Dear Friends,

Here is a quick view of what I will be launching in Biarritz during the RENDEZ VOUS.

Please suggest a meeting time at your convenience either on Tuesday 7, Wednesday 8 or Thursday 9 from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm before our schedules are too tight ! 

Warm regards. 

Marie-Laure Hébrard
FILM & PICTURE
01 47 23 90 35
06 31 18 64 10
ml@hebrard.org
alizesfilms@alizesfilms.com
www.filmandpicture.com

Every family business has a golden rule: compartmentalize. Xanadu isn’t any different. On one side, the Valadine manor. On the other, the Xanadu offices. Between the two, a padded door with a digital lock. And at the helm, Alex Valadine, the flamboyant patriarch…and the high priest of the French X-rated film industry.
 
For over 40 years at Xanadu, porn filmmaking and family life have lived peacefully together under the same roof, without the slightest cultural clash. Yet everything changes after a traumatic attack by a young and deranged person. For during a commemorative celebration for the dazzling porn star Elise Jess, Alex’s ex-wife, gunshots break out. The Valadine’s oldest son, Laurent, is in the line of fire. He collapses.
 
While Xanadu reels, Alex refuses to see that the world has changed since his early 70’s free-will adventure: the company is struggling to keep up with the 21st century, and the family is no longer able to hide the cracks in its varnish.
 
Who is holding a grudge against the “porn” family? Why are the different members of the family still consumed by Elise even after her death? How can the Valadines free themselves from their past? Will Alex finally let his children, Sarah and Lapo, take over the family business?
 

That obscure object of… pleasure.

Out of nowhere, Carmen arrived one day in Camargue, that wild and barren land at the eve of the last century. She is a Daughter of the Wind. Proud of the Gipsy blood flowing through her veins, still a child but a woman yet, she held her figure as she would a rifle. What did she want, what was she looking for?

Lonesome, only Carmen knew. She was facing the world’s hostility with her body as sole weapon. No one resisted her… This flawless liberty, which none of us could take from her, disturbed us, attracted us and drew us all mad.

Gipsy, she was bullfighter and bull at the same time. A woman first, totally and independently, she shone at a time reserved to men. Without restraints or limits, she showed that life was elsewhere , free from codes or traditions.

Haven't you ever wished to make your dreams come true? Don't you think life could be just greater? The day Hugo discovers the Khifu, a magic notebook which enables him to control future, he realises he can help his friends and family taking care of their problems. Unfortunately, the notebook cannot make Moïra fall in love with him. But anyway, this might be an amazing tool to make the world even better...

It's 1832, and 22-year-old Raphaël's gambling has driven him to the brink of suicide. He is about to throw himself in the Seine when a gun in an antique shop catches his eye. The shop's strange owner, Oswald, offers him something else instead: a "skin of sorrow", which will grant all his wishes, but in doing so will shrink, as will his remaining time on earth.
Not really believing it, Raphaël accepts the deal. His first wish is for a magnificent party, at which he can eat his fill in the presence of the most beautiful women. There he meets his friend Rastignac, who takes him to a rich banker’s house. The banker has decided to publish a newspaper and make Raphaël its editor. Amused, Raphaël makes his next wish: to become immensely rich. As time runs out, his fondest wishes come true, but he comes to understand that they are by no means as important as he once thought. Except for one. But by now it's far too late…

Fear descends on the small provincial town of Poitou-Charentes in France in the 1970s after a series of pretty brunettes are brutally murdered. The police don’t believe the crimes are the acts of a serial killer and the investigation stalls. With no suspect apprehended, women start to panic and dye their hair blond. Paranoia and madness overtakes the town.

Denis thought he had found the perfect shelter in a summer camp... But he has to cope with boisterous children which he hates and he is lumbered with the friendship of Gilles-Henri.
Denis’ last burglary turns to be a disaster. Trying to escape from the police, he climbs aboard a summer camp bus, pretending to be the awaited instructor. Upon his arrival the camp’s headmaster presents him his partner : Gilles-Henri, an adult spoiled brat who escaped from his mother’s overwhelming love. Denis will have to face both his unexpected job as a children’s instructor and the invading friendship of his unwanted partner.

