This family drama is the sequel to director Henri Verneuil's autobiographical film, Mayrig. It takes place some forty years after the end of the previous film. In the earlier film, a young man has moved with his family to Marseilles from Armenia and is adapting to his new country to the best of his ability. This tends to put him in conflict with his traditional Armenian family. Nonetheless, they are all hardworking and loving. Now, forty years later, the lead character has changed his name to Pierre Zakar, because it is easier for the French to pronounce and relate to. He has also become a very successful playwright.
Follows seemingly unrelated people as their lives begin to intertwine while they fall in, and out, of love. Affections languish and develop as Christmas draws near.
My Mother's Castle (Le chateau de ma mere) is a sequel and companion piece to My Father's Glory (La Gloire de Mon Pere), both based on the childhood recollections of Marcel Pagnol. Like its predecessor, the movie explores the adventures of the young Marcel (Julien Ciamaca) during his summers at the family summer home in Provence.
A meditation on civilization. July, 2001: friends wave as a cruise ship departs Lisbon for Mediterranean ports and the Indian Ocean. On board and on day trips in Marseilles, Pompeii, Athens, Istanbul, and Cairo, a professor tells her young daughter about myth, history, religion, and wars. Men approach her; she's cool, on her way to her husband in Bombay. After Cairo, for two evenings divided by a stop in Aden, the captain charms three successful, famous (and childless) women, who talk with wit and intellect, each understanding the others' native tongue, a European union. The captain asks mother and child to join them. He gives the girl a gift. Helena sings. Life can be sweet.
Bab El-Oued, a popular district of Algiers, in 1989, a few months after the riots. Boualem works at night in a bakery and steals the loudspeaker that was installed on his roof and was broadcasting the Imam's word... therefore preventing him from sleeping. This blunder is taken as a pretext by the Islamists to put the district under their control...
Before being extradited to Africa to stand trial, a notorious Belgian criminal is entrusted to the Marseilles police department for less than 24 hours. But the wily crook convinces bumbling policeman Emilien he's a lowly Belgian embassy employee who got railroaded by the brilliant master criminal.
A man considers the fine line between friendship and family as he crosses France by foot. Felix is a cheerful thirty-something from Normandy who is gay and HIV-positive. Felix has never really known his father, and after he receives some old letters his dad wrote to his mother, he decides its time they talked. Figuring his father's whereabouts in Marseilles, Felix hits the road, planning on hiking cross country and meeting up with his boyfriend. Along the way, Felix's open-hearted charm allows him to make several new friends, and before long he's bonded with a number of people he's embraced as a surrogate family: an elderly woman with regrets about her life; a single mother who can't find a stable relationship; a teenager coming to terms with his sexuality; and a "cousin" interested in kites with whom Felix has a brief fling. As Felix moves onwards, he and his new friends ponder the notion of family -- is it defined by blood, or by your heart and soul?
A gang of thieves calling themselves the Santa Claus Gang are wreaking havoc, and the police can't keep up. Police Captain Gilbert is distracted by a Chinese reporter writing a story on his squad, and taxi driver Daniel is in the midst of a relationship crisis. After a string of mistakes in which the thieves outsmart the police time and time again, Daniel and his super-taxi pitch in.
Marseilles, 1919. Georges Sarret is a distinguished and respected lawyer, recently honoured for his services in the First World War. He takes as his lover Philomène Schmidt, a young German woman, who has just lost her job and home. To enable Philomène to remain in France, Georges finds her a husband â who dies conveniently of natural causes a month after the wedding. Georges repeats the trick with Philomène's sister, Catherine â marrying her off to an old man who dies suddenly so that the scheming trio can profit from his life insurance. When an accomplice in the scheme, Marcel Chambon, threatens to blackmail them, Georges and his two lovers have no option but to kill him and his mistress...
This is the story of a small Marseilles football club on the verge of extinction that ends up in an amateur tournament organised during the World Cup (inevitably referred to as "La Mondialette"). It's their opportunity to save the club. The team, made up of temperamental hotheads, will have to dodge all kinds of low blows.
