Philippe Volter

Kesten is a picturesque village on the border between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. A French sociologist named Franæois Denis comes to the village to study the risk of ethnic conflict in this part of the Balkans. He finds out that in a place situated only 100 kilometers from Kosovo there are Muslims and Christians capable of living in peace just as they have for hundreds of years. But what is far more interesting to this western visitor is meeting the local inhabitants: Vladimír, who fills all municipal posts from mayor to postmaster, a poet whose verse has never been published and who longs to see Rossellini's The Greatest Love one last time, and a smuggler who is willing to do anything for his mentally disabled brother. It's a fascinating and absurd, though harmonious, world where anything can happen - where even wine has flowed from the water taps...

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Interconnected stories examine situations involving the five senses. Touch is represented by a massage therapist who is treating a woman, while her daughter accidentally loses the woman's pre-school daughter in the park. The older daughter meets a voyeur (vision), a professional house-cleaner has an acute sense of smell, a cake maker has lost her sense of taste, and an older man is losing his hearing.

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Mr. Slimami is an Algerian retiree living in Paris who witnesses a murder while taking a walk one evening. He's spotted by the assailant, but Slimami manages to slip away before being caught. The victim turned out to be a prominent businessman, and police are soon searching for the witness as well as the killers. Slimami does not want to step forward, both as a matter of personal safety and because he prefers to let the French police handle their own affairs. His son Alilou, a budding journalist, openly decries the failure of the witness to come forward as a black mark on the Muslim community in Paris, unaware that the man in question is his father.

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Anthology film based on three short stories by Knut Hamsun, updated to modern times.

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A German police commissioner investigates the murders of several Tour de France yellow jerseys.

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Lucien is a young soldier in the French army during the First World War. Recently married and with a young daughter, his only aim is to get through the war unscathed and get back to his wife and daughter. But this world is turned upside down by a pair of trousers.

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The story of famous Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis.

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Two teenage girls are rehearsing a scene from a play by Marivaux, a love scene, and from the first seconds, we know who will be the heroine, who will be Charlotte, the one who will, to summarize brutally, discover her homosexuality.

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The negative physical and psychological effects of anabolic steroids, growth hormones, and masking agents are examined in this European drama which focuses upon the conflict felt by a young runner whose fear of failure exceeds her fear of the drugs. Catherine Delaunay, a 25-year old runner, has just be named French champion after the real winner is disqualified for using drugs. When she suffers a small injury herself she begins using the drugs at the insistence of her German trainer and an unethical sports doctor. Catherine becomes hooked upon her regimen of medication and begins to suffer physical and mental side-effects. To conceal her drug use, Catherine keeps a large supply of "clean" urine. When she really does become drug free, her times suffer. A federation official strongly suggests she get pregnant as they hormones produced by early pregnancy will help her speed.

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The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.

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Aline is Michel's daughter, whom he has taken away for the holidays. Aline agrees: she knows how much her father needs love. She knows it so well that she encourages his romance with Julie, a social worker. And Michel succumbs because she feels just as great a need for love as he does. But Léo, Julie's ex-lover, a junkie and car thief, is hanging around. Three adults in need of love. A need that Michel wanted to fill first with Aline, then with Julie. But the void is too great. Aline knows this, and that's why she agrees to love him, her father. For real, this time.

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As an amateur magician, Phil is probably okay, but as a small-time criminal, he is definitely not destined for the big-time. When he is granted a twenty-four-hour furlough from prison in order to attend his mother's funeral, he is aware of this and intends to keep out of trouble. Furthermore, he has the same intention for when he finishes his prison term. Thus, his brothers' attempts to get him involved in a really neat theft they have dreamed up do not at first meet with much favor in his eyes. Eventually, their enthusiasm and the almost overwhelming assortment of pleasures they have arranged for him to enjoy soften him up enough for him to cooperate with them. Predictably, things don't go well, but an unsought chance to renew lost love also comes to him at this time, and good fortune finally intervenes on his behalf.

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A widower fights to keep the custody of his daughter that his in-laws claim.

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A hitman must fulfill a contract aboard a train. He faces great difficulties going to the sleeping car where sleeps the man he must kill.

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Véronique is a beautiful young French woman who aspires to be a renowned singer; Weronika lives in Poland, has a similar career goal and looks identical to Véronique, though the two are not related. The film follows both women as they contend with the ups and downs of their individual lives, with Véronique embarking on an unusual romance with Alexandre Fabbri, a puppeteer who may be able to help her with her existential issues.

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A young man, a researcher in ancient languages, begins to receive strange radio messages in a language only he knows. The messages ask him for very bizarre missions. Eventually, he understands that he's just a pawn in an intergalactic game, and that the fate of Earth depends on him.

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After the French defeat of 1870, Julia took three years to love Alexander, with whom she married for her fortune. Alas, when Julia wants to declare his love to her husband, the latter confesses to him that his passion is extinguished.

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Famed swordsman and poet Cyrano de Bergerac is in love with his cousin Roxane. He has never expressed his love for her as he his large nose undermines his self-confidence. Then he finds a way to express his love to her, indirectly.

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In this gothic romance based on a 1950s novel by Robert Margerit, after a whirlwind romance, Violette, a Parisian girl, has married Gustave Dupin, a charming aristocrat, and returned with him to live on his country estate. There, she begins to discover that all is not as it seemed, and beneath her groom's charming exterior is an undreamt-of savagery. She forms an alliance with her husband's much saner brother Bastien which saves her in the end, but not before she must go on trial for the murder of her husband.

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451 AD. Defeated by the Romans, a group of Barbarians led by their prince make a desperate attempt at losing their pursuers by going deeper and deeper into the Alpine forests.

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Aging opera singer Joachim Dallayrac retires from the stage and retreats to the countryside to school two young singers. Although the rigorous training takes its toll on both teacher and students, there is plenty of time for relationships to develop between the three.

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