A crooked comedy that will make you feel like a million bucks. Raoul, Martin and JP have known each other since they were kids growing up together in an orphanage. By the time they were teens they were masterminding elaborate swindles with their friend Sergio. But they drifted apart, all going their separate ways.

 Twenty years later, they reunite on the Riviera to exact revenge against the man who is responsible for Sergio’s death, Ségonzac. 

Following the death of his wife, Gérard must raise his 13 year old son, Victor, on his own. Things are not going well and as recent widow Gérard has found it easier to be in the company of call girls than take a chance with a real relationship. Meanwhile, Sophie, who is recently divorced, has her 13 year old daughter, Louise, living with her. Sophie is in a dead-end job as a sales clerk and has been surviving without a spark of romance.
When Gérard totals Sophie’s car, sparks fly – and the inconsolable widow and the divorce hardened Sophie fall in love. At first they act just like teenagers as they hide their love affair from their children with plenty of complications and cover-ups. While their parents are acting like kids, Victor and Louise are growing up fast as they experience first love. With adults being kids and kids being adults the question is: who is really ready for love?

A collection of eight films, each the fruit of an encounter between a novelist and a filmmaker, the latter given carte blanche to adapt one of the published novels, creating a hard-boiled crime story in the B-movie tradition, exploring every nuance of genre cinema, from high farce to social criticism, by way of moral (or immoral) fables, the macabre and the romantic.

Two cops, one is a police captain, the other one is an inspector. They work as a team.

Two cops from the G.I.S department (General Inspection of Services) invite us to join them solving investigations for national police.

Ariane Ferry fights against time to find missing people.

Ariane Ferry, Faust and Valentin are part of a special department specialized in the search for missing persons.

Each minute counts for Ariane and her team because as time goes by, chances to find these people alive are getting thinner.

Albert Camus, a life - Camus seen through women's eyes. From The Rebel to The First Man and The Fall, the last ten years of Albert Camus's turbulent life. 
In these ten years, this "faithful infidel", who would be proved right about so many issues, would achieve worldwide recognition while enduring the biggest crisis of his own existence.Saved by love, but swept along by the absurd, the Camus we discover through this film is the private man, full of integrity and a disquieting humanity.

A little lie with huge consequences...
In the school playground, 8 year-old Chloe is getting on little Hugo's nerves. She keeps telling him about Eric, her “new dad” to be who is going to leave his wife and children in order to live with Chloe and her mother. So the little girl doesn't understand why Hugo's mum hasn't got a boyfriend... Hugo eventually tells her that actually his mum does have a boyfriend too. But he couldn't tell her because that man is Eric. And he's going to marry his mum and not Chloe's.

Is this just a lie, or are three women really in love with the same man?

The city of Marseille is in a state of shock. Angèle, a depressive, alcoholic fifty-something has thrown herself out of a downtown window. Her violent death prompts the return of an infamous figure from the city’s past: Romain Garraud, recently released from prison having served 15 years for the rape of an underage girl. The victim, Isabelle, Angèle’s daughter, was 8 years old when the offence took place.

Romain and Angèle were lovers. He claims that she used her own daughter to wreak revenge on him during their break-up. He hopes to prove his innocence and have his case reviewed.
 
Jeanne, the lawyer he turns to, says she will do everything in her power to help him. At her own risk…

A flamboyant drama that opposes a father to his daughters in a war for power that he has himself initiated.

In 1945, Ottavio della Rocca, wealthy Corsican landlord, is about to marry his favorite daughter, Vanina, to Ange Caponi’s son, his new-rich former farmer… After World War II that turned the world upside down, one has to get new allies, even though they are your worst enemy.

