Claire Simon

A major figure in contemporary feminism and the first Frenchwoman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Annie Ernaux is seen by many as a source of individual and collective emancipation, blending the intimate with the universal. Filmmaker Claire Simon has devoted an original portrait to her, giving students and teachers a voice.

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In the Makarenko public elementary school in the Paris outskirts, children want to learn and to be cheered while teachers know they do not only teach, they also educate. With care, tenacity and efforts, children are trained to become not only responsible citizens but also human beings.

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In a Parisian public hospital, Claire Simon questions what it means to live in women’s bodies, filming their diversity, singularity and their beauty in all stages throughout life. Unique stories of desires, fears and struggles unfold, including the one of the filmmaker herself.

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In 1982, Yann Andréa and Marguerite Duras have been living together for two years. She is almost 70 years old, while he is 38 years her junior. Andréa asks journalist and writer Michèle Manceaux to interview him about his life with Duras, an obsession that both impassions him and drives him mad. He believes by entrusting their story to Manceaux, he may gain more clarity of the relationship. What follows is an intense and compelling conversation delving into the deepest recesses of modern love.

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Claire Simon goes to Lussas, in France’s Ardèche, home to a vibrant community of documentarians. She films the creation of Tënk, an online platform for auteur documentaries. The initiative is a labour of love for the passionate and optimistic people behind it, but the process is long and arduous, as cultural projects often are. The filmmaker followed them for months, capturing their doubts and dilemmas: how do you manage everyday conflicts? Be accepted by a rural population that you aren’t part of? By the general public? Reconcile private life and professional calling? Reassure the mayor? Secure funding without making ethical compromises? A fascinating, bittersweet and insightful behind-the-scenes film. (Apolline Caron-Ottavi)

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A small picturesque Provençal village. Certainly, I grew up there, but today life seems to have somewhat deserted it. Except for the car and motorcycle repair garage where everyone, I mean the men, come to have their car serviced. What do they do ? What do they talk about ? A breakdown develops into a nail-biting suspense, the garage becomes the place of masculine transmission. Men are amongst themselves and repair metal bodies.

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Lussas is a small village in South Ardeche, France, with only one main road crossing the village. This real village, with farmers and vineyards, is also turning over time into the Hollywood of documentary films. A few people are preparing the launch of a television channel. From this sweet utopia to the inauguration of a high-tech tool on the internet Claire Simon depicts a singular adventure of our times in 26 episodes.

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Claire Simon portrays an important time for any individual, from 16 to 18 years of age. Set in the Paris suburbs in high school (for those lucky enough to go), teenagers chat after and even during class, sitting in the hallway or outside on a bench, looking at the city below them.

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An all-access tour behind the scenes at France’s premiere film school, La Fémis. Showing us how successful candidates get to follow in the footsteps of such luminaries as Louis Malle, François Ozon and Alain Resnais, all of whom attended this prestigious institution. Stumbling over their words, the often-nervous candidates seem vulnerable when confronted with the veterans of the industry, who have the difficult task of discovering true talent among all these eager young people.

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Le Bois de Vincennes is a safe harbour for many Parisians. Migrants and natives, prostitutes and stalkers, rich and poor, old and young, downshifters and loners come to this forest in search of themselves and find there an escape from the metropolis. A delicate and profound portrait of a contemporary man and his desperate search for an 'unknown homeland'.

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Paris, North Station, anything comes by, even trains. One would like to stay, but they have to hurry up... Like other thousands lives crossing, Ismael, Mathilde, Sacha and Joan are going to meet here...

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Gare du Nord in Paris is a transit station for all those coming from the suburbs, the provinces or abroad. Accompanied by Simon Mérabet, the son of Algerian immigrants from the Var, Human Geography offers a series of brief meetings with individuals who recount their lives in just a few words before disappearing to take their trains. The crowd of passengers is embodied in these stories, one life after another, and we see how globalization fashions individual destinies, subject to geographical and economic pressures.

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A realist dramedy about dedicated social workers who devote their long shifts to helping pregnant women.

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After falling off her horse, a teenage girl is rescued by a manly, older fireman with whom she falls in love with tragic consequences.

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Mimi isn't a star, she's just someone. A close-up of the singularity of a real life. An encounter of someone's particular story, romance, fantasy and territories.

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Manon, 15, meets Greg, 17, while on vacation. He lives in Claviers, a little village in France’s Haut-Var region, while she lives in Paris. Greg and Manon are in love. This is a portrait of a young man who comes alive when his girlfriend is with him, for it’s their story that counts. He must deal with the geography that separates them and come to terms with the past.

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After studying political science in Paris, Antoine decides to go to Strasbourg to become a parliamentary assistant at the European Parliament. His motivation: to find his ex-girlfriend Cleo, who is a television editor. Half-documentary, half-fiction, with the students of the Théâtre National de Strasbourg.

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Based on a true story this emotionally wrenching character study focuses upon a desperate young wife who feigns an entire pregnancy in hopes of convincing her dissatisfied husband to remain with her. Magali's problem comes from the fact that she is so bland and unassuming as to be nearly invisible. Her passivity and inability to form her own opinions grates on her husband Alain, a go-getter radio journalist, and he plans to take a year long assignment in Canada to get away from her. While preparing to leave, his boss, who has been inadvertently led to believe that Magli is pregnant, shows up and tells Alain. The husband's first response is to demand an abortion, but on second thought he decides he would like to become a father after all. Magli, fearing that he will leave, then devises her elaborate ruse.

