A Few Cannes Festival 2019 Film Gems

Assigned to work alongside unethical police veterans Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada (Djebril Zonga) in Paris' Anti-Crime Brigade, Brigadier Stéphane Ruiz (Damien Bonnard) - a recent transplant to the working-class suburb of Montfermeil, where Victor Hugo wrote his famous novel Les Misérables - struggles to establish a working relationship with influential community leaders while attempting to maintain some semblance of peace between his disreputable team and the citizens of the local housing projects. When what should be a simple arrest goes tragically awry, the three officers must individually reconcile with the aftermath of their actions while angling to keep the neighborhood from retaliating with mob violence. Beginning as a Cesar-winning short film, the film was inspired by the 2005 riots in Paris. It was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize (in a tie with BACURAU) and was selected as France's entry for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.

Not yet 30, Lola controls her personal life with the same ruthless efficiency she uses to optimize profits in her job as a high-powered business consultant. No one knows about her older sister Conny or her family's history of mental illness. But when a tragic event forces Conny back into Lola's life and her secrets begin to unravel, Lola's grip on reality slips away.

Two years ago, the Perrin Industry Factory, 1100 employees, automotive supplier well known, affiliate to the German group Schäfer, signed an agreement asking to senior-managers and workers to accept a pay cut, in order to save the company in exchange of the promise to protect their jobs on at least the next five years. Today, the company takes the decision to close. The workers, conducted by their spokesperson Laurent Amadeo, refuse the inevitable and try to save their jobs.

A young Kyrgyz girl, Ayka, lives and works illegally in Moscow. After giving birth to her first child, she doesn't feed the infant but stages an impromptu breakout through the window of the maternity ward. Over the course of the next few days, she goes searching for a job all the while trying to keep the birth secret. She finds work at a chicken processing facility, only to learn that her boss has decided to skip town without paying his employees. This sets in motion a new wave of anxiety for the young woman, who needs to pay off her menacing creditors. While searching for a way to make money, her motherly yearning leads her to desperate attempts at finding the abandoned child.

Four different instances in the life of the same woman, as this is divided into four significant periods of her existence: childhood, puberty, adolescence, and adulthood, all representing fragments and diverse aspects of her being as its central focal point. Emotionally damaged, Renée is a caring schoolteacher committed to the education of underprivileged youth, trying to get pregnant with her boyfriend in an attempt to straighten out her life. However, her past catches up to her in the shape of Tara, a self-destructive, addicted gambler who has some unfinished business with her which dates back some seven years. Stepping back in time we find careless, fresh 20-something Sandra, whom elderly professional gambler Lev introduces to the world of horse racing and gives her a job at the racetrack as a "mule"--carrying bet money to the cashiers. Further back in time, Karine is an early-developed, audacious 13-year-old who engages in a constant merry-go-round of superficial relationships, always on the run from her brutal father, craving the attention she has never received. Ultimately, we see Kiki, a little girl from the province, whose innocent game of hide-and-seek quickly turns into a disaster. In the end, as we examine this fractured portrait of interconnected parallel lives, we can finally reach the very soul of a fearless woman, a complex individual who is determined to achieve freedom.

Near a coastal village of Thailand, by the sea where thousands of Rohingya refugees have drowned, a local fisherman finds an injured man lying unconscious in the forest. He rescues the stranger, who does not speak a word, offers him his friendship and names him Thongchai. But when the fisherman suddenly disappears at sea, Thongchai slowly begins to take over his friend's life - his house, his job and his ex-wife.

Sam Ali, a Syrian young man, took refuge in Lebanon to flee the Syrian civil war. There, he meets Jeffrey Godefroi, a famous tattoo artist, who makes Mr Ali's back his canvas for a piece of work. Soon, Mr Ali becomes aliving work of art, worth an astronomical sum on the art market,l. Collectors are interested, auction goes up, human rights activists are outraged. Mr Ali must get out of the predicament he's in; the man who sold his skin.

Fabienne is a star; a star of French cinema. She reigns amongst men who love and admire her. When she publishes her memoirs, her daughter Lumir returns from New York to Paris with her husband and young child. The reunion between mother and daughter will quickly turn to confrontation: truths will be told, accounts settled, loves and resentments confessed.

