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39 Movies That Will Transport You to Paris

By Caitlin Morton

Paris has inspired every type of artist over the years, from Impressionist painters to literary giants. But the city perhaps shines the brightest on the big screen, serving as the backdrop to countless movies over the past century. Even before French directors like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut launched a cinematic movement in the 1960s, Hollywood showcased the beauty of Paris in breezy musicals and romances. And since then, we've seen the city shine in animated films, white-knuckle thrillers, gritty biopics, and more. Regardless of the genre, one thing's for sure: The City of Light sure knows how to steal a scene. From Amélie to Ratatouille , here are 39 movies that will transport you to Paris—no plane ticket required.

Amélie (2001)

When I think of Paris on film, I think of scenes from Amélie . The quirky 2001 romantic comedy follows the titular character, played by Audrey Tautou, as she flits around her hometown of Paris, observing strangers around her. Though she's struggling with her own loneliness, she becomes fixated on improving the lives of others, often from afar and with no recognition. The feel-good film was supposedly filmed in over 80 locations throughout the city, so it alone is a whimsical trip through the City of Light. —Megan Spurrell, associate editor

Watch now: Buy from $16, amazon.com

Alphaville (1965)

The genius of Jean-Luc Godard’s hard-boiled dystopian sci-fi flick from 1965 is that it uses the Paris of its day to create a world that feels utterly unlike the place we think of as Paris, then and now. Shooting at night, Godard used the glassy Modernist high-rises of La Défense and other then-new developments on the outskirts of the city to depict the cold, computer-run autocracy of Alphaville, a Brave New World sort of place into which a Humphrey Bogart-ish American detective (played by Eddie Constantine) must go to seek the people’s freedom. The marriage between noir and science fiction that Godard achieved here is one that numerous other filmmakers would seek to replicate, with Ridley Scott in Blade Runner being perhaps the greatest example. — Jesse Ashlock, U.S. editor

Watch now: Rent from $4, amazon.com

An American in Paris (1951)

The dancing in An American in Paris is unparalleled. A 17-minute-long, dialogue-free ballet so well choreographed by the one and only Gene Kelly that the Oscars gave him an all-encompassing Academy Honorary Award? It doesn’t get better than that. The film, set to Gershwin music, follows Kelly as an American painter in Paris as he navigates love with the taken Lise Bouvier (played by the impeccable Leslie Caron in her film debut). The set pieces are out of this world and the dance numbers often hold more people than you can count on screen. Just take the aforementioned climactic dance sequence: it was filmed across 44 MGM backlot sets and covers a swath of French art history, with nods to Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, and more in the sets and costumes. It is, in my mind, a perfect movie.  —Meredith Carey, associate editor

Watch now: Rent from $3, amazon.com

Anastasia (1997)

Fair warning: I still feel creepy-crawlies when I see animated Rasputin and his bat sidekick Bartok. But this very fictional tale about Anastasia Nikolaevna’s disappearance is worth the goosebumps. (Rasputin allegedly starts the Russian Revolution by selling his soul and putting a curse on the Romanovs so, again, very fictional.) It follows an amnesiac teenage Anastasia after she barely escapes the Revolution and winds up in a rural Russian orphanage, unaware of her royalty. She’s then whisked away to Paris by a duo hoping to pass her off as the “real” Anastasia and cash in on her grandmother’s bounty. It’s an animated musical caper that’s sure to bring both St. Petersburg and Paris alive on screen.  —M.C.

Watch now: Free with HBO Now subscription ; rent from $4, itunes.com

CNT Editors

Caitlin Morton

Jesse Ashlock

Alex Erdekian

BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017)

This moving French film follows the Parisian chapter ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in the 1990s as its young activists grapple with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It’s an incredibly well-rounded movie, with a history of the group in Paris and a look into the fictional lives of its members, including a mix of HIV-positive and -negative Parisian twentysomethings. You can’t finish without having a greater understanding and deep sense of grief for this generation of LGBTQ+ folx—in Paris and beyond. (If you need another push to watch, it won the Grand Prix at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival .) —M.C.