Ugly, persistent, and (initially) annoying admirer pursues a beautiful actress. At first he is laughed of, especially by his ultra handsome rival, but with his firm insistence, and gradually emerging charm, he seduces the lady, to the total shocked surprise of his rival.
It is April 1974 and Julie Dujonc-Renens, young feminist journalist and the cunning Joseph-Marie Cauvin, leading reporter for the Swiss radio, have been sent to Portugal to investigate Switzerlandâs aid to poor countries. Sparks fly during the bus trip with Bob, sound engineer approaching retirement. The projects financed by Switzerland prove to be calamitous and the workersâ revolution that suddenly breaks out doesnât help, obliging our heroes to disregard first the radioâs management, and then their own codes of conduct.
A film about the early part of the French Revolution, shown from the eyes of the citizens of Marseille, counts in German exile and, of course, the king Louis XVI, each showing their own small problems.
Almost 19-year-old Marius feels himself in a rut in Marseille, his life planned for him by his cafe'-owning father, and he longs for the sea. The night before he is to leave on a 5-year voyage, Fanny, a girl he grew up with, reveals that she is in love with him, and he discovers that he is in love with her. He must choose between an exciting life at sea, and a boring life with the woman he loves. And Fanny must choose between keeping the man she loves, and letting him live the life he seems to want.
The story of a group of friends, all around 30, who live in the Le Panier district of Marseille, France. It's not a bad life, made up of slightly shady dealings, nights out, sun and just hanging out. But the neighborhood is an inescapable presence. Over a period of a few summer days, their carefree lives will plunge into a predictable tragedy.
In Marseilles, France in 1794, Desiree Clary, a young millinery clerk, becomes infatuated with Napoleon Bonaparte, but winds up wedding Genaral Jean-Baptiste Berandotte, an aid to Napoleon who later joins the forces that bring about the Emperor's downfall. Josephine Beauharnais, a worldly courtesan marries Napoleon and becomes Empress of France, but is then cast aside by her spouse when she proves unable to produce an heir to the throne.
In another typical Jean-Paul Belmondo vehicle, the French action hero plays a policeman prone to advancing the cause of justice by any means necessary. On his agenda is a powerful drug cartel working out of Paris and Marseilles, with a drug lord (Henry Silva) who is essentially inaccessible -- but not immortal. Stunts (performed by Belmondo) and chase scenes on land and water enliven the story, but the scenes with Belmondo's love interest are rather marginal themselves.
Alain Lefevre is a boxer paid by a Marseille mobster to take a dive. When he wins the fight he attempts to flee to America with the mobster's girlfriend Katrina. This plan fails and he seeks escape by joining the foreign legion. As part of the legion he tangles with abusive lieutenant Steinkampf and bonds with legionnaires Luther, Mackintosh and Rosetti.
A washed-up Marseilles cop (Auteuil) earns a chance at redemption by protecting a woman from the man who killed her parents as he is about to be released from prison.
Henri Verneuil was born Achod Malakian of Armenian parentage on October 15, 1920, in Rodosto, Turkey, and his family fled to France and settled in Marseilles when he was a young child. He later recounted his childhood experience in the novel Mayrig, which he dedicated to his mother and made into this 1991 film with the same name.
Sentenced to six years in prison, Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) is alone in the world and can neither read nor write. On his arrival at the prison, he seems younger and more brittle than the others detained there. At once he falls under the sway of a group of Corsicans who enforce their rule in the prison. As the 'missions' go by, he toughens himself and wins the confidence of the Corsican group.
In the 1920s, the Provence is a magnet for immigrants seeking work in the quarries or in the agriculture. Many mingle with locals and settle down permanently - like Toni, an Italian who has moved in with Marie, a Frenchwoman. Even a well-ordered existence is not immune from boredom, friendship, love, or enmity, and Toni gets entangled in a web of increasingly passionate relationships. For there is his best pal Fernand, but also Albert, his overbearing foreman; there is Sebastian, a steady Spanish peasant, but also Gabi, his young rogue relative; there is Marie, but there is also Josefa.