Etienne comes to Paris from Lyon to study cinema, meets many new friends and falls under the thrall of the mysterious Mathias.

Yoav, a young Israeli man, has a one-way ticket to Paris believing France to be his salvation from what he sees as the madness of his country. Things don't get off to a great start as he discovers his living arrangement is unfit for living, yet his grandiose expectations leave no room for a failure to adapt. Wholehearted in his resolution to erase his Jewish-Israeli origins, he refuses to speak Hebrew and obsessively studies his constant companion, a French dictionary. He develops a particularly strong bond with his privileged neighbor who symbolizes - to Yoav - the French promise of fraternité. Nothing can extinguish Yoav's determination to be thoroughly French. Based on the real-life experiences of writer-director Nadav Lapid, SYNONYMS explores the conflicted realm of fervent Nationalism and the challenges of putting down roots in a foreign land.

"Styx" depicts the transformation of a strong woman torn from her contented world during a sailing trip. When she becomes the only person to come to the aid of a group of refugees shipwrecked on the high seas, she is shown the limits of her importance and of the empathy of her cultural milieu. She is left slipping impotently from one nightmare to the next, and by the end she is forced to recognize that there is no way to counter the cruelties of real life. Only chance can save her.

Algiers, 1997. The country is in the hands of terrorist groups that seek to establish an archaic Islamic state. Women are particularly affected and oppressed by primitive diktas who seek to take control of their bodies and control their passage through the public space. While a frenzied hunt for unveiled women is launched, young fashion student Nedjma is determined to federate the girls of her campus to organize a fashion show challenging all that is forbidden.

"Tell me how you loved me, so I understand how to love." Together, a filmmaker and her characters venture into a personal research project about intimacy. On the fluid border between reality and fiction, Touch Me Not follows the emotional journeys of Laura, Tómas and Christian, offering a deeply empathetic insight into their lives. Craving for intimacy yet also deeply afraid of it, they work to overcome old patterns, defense mechanisms and taboos, to cut the cord and finally be free. Touch Me Not looks at how we can find intimacy in the most unexpected ways, at how to love another without losing ourselves.

An old man is having memories of a former lover who is still alive. Images of their affair showing them young combine with dreams and poetry

Somewhere in Santiago at a dimly-lit nightclub, Orlando, the kindly and well-off owner of a textile company, locks eyes with Marina, a hopeful singer and the roughly half-his-age love of his life. But, unfortunately, after Marina's birthday celebration and a night of passion, Orlando falls gravely ill--and by the following morning--he dies in hospital. In the wake of her companion's untimely death, Marina will soon realise that, from now on, everything is brought into question: her involvement in Orlando's death, their unconventional relationship; and above all, her right to mourn her beloved deceased. In the end, what was Marina's crime; a deed so hideous that would rob a fantastic woman of her respect, her dignity, and ultimately, her identity?

Set in the Parisian publishing world, an editor and an author find themselves in over their heads, as they cope with a middle-age crisis, the changing industry and their wives.

While participating in a rehabilitation program training wild mustangs, a convict at first struggles to connect with the horses and his fellow inmates, but he learns to confront his violent past as he soothes an especially feisty horse.

Gradually succumbing to dementia, George Laurent, the octogenarian patriarch of the Laurents, an affluent upper-bourgeois family, is uncomfortably sharing his palatial manor in Calais, the heart of the infamous migrant jungle, with his twice-married son, Thomas, and Anne, his workaholic daughter who has taken over the family construction business. Divorced and frigid, Anne has to handle the impact of a disastrous workplace accident caused by her disappointing son Pierre's negligence, while at the same time, the urgent hospitalisation of Thomas' ex-wife from a mysterious poisoning, leads his sulky 13-year-old daughter, Ève, to live with her father and his new wife, Anais. Undoubtedly, in this family, everyone has a skeleton in the closet, and as the fates of the Laurents enmesh with insistent and ignoble desires, a peculiar and disturbing alliance will form. But in the end, some secrets are bigger than others.