Watch now: Free with Hulu subscription ; rent from $4, amazon.com

Before Sunset (2004)

If you don't ship Jesse and Céline, what are you even doing with your life? Before Sunset is the second installment in Richard Linklater's dreamy trilogy following the relationship between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Deply), following 1995's Before Sunrise . After meeting on a train and sharing a night together in Vienna in the first film, the couple's lives intersect once again, nine years later in Paris. The dialogue is clever and poignant as you follow the pair on a walk around the city, meandering through the Marais district of the 4th arrondissement, Le Pure Café in the 11th arrondissement, and the Promenade Plantée park in the 12th arrondissement . Paris is the perfect backdrop to the film's reflection on fate and how one decision begets another (or eliminates one altogether). And if the credits roll and your heart is a mess and you can't quite part with Jesse and Céline, you're in luck: You can catch their final act in Before Midnight (2013), released—you guessed it—nine years after Before Sunset. —Lara Kramer, senior manager, audience development

Belle de Jour (1967)

Belle de Jour belongs to a vast and highly problematic canon of films made by men that purport to reveal the secret sexual world of women, one to which virtually every important European director of the second half of the 20th century has contributed. Still, this director—Spanish great Luis Buñuel—was one of the smartest and the slyest, and Belle de Jour serves as one of his many clever critiques of ruling-class manners and hypocrisies. Starring Catherine Deneuve at the height of her ice-queen phase as a proper young surgeon’s wife who secretly works in a brothel, Belle de Jour portrays Paris as a place of elegant scrims that serve only to obscure the raging id of the respectable people who walk its streets. —J.A.

Breathless (1960)

If I come out of quarantine with a questionable DIY pixie cut in the style of Jean Seberg, blame Breathless . Released back in 1960, the classic Jean-Luc Godard movie, which follows a car thief named Michel who flees to Paris after shooting a man in Marseilles (and tries to convince Seberg's character to subsequently run away to Rome with him), changed French cinema for good and cemented Seberg as an eternal style icon. But it also serves as a mesmerizing tour of Paris, with Godard taking us through the city's narrow streets, along its boulevards, and inside its cafés . The overt sexism of Michel's character has not aged well, but there's still plenty to love about this classic—and Paris sure looks good in it. — Lale Arikoglu, senior lifestyle editor

Watch now: Rent from $4, itunes.com

Casablanca (1942)

While most of Casablanca takes place in, well, Casablanca, Paris occupies a very important few minutes of the film. Shown as a flashback montage, the city is the backdrop to Rick (played by Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa's (played by Ingrid Bergman) whirlwind romance, complete with drives on the Champs-Élysées, ballroom dancing, and lots of champagne and passionate kisses. The carefree scenes contrast sharply with the wartime politics of the rest of the movie, but it helps viewers understand the love affair that is etched throughout one of the greatest films of all time. And, of course, it also brought us one of the most memorable lines in cinematic history: “We'll always have Paris.” —Caitlin Morton, contributing editor

Charade (1963)

There is a lot going on in Charade . There’s a couple murders, a missing $250,000 in gold, a CIA investigation, catfishing even Nev Schulman would be wowed by, and—of course—a romance. Add the chemistry between Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn into the mix, and a backdrop of Paris, and you’ve got one bang-up film. There’s also a character named Tex Panthollow, which certainly adds to the humor of this Hitchcockian whodunit (helmed by Funny Face and Singing in the Rain director Stanley Donen). —M.C.

Watch now: Free with Amazon Prime

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

To prepare my husband for his first-ever visit to Paris, we decided to rewatch The Da Vinci Code . I love a good mystery movie, and if there's a better way to get a lay of the land of the Louvre , I don't know about it. The museum trivia scattered throughout the movie made our visit even more interesting, especially when we finally had the chance to see the famous Da Vinci paintings in person. —Stephanie Wu, articles director

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

For most of The Devil Wears Prada , this comedy-drama is as New York as it gets . You have the young assistant, played by Anne Hathaway, working at the glossy magazine under an infamous editor-in-chief, in what some (me) consider the performance of a lifetime by Meryl Streep. But the entire film builds up to a series of scenes set that take place during Fashion Week in Paris, where major drama and revelations unfold—and frankly, the effect wouldn't be the same in any other city. —M.S.

