orangerie in Lyon, the Village Terre de l'Isle-d'Abeau in Villefontaine, the Unité d'Habitat or Cité Radieuse in Marseille, L'Aérohabitat in Algiers, the Palais des Raïs or Bastion 23 in Algiers, the Hôtel des Postes in Ghardaïa, and the low-cost housing of Sidi Abbaz de Bounoura.

Zelensky

Ten years ago, Volodymyr Zelensky was just one of the many faces on Ukrainian television screens. He became a star thanks to the 2015 satirical series Servant of the People, in which he played a history teacher who becomes president. Four years later, what began as fiction became a reality. This French documentary follows the transformation of a popular TV comedian into a statesman on the front lines of the Russian invasion. Archival footage, family photos, television appearances, and interviews with Zelensky and those closest to him create a multi-layered portrait of a man who always longed for a large audience. At the same time, the film places his personal development in the broader context of post-Soviet Ukraine, which is also searching for its own identity.

Bachar, le maître du chaos

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Marcello Mastroianni, irrésistiblement libre

The 1960s opened with La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini and its unforgettable lead: Marcello Mastroianni. The actor seemed to glide effortlessly through his roles — and through life — as if to say that life is not all that serious, or perhaps that it is far too serious not to be laughed at. But what kind of man was hiding behind the actor with the handsome, boyish looks, who appeared so gentle and nonchalant?

With Sea Views

After consolidating itself as a tourist destination in the mid-1960s, this small coastal village has become the dormitory town for the workers of a Nuclear Power Plant. With the liberal promise of prosperity and socioeconomic wellfare, many workers left their homes to move to the small city and started working at the new Nuclear Power Plant. The collective unrest and the silence, cut off by the great gusts of wind, articulate the landscape of the village that is now under the aid of the Nuclear Power Plant.

La réparation

In France, victims and perpetrators of offenses, misdemeanors, or crimes can meet and talk in secure, supervised settings. Included in the Penal Code since 2014, this "restorative justice" is intended to complement criminal justice and provide a safe space for dialogue. The aim is to enable victims to rebuild their lives and perpetrators to take full responsibility for their actions, thereby reducing the risk of reoffending. This film follows one such program over the course of a year. Amélie, a prison rehabilitation and probation counselor, and Séverine, a lawyer for a victims' association, prepare Marthe, Aurélien, Sylvain, and JF, who are incarcerated for murder or attempted murder of their spouses. They also follow Emeline, Evelyne, and Marie, victims of similar crimes.

Mamita Lidia

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The Arch

A modern explorer leads us on a global journey to discover how nine of the world's greatest architects are shaping our future.

Behind the Walls of the Forbidden City

Secluded from view by nine-meter-high walls and composed of 980 buildings, the Forbidden City in Beijing is the largest imperial palace ever built in the world. Three majestic structures form its center and host the city's ceremonies, each of which is considered an architectural masterpiece. In 1406, construction of the Forbidden City was launched at the initiative of one of China's most powerful sovereigns and founder of the Ming dynasty: Yongle. Endowed with divine power, the construction has already resisted more than 200 earthquakes.

Artus : Son p'tit truc en plus

A look behind the scenes of the film Un p'tit truc en plus, with interviews with Artus, Clovis Cornillac, and Ludovic Boul, as well as exclusive footage from the making-of.

Paris Train Stations: Shaping the City

Every day, Paris’ six railway stations welcome over 3,000 trains and more than a million travelers coming from France and all over Europe. The stations’ sizes are impressive: Gare du Nord is bigger than the Louvre or Notre-Dame de Paris. These railway stations are architectural landmarks and a model of urban planning despite the radical changes they’ve undergone since their construction in the middle of the 19th century. How did the railway stations manage to absorb the boom of travelers in just a few decades? What colossal works were necessary to erect and then modify these now essential buildings? From the monumental glass walls of Gare du Nord to the iconic tower of Gare de Lyon, to the first-ever all-electric train station, each has its own story, technical characteristics, and well-defined urban image.

André Ravéreau and Algeria

The architect André Ravéreau spent a large part of his life in Algeria, he is today an essential reference for Algerian builders of several generations. His daughter Maya, an architect herself, accompanies us to the places of his creations and his research, in the Mzab first where he lived, created, trained other architects in the "desert workshop" and had the oases of the Mzab classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Inspired by tradition to better innovate as in the construction of the Ghardaïa post office, or in that of a very surprising villa... Then in Algiers where he worked to preserve the ancestral heritage of the Casbah, faithfully describing the principles of his construction in line with current concerns, such as the choice of environmentally friendly materials and avoiding energy waste, as testified by the architect Yasmine Terki, a great specialist in earth materials.

La Singla

In the 1960s, a young Spanish flamenco dancer named Antonia Singla captivated audiences with her strikingly passionate performances. Having lost her hearing at a young age, La Singla rose to fame with her commanding presence through a combination of her powerful gaze and thunderous movement. However, just at the height of her fame, she seemingly disappeared and decades later has been all but forgotten. When a young woman in Seville comes across La Singla’s story, a bigger picture starts to be unveiled. Through research, interviews and captivating archival footage, she starts to piece together the legend of La Singla. Through the beauty of her performances and the heartbreak of her story, La Singla celebrates and preserves the legacy of one of the greatest Flamenco dancers of all time.

Tadao Ando

Tadao Ando, a self-taught architect, proposes an international architecture that he believes can only be conceived by someone Japanese. His architecture mixes Piranesian drama with contemplative spaces in urban complexes, residences and chapels. This film presents the formative years of his impressive career before he embarked on projects in Europe and the United States.

Mon Chirac

At the close of Jacques Chirac's life, politician Jean-Louis Debré has wished to make a film to celebrate his friend, to tell the story of their friendship and professional understanding, and to make an intimate portrait of the former President of France through the accounts of a few very close friends. Thanks to Jean-Louis Debré's presence, Claude Chirac and some of Jacques Chirac's closest friends, famous or unknown, agreed to talk to the camera, sometimes for the first time, to evoke their untold-before memories and tell about the moments that bonded the two men for a lifetime.

The Experimental City

In the 1960s, frustrated by the growing problem of urban pollution, Athelstan Spilhaus, a visionary scientist and futurist comic strip writer, assembled a team of experts to develop a bold experiment: the Minnesota Experimental City (MXC). MXC would be the city of the future, a domed metropolis for 250,000 pioneering residents, built from scratch and using cutting-edge technology to prevent urban sprawl and pollution. Things didn’t quite go as planned, as explored in Chad Friedrichs’ fascinating look back at the would-be city of tomorrow.

Les Autres Chemins

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Petit Rempart

Mariem, 53, a former estate agent, has been living at a shelter for several months. Surrounded by women in far more precarious circumstances than herself, she tries to regard her unprecedented social downfall as an immersion in real life. By the time she leaves, Mariem’s view of the world will have changed forever, enriched by all the women she has met along the way.