Nicole Hiss

Anne-Marie Stretter, the wife of a French diplomat in 1930s India, takes many lovers to relieve the boredom in her life.

Three episodes from the history of socialism: Babeuf, whose virulent discourse is a radical assessment of the bourgeois revolution of 1789 (Vincent Nordon episode); the legend of Napoleon I, or the formation of the state as it still dominates today (François Barat episode); and the carnage of the Paris Commune, which official history strives to repress and forget (Joël Farges episode). What does it mean to make a historical film today? It means illuminating the present in the light of the past, and therefore adopting the new modes of modern storytelling to challenge what dominates us, structures us, and oppresses us.

The full soundtrack to Marguerite Duras' 1975 film India Song, about a French ambassador's wife in 1930s India, is here repurposed with all new cinematography. As we hear all the dialogue of a bygone movie, we travel visually through images of absence and decay, bereft of life. It's the ghost of a film, and a further commentary on colonialism.

The story of two youths – one Algerian, one French – who become juvenile delinquents in a Paris suburb.

A man returns to the place he once lived a passionate love affair with a woman who is now dead. So powerful are the emotions that seize him that he imagines she is still alive, and begins to live as if this were the case...

In a secluded hotel circumscribed by a dense forest Max and Alissa Thor meet Stein and Elisabeth. Max, a professor of future history and an aspiring author, is immediately attracted to the brooding wife of industrialist Bernard Alione, Elisabeth, who is recovering from a miscarriage. Stein, a German Jew and potential writer, is infatuated by Alissa, Max's young wife and former student. During their sojourn the guests' identities gradually meld.

Marin Karmitz's avant-garde short film is a haunting tale about an alcoholic novelist facing a crippling case of writer's block.