Xavier Dolan

Mommy

Home Programme Xavier Dolan Mommy

Credits

Country :
Canada-France
Year :
2014
Director :
Xavier Dolan
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
138 minutes
Format :
digital 
Actors :
Anne Dorval, Antoine Olivier Pilon, Suzanne Clement
Awards :
Prix du jury, Cannes 2014 ; Nomination Best Foreign Language Film, Oscars 2015
Age classification :
12+

synopsis

A widowed single mother gains custody of her son, an impulsive and violent teenager with ADHD. Amid their outbursts and struggles, they try to make ends meet, notably with the unexpected help of their enigmatic neighbor across the street, Kyla. Together, the three of them find a fragile sense of balance, and soon, hope.

À ces héros boiteux, comme à cette banlieue prolétaire de Montréal, Xavier Dolan donne un style rutilant. C’est le paradoxe d’un auteur-réalisateur nourri depuis l’enfance de cinéma hollywoodien (il ne jure que par Titanic), mais reste, pour l’instant, dans son jus québécois et dans l’économie de L’art et essai. Mommy est donc merveilleusement hybride : mi-naturaliste mi-‘bigger than life’, tour à tour terre à terre et parcouru de somptueuses envolées lyriques ou oniriques. Mais aussi d’espiègles coups de théâtre formels : les dimensions de l’écran changent subitement, et avec elles l’horizon des personnages.

Télérama

Mommy

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Xavier Dolan

Tom à la ferme

Home Programme Xavier Dolan Tom à la ferme

Credits

Original title :
Tom at the Farm
Country :
Canada 
Year :
2019
Director :
Xavier Dolan
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
119 minutes
Format :
digital
Actors :
Xavier Dolan, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Lise Roy, Evelyne Brochu
Awards :
FIPRESCI Prize, Venice Film Festival 2013
Age classification :
12+
📕 Based on the play by Michel Marc Bouchard

synopsis

A young advertising executive travels to the remote Quebec countryside for a funeral, only to discover that no one there knows his name or the nature of his relationship with the deceased. When the deceased’s older brother forces him into a disturbing role-playing scheme designed to protect his mother and the family’s honor, a toxic relationship begins... one that will not end until the truth finally comes to light.

Tom à la ferme

Producteur, sceénariste, monteur, costumier, acteur. Dolan tient tous ces rôles dans "Tom à la ferme". Il ne manquerait plus qu’il compose la musique encore ! Un tel talent frise l’indécence !

France Info Culture

Made of equal parts mourning and melancholy, mystery, and possibly madness, the striking "Tom at the Farm" showcases Dolan’s abundant talents at turning seemingly simple material into a taut, tough film.

Indiewire

Tom à la ferme

It’s taut, creepy, compelling and sexy. And, apart from the location, it’s very much a Dolan film, focused on people testing the limits of their love for each other – and themselves.

Time Out

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Great Restorations

The Ear

Home Programme Great Restorations The Ear

Credits

Original title :
Ucho
Country :
Tchecoslovaquie
Year :
1969
Director :
 Karel Kachyna
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
94 minutes
Format :
digital 
Actors :
Jirina Bohdalová, Radoslav Brzobohaty, Gustav Opocensky
🗣️ 18:15 : Introduction to the film (in English) | 18:30 : start of the film

synopsis

Après être rentré d’une soirée, un fonctionnaire tchécoslovaque devient convaincu qu’il est sur le point de faire l’objet d’une purge politique et tente d’en limiter les conséquences, tout en gérant son mariage turbulent.

A remarkable thriller that explores the paranoia of a country due to the omnipresent nature of its government while also being a compelling domestic drama driven by the strength of its characters. The fact that we, the viewers, are as intrusive to the life of these people as the dreaded ‘ear’ makes for an interesting voyeuristic experience that’s hard to look away from.

Czech Film Review

The Ear

Suppressed as soon as production finished, Karel Kachyna's "The Ear" now resurfaces in a glorious 4K restoration. Prochazka’s dramatic masterstroke was to stage much of the film in the presumably grace-and-favour house that Ludvik shares with his wife, and to have as many thematic nods to Edward Albee's "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" as to the universe of Franz Kafka. It remains a brilliant analysis of how political power is maintained and enforced – and not just in a totalitarian situation.

