A teacher, driven to exasperation from insults and insubordination, takes her class hostage.
Social & External
The people behind it
Isabelle Adjani
Sonia Bergerac
Denis Podalydès
Chief Brigadier Labouret, negotiator
Jackie Berroyer
Principal
Yann Collette
Bechet, Labouret’s interventionist superior
Nathalie Besançon
Minister of the Interior
Marc Citti
Frédéric Bergerac, Sonia's husband
Yann Ebongé
Student Mouss M'Diop
Kévin Azaïs
Student Sébastien Lenoir
Sonia Amori
Student Nawel Jabli
Khalid Berkouz
Student Mehmet
On a faraway mountaintop, eight kids with guns watch over a hostage and a conscripted milk cow.
These five award-winning coming of age short films offer a glimpse of how boys and young men tackle life's difficult desires: confronting one's demons, understanding sexual relationships, gaining the respect of one's father, or simply running away from it all. This is only the start of their complex formative years, where not every question has an answer, and not every answer makes sense. The short films are: Boys [Pojkarna] (2015); Ioana (2015); Kiem Holijanda (2017); Picnic [Piknik] (2015); Tomer & Elias [Tomer en Elias] (2016).
At a music academy, veteran Professor Victor faces challenges as he prepares to conduct his final concert with a choir of children who lack passion for music. The arrival of the academy director complicates matters, and Victor learns of his dismissal just before the performance. Determined to overcome adversity, Victor, with the help of former student Angelica and the child Albert, manages to lead the choir to a heartfelt performance, rekindling their connection with music.
The story follows Iris at three points in her life: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Divided into three chapters, the narrative adapts the tales of The Bremen Town Musicians, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella to explore, at ages 10, 16, and 26 respectively, how the environment of each life stage influences her personality and perception of the world.
Randolph Bradley is perfectly content fading into the background, but when his coworker Benson snaps and goes on a violent killing spree, he’s forced to face his fears and confront his troubled past in order to find a way to survive.
Wyatt and Billy, two Harley-riding hippies, complete a drug deal in Southern California and decide to travel cross-country in search of spiritual truth.
In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.
During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.
Three friends growing up in South Central Los Angeles navigate a neighborhood plagued by violence, unemployment, and crime, each responding differently to the harsh realities of street life. As tragedy strikes close to home, their friendship, choices, and hopes for a better future are put to the ultimate test.
Masked intruders take the family of a bank manager hostage in order to rob his bank.
The story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students at a Yorkshire grammar school in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge. Bounced between their maverick English master, a young and shrewd teacher hired to up their test scores, a grossly out-numbered history teacher, and a headmaster obsessed with results, the boys attempt to pass.
While escaping from a foiled robbery attempt, three thieves find themselves surrounded by police at a New Orleans bar--only they're not the people the police are searching for.
Boys' college in eastern Quebec at the end of the 1940s. Brother Jean is not a teacher like the others. He wants to interest his students in the subject and to achieve this, he conducts archaeological excavations with his students aimed at proving the establishment of a Viking colony (Vinland) on the coast of the Saint Lawrence. The superiors of his congregation do not appreciate his unconventional ways of teaching. Without knowing it, Brother Jean will have a significant impact on the lives of his students, particularly in that of Émile, a young man who is having difficulty at school and who would prefer to abandon his studies to go work in a factory.
Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.
An inside look at Italy's modern-day crime families, the Camorra in Naples and Caserta. Based on a book by Roberto Saviano. Power, money and blood: these are the "values" that the residents of the Province of Naples and Caserta have to face every day. They hardly ever have a choice and are forced to obey the rules of the Camorra. Only a lucky few can even think of leading a normal life.
A young man befriends the last surviving Civil War veteran, intending to rob him of $50,000.
Based on the true story of would-be Brooklyn bank robbers John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile. Sonny and Sal attempt a bank heist which quickly turns sour and escalates into a hostage situation and stand-off with the police. As Sonny's motives for the robbery are slowly revealed and things become more complicated, the heist turns into a media circus.