The 400 Blows (1959)

It doesn’t seem so revolutionary today, but in 1959, this beautiful, sympathetic portrayal of troubled early adolescence—which announced François Truffaut and the French New Wave to the world—represented a noisy break from the staid customs of French filmmaking, with its jump cuts and naturalistic acting. More than sixty years later, Paris still feels so alive under cinematographer Henri Decaë’s restless, roaming lens, from the Eiffel Tower to the seedy streets of Montmartre. The first in a series of five semi-autobiographical films Truffaut would make featuring the central character of Antoine Doinel, it is one of the greatest movies about boyhood ever made. —J.A.

Funny Face (1957)

While searching for the next great fashion model, photographer Dick Avery (played by Fred Astaire) stumbles upon shy, philosophizing Jo Stockton (played by Audrey Hepburn) working in a bookstore—and her “funny face” ends up being exactly what the fashion industry has been looking for. The two jet off to Paris and shoot glamorous photos at some of the city's most famous landmarks , sing and dance to a soundtrack by George and Ira Gershwin, and even rub elbows with some beatnik philosophers at an underground café. Funny Face is easily one of the most fashionable movies of all time, and Fred and Audrey (and Paris, for that matter) have never been quite so charming. —C.M.

Gigi (1958)

Set in the Belle Époque era of the early 1900s, this Vincente Minnelli-directed musical tells the story of the friendship between Gigi (played by Leslie Caron), a precocious courtesan-in-training, and Gaston (played by Louis Jourdan), a rich playboy. As Gigi grows up and learns about the realities of courtship, the once-platonic friendship begins to evolve into something more romantic. The storyline is definitely a bit sexist and creepy by today's standards (the song “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” will never not be weird to me), but the costumes, dancing, and pure Parisian elegance help make Gigi an eternal classic. —C.M.

La Haine (1995)

Award-winning La Haine (which translates to “Hate”) is as relevant now as it was when it was first released in 1995. Filmed in black and white and starring an incredibly young Vincent Cassel, it's a violent, at times hard to watch, portrayal of social divisions in France, tracing the lives of three men who live in one of the housing projects that line the outskirts of Paris. It won't inspire any so-called wanderlust, but it will challenge you, and (hopefully) force you to ask important questions about the society we live in right now. —L.A.

How to Steal a Million (1966)

Charles Bonnet (played by Hugh Griffith) is a renowned art collector living in Paris who, unbeknownst to the public, replicates and sells famous works of art for a hefty price. When one of his forged statues unwittingly ends up in a major Parisian museum , he enlists his daughter, Nicole (played by Audrey Hepburn), and cat burglar Simon Dermott (played by Peter O'Toole) to steal the statue back before everyone finds out that his collection is a fraud. How to Steal a Million might just be Hepburn's coolest Paris movie, with a jazzy soundtrack by John Williams, wardrobe by Givenchy, and undeniable chemistry with O'Toole. —C.M.

Hugo (2011)

Hugo isn’t a movie about traipsing through Paris—instead, we see bits and pieces of the city through the titular character’s eyes. Hugo, a 12-year-old orphan, lives in the clocktower at Gare Montparnasse railway station and seldom leaves. Instead, he peers out at the city’s most famous landscapes from up above as he tinkers with his late father’s automaton and continues to run the clocks after his uncle goes missing. (He does occasionally venture out, including one adventure to the Hogwarts-like Sainte-Geneviève Library.) Set in the 1930s, the Martin Scorsese-directed movie is visually stunning, with elaborate sets and all the interesting sounds you'd expect of a train station, which helped it to win five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects. It’s also full of heart, small dogs, and a goofy Sacha Baron Cohen who’s constantly out to get Hugo. —Madison Flager, commerce editor

Watch now: Free with Netflix subscription ; rent from $4, amazon.com

Inception (2010)

Dom Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is a thief who is able to steal secrets from people's dreams. After he receives an assignment to plant an idea in someone's mind through dream-travel, he assembles a literal dream team, including architect Ariadne (played by Elliot Page), who helps him create labyrinthine “dreamscapes." (The rest of the insanely complex plot is impossible to explain here, so I recommend you just go ahead and watch it.) One of Inception 's best scenes occurs when Cobb helps Ariadne test out her skills, watching in awe as she folds the streets of Paris to a 90-degree angle and creates a bridge that seems to go on forever—the latter of which was filmed at the real-life Bir-Hakeim Bridge in Paris. It's certainly not how we're used to seeing the French capital portrayed on film, but it's still the stuff that dreams about dreams about dreams are made of. —C.M.