BFI

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Left-Handed Girl

Home Programme #CinémathèqueUnreleased Left-Handed Girl

Credits

Original title :
Zuopiezi nuhai
Country :
Taiwan-France
Year :
2025
Director :
Shih-Ching Tsou 
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
108 minutes
Format :
digital 
Actors :
Janel Tsai, Shih-Yuan Ma, Nina Ye
Awards :
Festival de Cannes 2025

synopsis

A single mother and her two daughters relocate to Taipei to open a night market stall, each navigating the challenges of adapting to their new environment while striving to maintain family unity.

"Left-Handed Girl" is an assured and lovely portrait of difficult motherhood and painful daughterhood, but it’s perhaps most entrancing for its turning kaleidoscope-view of the director’s native city, where the characters are the bouncing beads, but Taipei is the glitter and the dazzle.

Variety

Left-Handed Girl

It’s one of those films where the stakes don’t appear that high, yet we become so attached to this family and their survival it will all matter a great deal.

The Spectator

More than 20 years after co-directing Take Out with Sean Baker, Tsou, who has produced many of the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s projects, returns behind the camera to helm a modest and entertaining story about three generations of women making their way in contemporary Taipei. The strengths of this slender film, which Tsou co-wrote with Baker, stem from its authentic rendition of daily life in a bustling metropolis.

The Hollywood Reporter

Left-Handed Girl

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Xavier Dolan

Laurence Anyways

Home Programme Xavier Dolan Laurence Anyways

Credits

Country :
Canada-France 
Year :
2012
Director :
Xavier Dolan
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
168 minutes
Format :
digital 
Actors :
Melvil Poupaud, Suzanne Clément, Monia Chokri, Nathalie Baye
Awards :
Queer Palm & Prix d’interprétation feminine ≪ Un certain regard ≫ (Clément), Cannes 2012
Age classification :
6+

synopsis

In the early 1990s, Laurence, a literature teacher, reveals to his partner Fred his desire to live as a woman, profoundly disrupting their relationship.

Laurence Anyways

Il y a une double détente dans le cinéma faussement superficiel de Dolan : un style tapageur et une distance ironique forment un voisinage heurté et tout en ruptures. Ses films ressemblent à une bouche bavant de rouge à lèvres, d’ou jailliraient des vérités cruelles sur l’amour, les sentiments, la difficulté de vivre.

Cahiers du cinéma

It takes cojones for a filmmaker to chase Fassbinder’s ghost, but it takes heart and talent to damn near catch up with it.

Slant Magazine

Laurence Anyways

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La Tour de Glace

Home Programme #CinémathèqueUnreleased La Tour de Glace

Credits

Country :
 France-Allemagne 
Year :
2025
Director :
 Lucile Hadzihalilovic 
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
118 minutes
Format :
vostEN | digital
Actors :
Marion Cotillard, Clara Pacini, August Diehl
Awards :
Silver Bear, Berlinale 2025

synopsis

1970s. Jeanne runs away from her mountain home to make her way to the city. In the studio where she has taken refuge, the young girl falls under the spell of Cristina, the enigmatic star of The Snow Queen, her favorite fairy tale. A troubling relationship develops between the actress and the young girl.

Le merveilleux dans lequel baigne le film, inspiré par les premières images de cinéma et la force cristalline du muet, orchestre une sorte de ballet magnetique où le magique et les artifices plongent Jeanne et les spectateurs dans un état de trouble des perceptions. Il y a du Méliès et du Cocteau dans cette oeuvre dont la beauté réside dans la désarticulation du réel.

La Septième Obsession

La Tour de Glace

"The Ice Tower" is as fragile and delicate as a snowflake, as disorientating and mysterious as adolescence, and as dark as a winter’s night.

Little White Lies

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Sense & Sensibility

In the Mood for Love

Home Programme Sense & Sensibility In the Mood for Love

Credits

Original title :
Fa yeung nin wah
Country :
Hong Kong
Year :
2000
Director :
Wong Kar Wai 
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
99 minutes
Format :
digital | 4K Restoration
Actors :
Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung
Awards :
Meilleure interprétation masculine (Leung), Prix de la Commission Superieure Technique ; Cannes 2000

synopsis

Hong Kong, 1962. Mrs. Chan rents a room. On the same day, on the same floor, Mr. Chow moves in. Their spouses are often absent. One day, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan discover that their respective spouses are having an affair…

Excites us with words not spoken, passions not played out. A mood story more than a love story, it’s all about sustaining a state of exquisite melancholy in the face of desire.