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A small company valiantly struggles to survive under the respectful yet probing camera of Claire Simon in “At All Costs.” As the docu opens, founder and manager Jihad is off to see his banker. The lack of ready cash to pay his loyal employees, wholesale produce providers and a whole range of other creditors, including the tax-gobbling French government, is omnipresent. From a staff of 14, Jihad is down to three cooks, one delivery driver and a secretary in less than six months. The good-natured pluck of the remaining employees is at the heart of the film. Subterfuges for putting up a brave united front include scheduling food orders from a coin-operated pay phone when the office phone is cut off for nonpayment.

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As French kindergarteners pour forth for recess, play takes on epic proportions. In every corner, some miniature drama is unfolding. Violence, love, jealousy, treachery are all here! This is human society in the making.

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Something extraordinary happened to Marie... and it wasn't what she thought. As she does every day, Marie went to the cellar to fetch the broom to sweep the passage. She doesn't like going down to the cellar, however. One day she saw squatters, one of them a bearded man, at the back of the cellar. She was terrified and shut the door at once and went to call the police.

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A woman cleans her house, from time to time, when she can, like everyone else. When her hands are busy, she dreams, she makes a wish that she immediately grants in her mind.

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The story of the last month of work of a popular generalist doctor of Reims. Just before his retirement. The film shows the doctor with his old patients, or alcoholics anonymous he had follow.

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A girl tries to help her babysitter out of trouble.

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Claire Simon films her ill father during his day: from breakfasting with his nurse to his evening phone calls, when it's time for his daughter to return to the city. An intimate, brave film conceived as a salutation.

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Simon is an Algerian man who has moved to the south of France. Simon roams from house to house in the town, considered by everyone to be the “idiot of the village”. Simon is in search of not only a job but also acceptance in the society where he finds himself. A small film in the form of a sincere and thoughtful portrait.

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Portrait of a young woman through her relationship to money. The director films her friend for a whole month. The dynamic of the film is based on the bond between the director and Patricia, and on the reactions of this young woman to the financial difficulties, real or imaginary that she meets.

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Free adaptation of Faulkner's novel aroused by the Patrick Henry and Ranucci cases.

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The girl who loved chocolate...

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A dance of bodies, glances, and flamenco, created as a trailer for the 16th edition of the Sicilia Queer Film Fest.

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In a Parisian public hospital, Claire Simon questions what it means to live in women’s bodies, filming their diversity, singularity and their beauty in all stages throughout life. Unique stories of desires, fears and struggles unfold, including the one of the filmmaker herself.

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Sardinia 2017. The starting point for the film is one of the most loved lands in the Mediterranean, using it to enter into the world of cinema. Ten international masters of cinema explain Fiorenzo Serra's images, one of the greatest post-war Italian documentary makers. His masterpiece, "The last punch of Earth", will be analyzed and debated, a film which examined Italian change and European reflection.

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Gare du Nord in Paris is a transit station for all those coming from the suburbs, the provinces or abroad. Accompanied by Simon Mérabet, the son of Algerian immigrants from the Var, Human Geography offers a series of brief meetings with individuals who recount their lives in just a few words before disappearing to take their trains. The crowd of passengers is embodied in these stories, one life after another, and we see how globalization fashions individual destinies, subject to geographical and economic pressures.

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Mimi isn't a star, she's just someone. A close-up of the singularity of a real life. An encounter of someone's particular story, romance, fantasy and territories.

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Two lesbians are victims of a break-in. Together with their clan of friends, they undertake a wild investigation, with suspense and rigour, to arrive at the truth. Sensitivities are aroused around life choices, and political choices. Questions of morality comically embellished with words of abuse falling into drunkenness.

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May 68. While, outside, people are demonstrating, a man is finishing the editing of Baisers volés.

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In a Parisian public hospital, Claire Simon questions what it means to live in women’s bodies, filming their diversity, singularity and their beauty in all stages throughout life. Unique stories of desires, fears and struggles unfold, including the one of the filmmaker herself.

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In 1982, Yann Andréa and Marguerite Duras have been living together for two years. She is almost 70 years old, while he is 38 years her junior. Andréa asks journalist and writer Michèle Manceaux to interview him about his life with Duras, an obsession that both impassions him and drives him mad. He believes by entrusting their story to Manceaux, he may gain more clarity of the relationship. What follows is an intense and compelling conversation delving into the deepest recesses of modern love.

Open details →

Lussas is a small village in South Ardeche, France, with only one main road crossing the village. This real village, with farmers and vineyards, is also turning over time into the Hollywood of documentary films. A few people are preparing the launch of a television channel. From this sweet utopia to the inauguration of a high-tech tool on the internet Claire Simon depicts a singular adventure of our times in 26 episodes.

Open details →

Claire Simon portrays an important time for any individual, from 16 to 18 years of age. Set in the Paris suburbs in high school (for those lucky enough to go), teenagers chat after and even during class, sitting in the hallway or outside on a bench, looking at the city below them.

Open details →