Shulamit Adar

Voyages

In the first of the three linked episodes of French writer-director Emmanuel Finkiel’s delicate, poignant Voyages, a bus tour of Poland, by present-day French survivors of the Holocaust, suffers a mishap: en route to Auschwitz from a Jewish cemetery, the bus breaks down. In the second episode, one of them confronts the possibility that her father, long presumed to be among the Six Million, in fact survived; but is he her father?

Kings & Queen

Shortly before her wedding, art gallery director Nora travels from Paris to Grenoble to visit her preteen son, Elias, who is spending time with her aging professor father, Louis, recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. During her stay, she reaches out to her former lover, Ismaël, a viola player and father figure to Elias who has been committed against his will to a mental hospital. Ismaël, however, has his own problems to sort out.

Mrs. Moskowitz and the Cats

When Yolanda Moscowitz, a retired French teacher, wakes up in a hospital geriatric ward, she is convinced it must be a mistake. But the titanium plate in her hip confines her to a wheelchair and to a lengthy convalescence. Nonetheless, Yolanda discovers a new life in the hospital. She develops a close relationship with Allegra, a solitary woman who is her roommate, and she meets Shaul, a former soccer player, who makes her feel certain emotions she thought had vanished from her life for good.

The Last Love of Laura Adler

Yiddish live theater, a formerly lively theatrical form, is barely sustained by a few aging aficionados and its loyal but aged audience. Laura Adler is a big star of one of these troupes. She is attractive, middle-aged and quite content to spend her days performing obscure theater in her backwater town. One day, however, she learns that she is being considered for a part in a major U.S. film, and, while she is absorbing that news, she has an affair with a young man. Later, when she learns that she has terminal cancer, she decides to spend her remaining days onstage with her theatrical friends and family.

Memoir of War

In the last days of the Nazi-occupied France, writer Marguerite Duras awaits the return of her husband, Robert Antelme, arrested for being a Resistance fighter and then deported, while she maintains a tense relationship with her ambiguous lover and a dangerous game with a French collaborationist. Even when the Liberation arrives, she must still endure the unbearable pain of waiting.

Madame Jacques on the Croisette

A César Award winning short film about an elderly Jewish couple playing cards in Cannes who find love at an unexpected age.

Les murs porteurs