World Language Resources

Xavier (Romain Duris) is a straight-laced French college senior who moves to Barcelona as part of a exchange program, much to the dismay of his beautiful Martine (Audrey Tautou). But sharing cramped quarters with students from all over Europe quickly leads to multi-cultural chaos as Xavier gets a hilarious, eye-opening lesson on how to live, love, laugh?and party!

One of the first French films to address the issue of collaboration during the German Occupation, Louis Malle’s brave and controversial Lacombe, Lucien traces a young peasant’s journey from potential Resistance member to Gestapo recruit. At once the story of a nation and one troubled boy’s horrific coming of age, the film is a disquieting portrait of lost innocence and guilt.

The magnificent, epic story of an Ethiopian boy who is airlifted from a Sudanese refugee camp to Israel in 1984 during Operation Moses. Shlomo is plagued by two big secrets: He is neither a Jew nor an orphan, just an African boy who survived and wants, somehow, to fulfill his Ethiopian mother’s parting request that he “go, live, and become.” Buoyed by a profound and unfaltering motherly love – both in his memory and in the arms of his adoptive mother – he ultimately finds an identity and a happiness all his own.

Antoine Doinel strikes again! In the final chapter of François Truffaut’s sage, we find Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), now in his 30s, convivially concluding his marriage, enjoying moderate success as a novelist, and clinging to his romantic fantasies. The newly single Dionel finds a new object of his affections in Sabine, a record store salesgirl whom he pursues with the fervid belief that without love, one is nothing. Along the way, he renews his acquaintance with previous loves and confronts his own chaotic past. In “Love on the Run (L’Amour en Fuite)”, Antoine Doinel is still in love and, because he’s still in love, he’s still alive.

Screen legend Omar Sharif is Monsieur Ibrahim, an elderly widower who owns a grocery store in a shabby, working-class section of Pais. His life takes on new meaning when he befriends Momo, a lonely teenage boy (Pierre Boulanger). In Ibrahim, Momo finds the father he never had, a patient man infused with kindness and a wisdom he freely shares. And Momo awakens within Ibrahim a tastefor grand adventure, which takes them on a journey that will change their lives forever.

Louis Malle’s critically acclaimed “Murmur of the Heart (Le Souffle au Coeur) gracefully combines elements of comedy, drama, and autobiography in a candid portrait of a precocious adolescent boy’s sexual maturation. Both shocking and deeply poignant, this is one of the finest coming-of-age films ever made.

Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, filmmaker Alain Resnais documented the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz. One of the first cinematic reflections on the horrors of the Holocaust, Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) contrasts the stillness of the abandoned camps' quiet, empty buildings with haunting wartime footage. With Night and Fog, Resnais investigates the cyclical nature of man's violence toward man and presents the unsettling suggestion that such horrors could come again.

This award-winning feature debut from Fanta Régina Nacro, one of Africa's most talented female directors, takes place in an unnamed country where two peoples, the ruling Nayak and the opposition Bonandés, have finally embarked on a path to peace after a decade of atrocities. To commemorate the reconciliation, a celebratory feast is planned.
The banquet is prepared and the evening's events are scheduled with care. Precautions are taken to keep the celebration peaceful. Drums that usually would accompany the dancers are banned, due to past violence. The people cautiously greet the soldiers and the President. Speeches are made, toasts are offered and food is served, until suddenly the fragile peace is shattered by the distant sound of drums that signal impending trouble... Haunted by memories of the past, will the night of truth bring understanding - or revenge?

French comedy sensation Jean Dujardin stars as secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, a.k.a. OSS 117, in this blithe and witty send-up not only of spy flicks and the suave secret agent figure but also neo-colonialism and Western covert action in the Middle East. It's 1955 and after a fellow agent and close friend is murdered, OSS 117 is ordered to take his place at the head of a poultry firm in Cairo. This is to be his cover while he investigates his friend's death, monitors the Suez Canal, beds local beauties, checks up on the Brits and Soviets, burnishes France's reputation, foils Nazi holdouts, quells a fundamentalist rebellion and brokers peace in the Middle East... all in spite of his colossal but debonair cluelessness!

Writer and director Marjane Satrapi draws a poignant story about a young girl in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, when people's hopes were dashed as fundamentalists took power.

Albert Lamorisse's exquisite "The Red Balloon" remains one of the most beloved children s films of all time. In this deceptively simple, nearly wordless tale, a young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of its own, on the streets of Paris. The two become inseparable, yet the world s harsh realities finally interfere. With its glorious palette and allegorical purity, the Academy Award winning The Red Balloon has enchanted movie lovers, young and old, for generations.

"Set on the French Riviera in the summer of 1915, Jean Renoir -- son of the Impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste -- returns home to convalesce after being wounded in World War I. At his side is Andr‚e, a young woman who rejuvenates, enchants, and inspires both father and son. RENOIR locates a fascinating moment of change, with one century's way of thinking giving way to the next." -- Amazon.com.

After making such American noir classics as The Naked City and Brute Force, blacklisted director Jules Dassin went to Paris and embarked on his masterpiece: a twisting, turning tale of four ex-cons who hatch one last glorious heist in the City of Lights. At once naturalistic and expressionistic, this melange of suspense, brutality, and dark humor was an international hit and earned Dassin the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival