At the age of 51 and after 20 months on unemployment, Thierry starts a new job that soon brings him face to face with a moral dilemma. How much is he willing to accept to keep his job?
La banquière
While in a party promoted by her chief and friend Måns Wenngren, the fiscal attorney, Rebecka Martinsson, receives a call from her former sister-in-law, Sanna Strandgård, telling that her brother and preacher Viktor was murdered, stabbed and with severed hands, and she would be arrested. Rebecka heads to her hometown Kiruna and defends Sanna, but the evidences found by the police in her house prove her guilty and she is arrested. While investigating the crime, Rebecka is haunted by her past and faces the bigoted and fanatic religious dwellers that worship the local church, and is more convinced of the innocence of Sanna.
Long married 50-somethings Brigitte and Xavier are prize cattle breeders in regional France. Life is good, but the departure of their children from home has thrown Brigitte’s world into flux, as she finds herself locked into routine. She keeps hoping for something else, something more. A party held by students on the adjoining property accelerates this latent crisis and Brigitte impulsively sets off for Paris under the guise of a doctor’s appointment. The city immediately invigorates her, and when she meets a charming Danish gentleman, she impulsively allows herself to be flattered by his attentions…
On his downfall from Heaven to Hell, Lucifer passes through the earthly paradise, a village in Mexico, where elderly Lupita and her granddaughter Maria live. Lupita's brother Emanuel pretends he's paralyzed so he can drink and gamble while the two women tend to the sheep. Lucifer senses an opportunity and plays the miraculous healer. He forces Emanuel to walk again, seduces Maria and makes Lupita doubt about her faith. He didn't bring bad luck, he only illuminated the line between good and evil, where it didn't exist before.
Six employees of the Geugène company travel to Paris to take part in a motivational seminar.
After spending most of his life being defeated by his rival Ottone, meek Biagio tries to commit suicide – but in the hereafter he's offered a chance to come back to life for a week as Dennis, Ottone's trusted business partner.
Under the sun, the heavenly beauty of grasslands will soon be covered by the raging dust of mines. Facing the ashes and noises caused by heavy mining , the herdsmen have no choice but to leave as the meadow areas dwindle. In the moonlight, iron mines are brightly lit throughout the night. Workers who operate the drilling machines must stay awake. The fight is tortuous, against the machine and against themselves. Meanwhile, coal miners are busy filling trucks with coals. Wearing a coal-dust mask, they become ghostlike creatures. An endless line of trucks will transport all the coals and iron ores to the iron works. There traps another crowd of souls, being baked in hell. In the hospital, time hangs heavy on miners' hands. After decades of breathing coal dust, death is just around the corner. They are living the reality of purgatory, but there will be no paradise.
Roa is a fictionalized account, based on real facts, about Juan Roa Sierra, the supposed killer of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, Colombian politician and lawyer, dissident candidate of the Liberal Party for the 1950 Presidential elections, which he had a very high probability of winning.
When a brothel closes because of new laws, four of the prostitutes decide to go into business running a restaurant. They discover they cannot escape their past.
André Demester secretly and painfully loves Barbe, his childhood friend, accepting from her the little that she gives him. He leaves home to be a soldier in a war in a far off land. Barbarity, camaraderie and fear turn him into a warrior. As the seasons go by, Barbe, alone and wasting away, waits for the soldiers to return. Will Demester’s boundless love for Barbe save him?
Sun is setting on Havana. Five friends are gathered to celebrate the return of Amadeo after 16 years of exile in Madrid.
Forty-eight-year-old Alain Evrard is obliged to return home to live with his mother. This situation causes all the violence of their past relationship to rise to the surface. Alain then discovers that his mother has a fatal illness. In the last months of her life, will they finally be capable of taking a step toward each other?
After promising 1100 employees that they would protect their jobs, the managers of a factory decide to suddenly close up shop. Laurent takes the lead in a fight against this decision.
Clemens works as a masseur, Lara as a cook, but their clientele is the same: the guests of a luxury hotel. As sparks begin to fly between the two, his sensitivity clashes with her more fiery temperament—opposites attract, but harmony is nowhere in sight.
Marco Lopez, a former Neo-Nazi and skinhead, tries to leave his violent, racist and hateful past behind him.
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".
Lucien, 14, can’t understand why his father, a serious and respected teacher, makes a fool of himself by dressing up as a clown and giving a show. André, Lucien’s father’s best friend, feels for the teenager and decides to reveal something from their mutual past that will explain the reason for Lucien’s father’s strange behavior.