It’s 1974 and Sam Bicke has lost everything. His wife leaves him with his three kids, his boss fires him, his brother turns away from him, and the bank won’t give him any money to start anew. He tries to find someone to blame for his misfortunes and comes up with the President of the United States who he plans to murder.
A pregnant Colombian teenager becomes a drug mule to make some desperately needed money for her family.
After a chaotic night of rioting in a marginal suburb of Paris, three young friends, Vinz, Hubert and Saïd, wander around unoccupied waiting for news about the state of health of a mutual friend who has been seriously injured when confronting the police.
Young Violetta and her mother Hannah are a peculiar couple. Ten-year-old Violetta lives a quiet life with her grandmother, while her mother Hannah is an unpredictable photographer who lives off of the generosity of others. When Hannah forces her daughter to pose as a model, Violetta finds her life with her loving grandmother turned upside down.The resulting pictures quickly become a sensation for the trendy 70's Paris art scene, and Violetta finds herself caught in between her new stature as an art muse and her dull childhood.
A bourgeois couple, modern yet conventional. One night by accident, a young prostitute barges into their lives. Hounded down, beaten up, threatened, she will continue to struggle, with the help of a well off lady, first for her survival-her resurrection-then for her dignity and freedom. Stormy encounters for everyone involved.
Housed in a shelter for young mothers, Jessica, Perla, Julia, Ariane, and Naïma, all of whom have grown up in difficult circumstances, struggle to obtain a better life for themselves and their children.
A misguided museum guard who loses his job and then tries to get it back at gunpoint is thrown into the fierce world of ratings-driven TV gone mad.
A joinery instructor at a rehab center refuses to take a new teen as his apprentice, but then begins to follow the boy through the hallways and streets.
A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.
At Léon Blum High School in Créteil, France, a history teacher decides to have her weakest 10th grade class participate in a national history competition.
Everyone knows the name of Samuel Paty, but few people really know his story. On October 16, 2020, Samuel Paty, professor of History-Geography, was murdered at the end of his college. In the light of investigations and trials, this film looks back on his last eleven days, and the gear that led to his tragic death.
When Ilan Halimi is kidnapped for ransom because Jewish and supposedly rich, his family and the police start a race against time to save him from the tortures of the "gang of barbarians".
Nathalie teaches philosophy at a high school in Paris. She is passionate about her job and particularly enjoys passing on the pleasure of thinking. Married with two children, she divides her time between her family, former students and her very possessive mother. One day, Nathalie’s husband announces he is leaving her for another woman. With freedom thrust upon her, Nathalie must reinvent her life.
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
A successful photographer gives up everything to devote himself to writing and discovers poverty.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
Because he wanted to protect his little brother, Teddy, a young man without a history, is accused of the murder of his father and sent to a closed educational center, waiting for his trial for parricide. He then plunges into a brutal universe of which he does not know the rules.
Raf and Julie, a couple on the verge of breaking up, find themselves in an emergency ward bordering on collapse on the evening of a Parisian Yellow Vest protest. Their encounter with Yann, an angry and injured demonstrator, will shatter each person's certainties and prejudices. Outside, the tension escalates.
Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom.
Julie finally gets an interview for a job where she can raise her children better only to run into a national transit strike.
Former Marine Louanne Johnson lands a gig teaching in a pilot program for bright but underachieving teens at a notorious inner-city high school. After having a terrible first day, she decides she must throw decorum to the wind. When Johnson returns to the classroom, she does so armed with a no-nonsense attitude informed by her military training and a fearless determination to better the lives of her students -- no matter what the cost.
When Internal Affairs officer Stéphanie investigates a young man severely injured during a chaotic Paris demonstration and finds no police misconduct, the routine case hits close to home upon her discovering the victim is from her native town.
