Thriller
The French have excelled in thrilling the spectator, recreating Hitchcockian tension like no other nation, through a variety of genres encompassing war, noir, psychological and police/crime thrillers. Cinémoi showcases the finest examples from Gallic masters of suspense, including the towering likes of Claude Chabrol, Henri-Georges Clouzot and Jacques Audiard.
Director: Alain Corneau
Simone Signoret and Yves Montand star in Alain Corneau’s thriller about a tough but honest cop who...
Fred 1997
(81 mins)
Director: Pierre Jolivet
Vincent Lindon stars as Fred, an unemployed man who lives in the industrial suburbs of Paris. When...
Rapt 2009
(125 mins)
Director: Lucas Belvaux
Yvan Attal stars as a rich industrialist, kidnapped by a group who demand 50 million Euros for...
Director: Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé’s audacious film is a revenge story told backwards, where we slowly discover the horrific event...
Director: Xavier Beauvois
Bored of dealing with petty crimes, recent police graduate Antoine is brought into the homicide unit due...
Director: Frédéric Schoendoerffer
While investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl, Charles Berling’s and André Dussollier’s forensic cops uncover signs...
Director: Jean-Claude Brisseau
Sandrine, at a crossroads and languishing in life, embarks on a series of sexual encounters and experimentations...
Director: Jan Kounen
Vincent Cassel is Dobermann, the leader of a brutal gang of robbers being hunted by a policeman,...
Director: Jean-Claude Brisseau
A filmmaker holds erotic auditions for his study of female pleasure in another raunchy tale, based on...
Director: Laurent Tuel
The young heir of a powerful mafia clan attempts to leave the family business, but not without...
Director: Enki Bilal
Set in New York in 2095, Enki Bilial's original and thought provoking Scince fiction epic features Charlotte...
Director: Jean-Paul Salomé
Based on the French literary equivalent of Sherlock Holmes, this fast-paced period romp sees the daring jewel...
Director: Frédéric Schoendoerffer
On a mission in Casablanca, a crack team of secret agents find themselves framed and fighting for...
Verso 2009
(100 mins)
Director: Xavier Ruiz
When his ex-partner is released from prison and becomes a mafia henchman, cop Laurent Lucas (Harry He’s...
Director: Abel Ferry
Five young mountain climbers, on the trail of adventure, take a risky detour along a prohibited route,...
MR 73 2008
(120 mins)
Director: Olivier Marchal
A seemingly washed-out cop is offered one final chance of redemption in Olivier Marchal’s closing chapter of...
Director: Alain Corneau
An all-star cast light up the late Alain Corneau’s pulsating thriller about Daniel Auteuil’s escaped gangster looking...
Director: Robert Guédiguian
An Armenian poet leads a group of immigrants in guerrilla attacks against Nazi occupiers in Robert Guédiguian’s...
Rivals 2008
(103 mins)
Director: Jacques Maillot
Jacques Maillot’s stylish, retro rip-ride through the dirty and irresistible underworld of dirty cops and erratic criminals...
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Veteran actor Tommy Lee Jones meets France’s most revered auteur, Bertrand Tavernier, in this superior psychological thriller...
Director: Henri Verneuil
Nightclub owner Jean-Paul Belmondo is the wrong man accused of the murder of a prostitute and football...
Director: Yves Boisset
On the run from the police, American gangster Jimmy Cobb hides out in a secluded farm with...
Landru 1963
(115 mins)
Director: Claude Chabrol
WW1 - Henri-Désiré Landru discovers a way of feeding his struggling family: seducing lonely, rich women. Claude...
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Mathieu Kassovitz directs Michel Serrault as an aging assassin desperate to impart his fatalistic wisdom to Max,...
Director:
Michel Serrault gives a chilling performance in the title role as a Doctor during WWII, luring Jewish...
Director: Jacques Deray
Jacques Deray (La Piscine) directs Michel Serrault and Charlotte Rampling in a stylish noir thriller about a...
Director: François Ozon
Charlotte Rampling is a writer attempting to complete her latest novel in the south of France, until...