Wall Street Journal

A ravishing evocation of an unconsummated romantic relationship put through an emotional and cultural ringer, a retread of sorts through Happy Together territory, this time without the kinetic patchwork of jarring film stocks that have become Wong trademarks since Chungking Express. Ravishing beyond mortal words.

Slant Magazine

In the Mood for Love

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Great Restorations

Werckmeister Harmonies

Home Programme Great Restorations Werckmeister Harmonies

Credits

Original title :
Werckmeister harmóniák
Country :
Hongrie-Italie-Allemagne
Year :
2000
Director :
Bela Tarr, Agnes Hranitzky
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
145 minutes
Format :
digital
Actors :
Lars Rudolph, Hanna Schygulla, Peter Fitz, Janos Derzsi
🗣️ 18:30 : Introduction to the film (in English) | 18:45 : start of the film
In memoriam Béla Tarr

synopsis

In the Hungarian lowlands, during Communist times, a town is unsettled by the arrival of a strange traveling circus. It attracts the interest of the inhabitants who line up by the hundreds to see the main attraction: a stuffed whale hiding a mysterious prince.

Viewers should allow themselves to fully confront the terrifying ‘unresolvability’ of the film’s central theme: the immortal endlessness of the universe in relation to human finitude. Don’t miss this opportunity to see a film that exploits the big screen to an absolute extreme.

Cine-file

Werckmeister Harmonies

Tarr’s precise yet effortless command of the long take is so transcendent as to suggest the presence of God. Every stoppage point within each shot becomes a heavenly composite of the film’s collective whole.

Slant Magazine

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Julian

Home Programme #CinémathèqueUnreleased Julian

Credits

Country :
Belgique
Year :
2025
Director :
Cato Kusters
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
87 minutes
Format :
digital 
Actors :
Nina Meurisse, Laurence Roothooft, David Coburn
Awards :
5 wins including Best Film & Best Director, Flemish Film Awards 2026
📕 Based on the book by Fleur Pierets
In collaboration with queer loox | Introduction to the film by Hélène Walland (in English)

synopsis

Fleur and Julian fall madly in love and decide to get married in all countries where they, as two women, are allowed to do so. After only four marriages, their journey comes to a painful and unexpected halt.

 

By way of her first feature film, "Julian", young Flemish director Cato Kusters delivers a sensitive and fast-paced portrait of love. Two wholly committed actresses were required to carry this larger-than-life love story, and this is defintely the case for Nina Meurisse (who won a Cesar for Souleymane’s Story) and Laurence Roothooft.

Cineuropa

Julian

Cato Kusters proves to be a born storyteller, whispering to us an intimate tale that feels both personal and universal.

Film Fest Ghent

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Xavier Dolan

Matthias & Maxime

Home Programme Xavier Dolan Matthias & Maxime

Credits

Country :
Canada
Year :
2019
Director :
Xavier Dolan
Version :
vostEN
Duration :
119 minutes
Format :
digital
Actors :
Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas, Xavier Dolan, Pier-Luc Funk, Antoine Olivier Pilon, Anne Dorval
Awards :
Sélection officielle, Cannes 2019
Age classification :
12+

synopsis

Two childhood friends share a kiss for the purposes of an amateur short film. After this seemingly harmless kiss, a recurring doubt takes hold, forcing the two boys to confront their desires, unsettling the balance of their social circle and, soon, their lives.

Le trouble vient de là. Et le vertige du film. Son coup de foudre fait d’attente et de suspension, de silence et de déni, ces deux amants qui crèvent de désir, et meurent doucement de ne pas se toucher. "Matthias & Maxime" a l’étoffe des histoires d’amour impossibles sur le papier qui ont le pouvoir de s’incarner en nous.

Les Inrockuptibles

Matthias et Maxime

A relatively subtle yet moving entry into the Dolanverse, where explosive love is sublimated beneath the ebb and flow of friendship rhythms, and characters are revealed in tender observational details.

Empire

As ever, Dolan’s creative motor runs on dialogue: people talking, talking, talking. Sex is the one thing that stops the flow. He gets his camera intimately close to his actors’ faces: a wide shot, or a thoughtful tableau, is relatively rare. His movies, for me, have become increasingly watchable, accessible and enjoyable because the feelings involved are increasingly real and deeply felt. There is such tenderness and gentleness in this film.

The Guardian

Matthias et Maxime

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