Charlotte is young and modern, not a hair out of place, superficial, cool; she reads fashion magazines - does she have the perfect bust? She lives in a Paris suburb with her son and her husband Pierre, a pilot. Her lover is Robert, an actor. Assignations with him, dinner with her husband and a client, consulting a physician: there's tension at home, Pierre had her followed a few months before, their marital play has an edge, Pierre slaps her and apologizes. She quizzes Robert: is he acting when he's with her? Events may force her to choose Robert or Pierre. Close-ups fill the screen; is there more than surface? Her eyes tear up. The horrors of war provide a distant counterpoint.
Foreign Legion officer, Galoup, recalls his once glorious life, leading troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, but the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup's mind. He feels compelled to stop him from coming to the attention of the commandant who he admires, but who ignores him. Ultimately, his jealousy leads to the destruction of both Sentain and himself.
Chouf: It means âlookâ in Arabic, but it is also the name of the watchmen in the drug cartels of Marseille. Sofiane is 20. A brilliant student, he comes back to spend his holiday in the Marseille ghetto where he was born. His brother, a dealer, gets shot before his eyes. Sofiane gives up on his studies and gets involved in the drug network, ready to avenge him. He quickly rises to the top and becomes the bossâs right hand. Trapped by the system, Sofiane is dragged into a spiral of violenceâ¦
Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura) finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Though Gerbier escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseilles, France, and exacts his revenge on the informant, he must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis in an atmosphere of tension, paranoia and distrust.
Roberto goes to Marseilles to give a hand to his friend Xavier, wrongly imprisoned following a frame-up organized by his associate Villanova. Roberto sets out to seduce Villanova's mistress, but when Villanova is killed, Roberto ends up leader of the band...
In the middle of the night, someone brings Ivan's body home to his wife and his sad-faced, jug-eared son. Through flashbacks, the film discloses the relationships among Ivan and his brother Alex, a cop with a cleanliness fetish; siblings Juliette and Jimmy, Ivan's partners in a seedy nightclub; the love triangle of Alex, Juliette, and Marie, a professor of philosophy; and of Alex and his nephew, Ivan's dour, stoic son. Ivan's death changes every relationship.
After his father is murdered by the Nazis in 1938, a young Viennese Jew named Ferry Tobler flees to Prague, where he joins forces with another expatriate and a sympathetic Czech relief worker. Together with other Jewish refugees, the three make their way to Paris, and, after spending time in a French prison camp, eventually escape to Marseille, from where they hope to sail to a safe port
A 14 year old boy, an ER doctor, a cop looking for revenge, a mother fighting for her children and a man distraught by the death of his wife see their destinies come together. As the doctor spends several days in a coma, events keep on happening and all will be swept by the shock wave.
Sarah seems to have the world at her feet. She's young, bright, pretty, free spirited yet hard working, with a real passion for life. Then, in just one day, she loses her job, is told she will have to move out of her apartment, and discovers she is seven months pregnant.
In 1983, in France experiencing intolerance and racial violence , three young teens and the priest Minguettes launching a largely peaceful march for equality and against racism, over 1,000 km between Marseille and Paris . Despite the difficulties and resistance encountered, their movement will bring about a real boost of hope in the way of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. They unite with their arrival more than 100 000 people from all walks of life and give France its new face.
In 1970, Tahar, a young Tunisian, travels to France for the first time to help his older brother, who is wrongly accused of murder and incarcerated in Paris. He first stops in Marseille, where he meets Tunisians very different from those familiar to him; enigmatic French people; and a strange atmosphere that makes him doubt his brotherâs innocence, his own innocence and his own mental integrity.
The German troops are just outside Paris. Georg escapes to Marseille at the last moment. His luggage contains the legacy of a writer named Weidel, who took his own life out of fear of persecution. This legacy comprises a manuscript, some letters and the Mexican Embassyâs assurance of a visa. Only those who can prove that they will leave are allowed in this port town, and this means you need an entry permit from a potential host country. Assuming the identity of Weidel, Georg tries to obtain one of the few scarce passages on a ship.
A dark tale of working-class life in Marseilles, a city in crisis. Interesting characters include a hard-bitten but compassionate fish market worker with a drug addicted daughter and a moody bartender with a shocking secret life.
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