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Jean-Pierre Melville’s depiction of the bleak life endured by a group of French resistance fighters and their...
Director: Orso Miret
When Olivier (Mathieu Demy) witnesses a murder committed by one of his friends, he must keep his...
Director: Jean-Paul Salomé
Sophie Marceau and Michel Serrault star in Jean-Paul Salomé’s adaptation of Arthur Bernède’s renowned tale of a...
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Jean-Pierre Melville’s penultimate film is widely regarded as a masterpiece of crime cinema, with Alain Delon and...
Un Flic 1972
(98 mins)
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
In his final feature, Jean- Pierre Melville reunites with Alain Delon, in the story of a wary...
Director: Nicole Garcia
Catherine Deneuve, Jacques Dutronc and Emmanuelle Seigner lead a powerhouse cast in Nicole Garcia’s atmospheric noir about...
Director: Olivier Marchal
Olivier Marchal (36) directs Anne Parillaud (Nikita) in an action-packed heist thriller. Richard Anconina co-stars. (2002)
...
Director: Francois Hanss
Emmanuelle Seigner (La vie en rose) stars in an unnerving thriller about a couple who meet in...
Director: Philippe Blasband
As a famiy is found murdered, the police investigate the suspect Hubert Verkamen, whose business deals are...
Director: Jacques Audiard
Jacques Audiard’s prized debut is a taut thriller about a man seeking vengeance for the murder of...
Director: Leos Carax
A mysterious virus threatens all the lovers of Paris. Leos Carax’s visually stunning, darkly evocative second feature,...
Director: Guillaume Canet
Guillaume Canet directs and stars in this darkly comic thriller about the TV world’s high-flyers and the...
The Key 2007
(115 mins)
Director: Guillaume Nicloux
Guillaume Nicloux's taut thriller sees Guillaume Canet paying the price for the shady dealings of his late...
Director: Cédric Klapisch
Through her latest report, a camerawoman finds herself embroiled in the criminal underworld and takes an unexpected...
Director: Marc Caro
Marc Caro’s (of Delicatessen fame) first solo feature is a dystopian sci-fi adventure set on a prison...
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Bertrand Tavernier’s powerful wartime thriller examines the conflict between Collaborators and Resistants working in the French film...
Director: Dominik Moll
Domink Moll’s cult psychological thriller about a man’s chance encounter with a childhood friend, which will make...
Director: Serge Le Péron
Serge Le Péron’s film examines one of the key figures of the anti-colonial movement in this political...
Director: Cédric Kahn
Cédric Kahn’s critically acclaimed film based on the true story of the eponymous Italian serial killer, who...
Cavale 2003
(110 mins)
Director: Lucas Belvaux
Dialogue is kept to a minimum In Part One of this gripping trilogy. After...
Cortex 2008
(105 mins)
Director: Nicolas Boukhrief
When his suspicions that a criminal is on the loose in his nursing home fall on deaf...
Director: Laurent de Bartillat
A young student sets out to solve the mystery of a series of paintings by a 19th...
Director: André Téchiné
Nina, a wannabe actress from the provinces, must brave the violent underworld of Paris in her quest...
Director: Lucas Belvaux
Accalimed director Lucas Belvaux injects measured doses of social commentary and comedy in his innovative take on...
36 2004
(110 mins)
Director: Olivier Marchal
Olivier Marchal’s heavy-weight police drama pits Gérard Depardieu and Daniel Auteuil against each other as senior officers...
Vidocq 2001
(100 mins)
Director: Pitof
A lavish science fiction fantasy set in 19th century Paris, with Gérard Depardieu as famed detective Vidocq...
Director: Philippe Le Guay
The contented life of family man Pierre is turned upside down once he starts a night shift...
Director: André Téchiné
In a small village in the south west of France, Thomas (Nicolas Giraudi), a fourteen year old...
Director: Claude Chabrol
In a sleepy town on the coast of Brittany, a young girl leaves her art teacher’s house...
Director: François Ozon
Sasha (Sasha Hails), a young English woman, goes on holiday with baby daughter in tow to her...
Director: Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol’s classic hard-boiled police thriller gives birth to the infamous inspector Lavardin, a cop who will...