Vanina refuses. Ottavio decides to disinherit her even though, to do so, he has to transmit his fortune to his elder daughters he despises.

What does it mean to be in love today? In times when love is ruled by merchandising, when it can be triggered by a clic on Meetic et killed by a SMS, “just a little bit of love” portrays the never-ending quest which sets us all in motion: the quest for happyness.
The film stars Clémentine Célarié who falls in love with a model, much younger than her.
The film is an inventory of love affairs, multiple and complex, innovative and eternal, neither complexed nor discreet, universal. Love above all. Love that leads the world, men and women, the young and the older ones, the disillusioned and the dreamers. Love that make us live, vibrate, move forward and that often makes us more human. Today, the pessimistic vision of modern love is well spread : divorces, reconstructed and deconstructed families, fleeting love, impossible fidelity, are all over the medias…

Belleville, One of the melting pots of Paris, today.

Freddy, 20, a hopeless young thug, has to kill a strange guy, Mr Zhu, a 50-year-old 1970s throwback. A bit nuts, a bit Zorro, he's just arrived from China for "someone" and for the night. A long, feverish night of blows, knives and guns which slices through the strange and illicit underbelly of insomniac Belleville...

Dr Valmer, who pretends to be the best dentist in town, breaks an arm in a hunting accident and has to stop working for several months. He must urgently find someone to replace him. There are not so many candidates. However one of his colleague finds him the "gem". But this supposedly ideal candidate does not look too good : efficient but without charm nor charisma. Back home after three long weeks at the hospital, Daniel is ill at ease with his idle situation. And he starts getting on the nerves of his mates. Especially when he realizes that his replacement has turned to be charming, funny, with a good sense of humor and has thus seduced everybody around him, even Daniel's own dog ! The dentist business is flourishing. Little by little Daniel starts to hate him, fearing his stand-in will even replace him with his wife.

Paris, 1961. 18 years old Jean meets 23 years old Marie, at the headquarters of the French criminal police department, where he has been summoned for unexplainable reasons. Utterly distraught, he tries to understand his father’s troubled past, whom had to run away to Switzerland. Secretive and mysterious, life has left its indefinable mark on the young woman. She keeps lying, confusing the issues, apparently avoiding someone.  Jean accepts to help her and puts her up in the large deserted family apartment he’s sharing with one of his father’s friends, Grabley. Willing to break off with her questionable social environment, Marie introduces Jean as her young brother to her special business contacts Ansart and Jacques De Bavière. Despite their differences and increasing risks, Marie and Jean gradually develop a relationship… Caught in a trap, they face a dark growing danger. Will they be able to fly away to Rome and to live their love affair?

Summer has started. 15-year-old Melissa has just moved into a new neighbourhood with her parents.  She soon makes friends with two girls, Océane and Jessie, then a bunch of boys, all of them forming a new gang.  Melissa falls in love with 17-year-old Bruce, but their relationship suffers pressure from the rest of the gang, especially Fred, the leader, for whom "falling in love" is shameful.

Four bullets in the breast, one in the head. Russian journalist exiled in Bets, Andreï Karpov decides to return in Moscow to attend the burial of his friend. A return which frightens Claire, his partner, French professor in the Parisian region. Rightly. Andreï, who dashed in single into an investigation) to identify the people in charge of Anna's murder, disappears at the end of some days. Decided to find the man she loves, Claire off-loads in Moscow and reconstitutes the puzzle of her investigation. She discovers a woman, Anna, and a world of which she ignores everything, Russia, Chechnya, are in hiding of violence and chaos, where the truth got multiple faces …

An ultimate love story, before oblivion.

Eric finds out that he suffers from premature Alzheimer as he is falling in love with Alice. He decides to hide his illness and to enjoy his life as long as it is possible. Not to burden his love story. He shall leave when he cannot handle it anymore. He will leave on that day. On his own terms. But little by little, Eric’s façade is crumbling…