A retired professor of American origin lives a solitary life in a luxurious palazzo in Rome. He is confronted by a vulgar Italian marchesa and her lover, her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend, and forced to rent to them an apartment on the upper floor of his palazzo. From this point on his quiet routine is turned into chaos by his tenants' machinations, and everybody's life takes an unexpected but inevitable turn.
In 1953, a sensitive French boy finds out from a neighbor that his family's Jewish. François Grimbert becomes a physician, and gradually peels the layers of his buried family history which resulted in his difficult upbringing, raised as Catholic by his "Aryan" appearing parents. His athletic father labored to stamp out stereotypical Jewish characteristics he perceived in his son, to keep the family's many secrets, as most relatives fought in World War II, and later were hauled off to labor and death camps by the Gestapo.
Hilarious but harrowing, the film charts the disintegration of the friendship between Renton, Spud, Sick Boy, Tommy and Begbie as they proceed seemingly towards a psychotic, drug-fuelled self-destruction.
A depiction of the life of an impoverished early twentieth century rural Bengali family.
Raghuvaran, who is unemployed for years, gets his dream job but a powerful rival is keen to put him down. Can he take on his adversary?
After his wife leaves him, a photographer has an existential crisis and tries to cope with his cousin's visit.
John Smith, a middle-aged married man, is made redundant by his employer; at a loss and despairing, his friend Harry Jones suggests applying to the Embankment Fellowship Centre, a charity that provides hostelling, retraining and help finding work for men in his position.
A chemist loses his job to outsourcing. Two years later and still jobless, he hits on a solution: to genuinely eliminate his competition.
David Cole is a twenty-something man trying to make ends meet. His wannabe actor roommate Steve isn't making things any easier for him. But when a nasty string of bad luck turns his life upside down, only then can he realize that he may not be as unlucky as he thinks.
Lorna is a young Albanian woman in a marriage of convenience with Claudy, a heroin addict. Just as Lorna is about to be granted Belgian citizenship, Claudy finds the strength to detox; this presents a problem not only for Lorna, but for the criminal who brokered the deal.
In 1930s Berlin, Dr. Jakob Fabian, who works by day in advertising for a cigarette company and by night wanders the streets of the city, falls in love with an actress. As her career begins to blossom, prospects for his future begin to wane.
Frankie is a car park attendant at the spectacular Giant’s Causeway in Co. Antrim. His friend Cathy and her husband Paul are in trouble. Nevertheless as Frankie always says, "Something will turn up!"
The first film ever distributed by the NFB, The Case of Charlie Gordon focuses on an unemployed young Canadian who has never held a job. In the late '30s, there were many in Charlie's position. Determined to change this, a committee was formed to team up local employers with these young men. Through their efforts, and with the help of the Federal Government, people were trained and employed. As a result, their hopeless attitudes were transformed into a readiness to learn and be useful members of society.
One winter night, Pilar runs away from home. With her, she takes only a few belongings and her son, Juan. Antonio soon sets out to look for her. He says Pilar is his sunshine, and what's more, "She gave him her eyes"...
Marseille. The director of a company offers a promotion to Francois (Michel Creton) if he accepts to help him fire all the staff from his office. If he refuses, he will himself be fired. Francois opts for the latter. He registers as unemployed and discovers what he has lacked so far in his life: a certain freedom. His habits are changing as well as his attitude towards the others changes ... Luce (Claude Jade), his wife, and Marquerite (Courtois Queen), her stepmother, are surprised: why he is not himself anymore?
Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the unpaid back rent. The young man, brother of the protagonist Anni, removes his wristwatch and throws himself from a window out of despair. Shortly thereafter his family is evicted from their apartment. Now homeless, the family moves into a garden colony of sorts with the name “Kuhle Wampe.”
Ainhoa is 8 years old and has left home with her school bag, a Playmobil figure and a secret plan.
Die Polizistin is a drama by Andreas Dresen about the life of a young police woman who is faced with the difficulties between her responsibilities at work and her personal responsibilities.
When you read the title ‘Summer on the Balcony’ you probably think it will be a light Berlin summer comedy but it’s not. This film is an intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.
From the youth directed novel of the same name by Greogor Tressnow comes a film by Detlev Buck that is a realistic portrait of life in the section of Berlin called Neukölln. It’s about power and weakness, delinquents and victims, and the difficulties a 15-year-old faces in a poor and criminal environment.
Catherine and Mack and their close friends Chris and Madge graduate from a West Coast college and fly to New York City to find work.