Director: Claude Chabrol
Following the success of Poulet au vinaigre, director Claude Chabrol and actor Jean Poiret bring back the...
Director: Maroun Bagdadi
Maroun Bagdadi’s 1991 film bears witness to the seemingly interminable Lebanese war through the eyes of a...
Director: Claude Chabol
Jeanne Pollet (Anna Mouglalis), a young piano student, discovers there’s a faint possibility that she was switched...
Director: Claude Chabrol
Betty (Isabelle Huppert), a woman in her thirties, and Victor (Michel Serrault), a sexagenarian, form an unlikely...
Masques 1987
(97 mins)
Director: Claude Chabrol
Philippe Noiret scintillates as a popular game show host, who, beneath an amiable mask, appears to be...
Director: Henri Verneuil
Set in June 1940, Henri Verneuil’s Second World War film depicts the struggle of British and French...
Director: René Clément
Alain Delon stars in his debut leading role as Tom Ripley, a young American who is paid...
Director: Claude Chabrol
His third feature in as many years, the prolific and exciting upstart Claude Chabrol followed his acclaimed...
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Bertrand Tavernier won the Best Director César for this powerful and unusual wartime drama exploring the psychological...
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Bertrand Tavernier’s wonderfully dark tale about a disrespected constable who reaches breaking point. Set in colonial Africa,...
Director: Guillaume Nicloux
Jean-Pierre Darroussin excels as the ‘Le Pouple’, a humourous hero who sets out to investigate the desecration...
Director: Jacques Audiard
Mathieu Kassovitz stars in Jacques Audiard’s award-winning World War 2 drama with shades of dark humour about...
Director: André Techiné
André Téchiné’s intelligent thriller stars Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil and Laurence Côte as a lecturer, cop and...
L.627 1992
(145 mins)
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Inspector Lucien Marguet (Didier Bezace) is transferred to another department following a failed police raid. Bored with...
Director: Alain Corneau
They say police officers are only as good as their informants. However, following a scandal, the judge...
Director: François Truffaut
Truffaut’s last film, sadly he died of cancer a year later, confidently boasts the director’s mastery of...
My Son 2007
(90 mins)
Director: Martial Fougeron
Martial Fougeron’s first feature is a powerful family drama with a disarming effect.
...
Director: Fabienne Godot
A former psycho-sociologist, Fabienne Godot delivers a film that is part psychological drama, part thriller.
...
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Responsible for causing a scandal on its domestic release, this bruising portrait of disaffected youth confirmed its...
Director: Claude Chabrol
Chabrol has such a natural affinity to stories of murder and intrigue set among the provincial bourgeois...
Director: Louis Malle
Louis Malle’s debut must rank as one of the greatest in cinema and thoroughly deserved its prestigious...
Director: Anne Fontaine
In His Hands is an unnerving thriller with a nod to Hitchcock’s Suspicion.
...
Director: Laurent Herbiet
A "Reformed Colonel" is found dead in Paris, a couple of decades after Algeria's War.
...
Director: Robert Guédiguian
Francois, Rene and Muriel used to rob banks in the 1980s.
...
Director: François Truffaut
Combines the style of American film noir with all the mood twists, visual jokes and camera techniques...
Director: Franck Mancuso
A cop investigates whether the man convicted of murdering his daughter is really guilty.
...
Director: Erick Zonca
A young man from the countryside of Marseille comes to the city, hoping to find a job....
Director: Fabrice Genestal
Released in 2000, Fabrice Genestal’s film explores the systematic violence embedded within France’s deprived suburban ghettos. Inspired...
Director: Nicolas Klotz
Simon Kessler, is assigned the task of assessing whether the company’s CEO is unfit to do his...
Director: Frédéric Balekdjian
His father’s family store is riddled with debts, the scams he carries out with his brother Toros,...
Director: Jean-François Richet
Jean- François Richet’s explosive film about life in the downtrodden suburbs of Paris carries a pertinent message...
Director: Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol’s masterful thriller depicts the tension between a wealthy housewife and her domestic servant. Starring Sandrine...