Bertrand Bonello

A group of young, multiracial radicals execute a series of terrorist attacks across Paris and then take shelter for the night in a shopping center while a massive manhunt is conducted outside.Read More »

Quote:
Spiritual disciplines span the spectrum from quiet personal self-reflection to physically militant offensives against the ego that tyrannizes us all. Writer/Director Bertrand Bonello’s latest film On War deals with the latter.

On War is a film about purging—the purging of self, of attachment to the world, and of attachment to assumptions about one’s self in the world. As the characters in the film suggest, it is only through this purging that a person may fully release into the immediacy of joy and pleasure. And it is joy and pleasure, things real and authentic, that our protagonist Bertrand (Mathieu Amalric) is searching for.Read More »

Bertrand Bonello’s daughter has just turned 18. But the moment this young adult officially begins to “spread her wings” coincides with a global health crisis. Locked indoors, she experiences life in a state of limbo.Read More »

Quote:
Bonello seized on the idea of making a cinematic tribute to Ingrid Caven when he first heard her sing at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, but the portrait he eventually made finds her exploring a more expansive range of performance styles and moods. A former member of R.W. Fassbinder’s cinematic troupe—the two were married for a brief stretch in the 1970s—and the ostensible subject of a fictional biography by Jean-Jacques Schuhl, Caven spends Bonello’s movie singing a rich repertoire of songs, some of them traditional ballads, others non-verbal, and still others verging on abstract performance art. Ingrid Caven: Music and Voice is a showcase for a truly sui generis musician—a sort of cabaret singer for the 21st century—and a respectful tribute to one artist from another.Read More »

Quote:
According to ancient mythology, Tiresia was both a man and a woman. Blinded by the rage of the goddess, the gods granted him higher vision. This version of the myth takes place in the suburbs of Paris. Tiresia is a Brazilian transexual of extreme beauty, earning her living as a prostitute, she shares an appartment illegally with her brother Terranova. With his morbid and poetic ideals, he falls madly in love with her, finding no other way to keep her for himself, he decides to kidnap her. Robbed of her daily fix of hormones, Tiresia finds herself slowly turning back into a man.Read More »

Quote:
An opera ballet that doesn’t exist. A ghost-like piece, played in Opera Bastille and danced at Opera Garnier, An almost mystical link between both scenes, A musician is testing sounds in Bastille’s pit, The choir are taking their place in the rehearsal studio, Both sides are fine tuning the work in progress of an opera ballet : SARAH WINCHESTER, her grief, her madness, her home and her ghosts.Read More »

Jacques Laurent made pornographic films in the 1970s and ’80s, but had put that aside for 20 years. His artistic ideas, born of the ’60s counter-culture, had elevated the entire genre. Older and paunchier, he is now directing a porno again. Jacques’s artistry clashes with his financially-troubled producer’s ideas about shooting hard-core sex. Jacques has been estranged from his son Joseph for years, since the son first learned the nature of the family business. They are now speaking again. Joseph and his friends want to recapture the idealism of 1968 with a protest. Separated from his wife, Jacques strives for personal renewal with plans to build a new house by himself…Read More »

Quote:
Paul and Marguerite are a five years old couple. Their love is strong, deep, tragic… visceral. Paul wants to control things. Marguerite is more free…Read More »

The dawn of the XXth century: L’Apollonide, a house of tolerance, is living its last days.
In this closed world, where some men fall in love and others become viciously harmful, the girls share their secrets, their fears, their joys and their pains…

Des derniers jours du XIXe siècle à l’aube du XXe, la vie quotidienne des prostituées et de leur patronne dans une maison close. Criblée de dettes, cette dernière dissimule à ses employées la fermeture imminente de l’établissement. Connue sous le nom de « La femme qui rit », une prostituée a le visage marqué par un client dément. Une autre mourra de la syphilis. La plupart des filles rêvent de mariage, d’argent, de liberté. « L’Apollonide » est une cage dorée dans laquelle elles se fanent doucement. Le monde extérieur, ses tragédies, ses nouveautés et ses changements, n’y entre que par l’intermédiaire des habitués qui viennent rejoindre leurs filles favorites tous les soirs, et se confient à elles…Read More »