Irréversible (2002)

The violence associated with this art house horror made it controversial upon release in 2002. Irréversible is shocking for sure, but the narrative techniques employed by director Gaspar Noé to tell the story, such as reversed chronology and chaotic cinematography, help turn a film anchored by a brutal rape in a Paris metro tunnel into an experiment in storytelling. Worth watching for those interested in raw, complex human stories—and those who can tolerate being uncomfortable.  —Erin Florio, travel news director

La Jetée (1962)

While serving as a test subject for scientific experiments (specifically relating to time travel) in post-apocalyptic Paris, a man obsessively fixates on a moment from his childhood when he witnessed someone die on the jetty ("la jetée") at Orly Airport. The man hops around through time, both into the past and the far future, until he finally learns the truth about his obsessive memory—which I won't dare spoil for you here. The 28-minute film is unlike anything else on this list, primarily because it's constructed entirely out of still photographs (aside from one moving image, which is at once refreshing and incredibly unnerving) and plays out like a slideshow being projected in a quiet room. La Jetée is also famous for directly inspiring the 1995 science fiction film 12 Monkeys , which earned Brad Pitt his first Oscar nomination. —C.M.

Jules et Jim (1962)

It's honestly hard for me to talk or write about this movie without getting teary-eyed, but here goes. The third full-length feature from New Wave director François Truffaut, Jules et Jim tells the tale of the decades-long friendship between Austrian introvert Jules (played by Oskar Werner) and French extrovert Jim (played by Henri Serre). The two meet during the carefree days Paris before World War I, write letters to each other while fighting on opposite sides of the war, and continue to see each other in the years following the war—all while engaging in a fraught love triangle with free-spirited Catherine, played with perfectly masked sadness by Jeanne Moreau. (Do yourself a favor and watch her sing "Le Tourbillon" from the soundtrack, which is currently one of my most-played songs on Spotify.) But even with Moreau stealing every scene she's in, it's the titular friendship that will make you melt—right up to the absolutely heartbreaking final scene, set in Paris. (Uh oh, here come the tears.) I don't watch Jules et Jim too often, but it's a film that will be forever etched in my memory. —C.M.

Julie & Julia (2009)

When bored and frustrated Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams) gets fed up with her life in New York, she decides to prepare all 524 recipes from Julia Childs's Mastering the Art of French Cooking . Her culinary project is intercut with scenes of how Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep) herself learned to master the art of French cooking , including strolls through Parisian markets and a whole lot of butter. Julie & Julia was Nora Ephron's final film before her death in 2012, and serves as a lovely tribute to the director's trademark wit and warmth. Plus, if this movie doesn't inspire you to spend all day making a big pot of beef bourguignon, then I don't know what will. —C.M.

Les Misérables (2012)

Much like the plot of Victor Hugo's source novel, Les Misérables tells the redemption story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant who serves 19 years in jail after stealing bread for his sister's starving child. Valjean steals a bishop's candlesticks shortly after receiving parole, but the bishop's mercy inspires him to set out on a journey to live a good and honest life—a journey that throws him among an obsessive police inspector, a single mother on the verge of death, and young idealists fighting during a revolution in Paris. While nothing quite compares to seeing Les Mis (my personal favorite musical) on stage, this 2012 film adaptation is the next best thing. Hugh Jackman does a fine job in the role of Jean Valjean, and the supporting cast gets through the rest of the score with no love lost (the exception being poor Russell Crowe, whose portrayal of antagonist Javert is bad to the point of being comical). Regardless of how you watch it, I think you'll find that the political commentary and questions of morality in Les Misérables are as relevant today as they were in 19th-century France. —C.M.

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is as memorable for its soundtrack as it is for the gorgeous costumes and razor-sharp depiction of the politics and gossip that once swirled through Versailles . Yet the movie, starring Kirstin Dunst and Jason Schwartzman, was initially dismissed by critics as teenage fluff (much like history has done with Antoinette herself) when it was first released in 2006. Thankfully, it has stood the test of time and emerged as a cult classic that transports you straight to the palace's grand ballrooms and manicured gardens, and acutely captures what it's like to be a teenage girl—regardless of what century you might be in. —L.A.

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

I will never get tired of this movie. Period, the end. A technicolor Baz Luhrmann masterpiece, the movie follows Satine (played by Nicole Kidman), a terminally ill star at Paris’s iconic Moulin Rouge , and her clandestine love affair with Christian (played by Ewan McGregor). A musical of epic proportions, Moulin Rouge! mixes pop songs we all know and love (I still get shivers when I hear the Argentine tango rendition of The Police’s “Roxanne”) and originals like “Come What May.” It’s set in Montmartre and at the Moulin Rouge itself, and while it doesn’t showcase many iconic sights outside of the occasional background view of the Eiffel Tower, it’s an absolutely over-the-top delight. And when you’re done, pop on the soundtrack from the recent Broadway stage musical—which threw even more modern songs in the mix.  —M.C.

Watch now: Free with HBO Now subscription ; rent from $4, amazon.com

Paris, Je T'aime (2006)

Willem Dafoe. Natalie Portman. Alfonso Cuarón. Gus Van Sant. Oh, and Paris . Everyone gets a little something in this 2006 anthology film, which calls on 22 directors to oversee 18 plotlines, all set in different arrondissements throughout the City of Light. In the Coen brothers’ “Tuileries,” Steve Buscemi falls into a lovers’ tangle when he accidentally makes eye contact with one of the parties; in “Quartier des Enfants Rouges,” Maggie Gyllenhaal is an American actress who catches feelings for her drug dealer. The stories are sometimes extraordinary (there's one about vampires), though in most cases, they’re given their emotional power purely by drawing on the everydayness of life—and the often-random connections we make. But it’s witnessing that kaleidoscope of human experience, all against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, that makes this a film to return to again and again. —Betsy Blumenthal, associate editor

Paris When It Sizzles (1964)

After selling a script idea to a big Hollywood producer, screenwriter Richard Benson (played by William Holden) spends most of his writing time gallivanting around Paris. When he suddenly finds himself close to the deadline with zero pages written, he hires an assistant named Gabrielle Simpson (Audrey Hepburn), who helps him write a love story by acting out all the romantic scenarios with him. Much to no one's surprise, the two eventually start to develop a real-life love story of their own, all set to the backdrop of Paris. Paris When It Sizzles is flighty but fun, and the chemistry between Holden and Hepburn is always a delight to see play out on the big screen. —C.M.

Passport to Paris (1999)

This movie may not rise to the top of the pantheon of movies filmed in Paris, but it was a major turning point for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's Hollywood career. Their first international film is about a spring break trip to Paris, where they stay with their grandfather, the U.S. ambassador to France . It features all of Paris's most popular sites—the Eiffel Tower , Notre Dame, Jardin du Luxembourg—but also ordering mishaps, bad accents, and boys on mopeds. Passport to Paris 's real legacy, however, is that it shows the twins growing up, with their first-ever on-screen kisses. —S.W.

The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Somehow, nearly all of my suggestions for this gallery are musicals, so of course The Phantom of the Opera has to be among them. This rendition, which follows Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical of the same name in near lockstep, stars Gerard Butler as the living, breathing phantom haunting a Parisian opera house and Emmy Rossum as Christine, the opera’s new lead actress. The usual Phantom madness ensues, with operatic sabotage, a love triangle, an underground lair in the Parisian catacombs, and lots and lots of deep, dramatic stares.  —M.C.

The Pink Panther franchise (1963-1976)

The entire Peter Sellers-backed Pink Panther series (which includes five films: The Pink Panther , A Shot in the Dark , The Return of the Pink Panther , The Pink Panther Strikes Again , and Revenge of the Pink Panther ) is one of the most delightful film franchises of the 20th century, thanks in large part to some crazy plot lines and Sellers's impeccable comedic timing. The series follows the antics of inept French police inspector Jacque Clouseau (played by Sellers) as he tries to recover the ever-elusive Pink Panther diamond, taking him all around the world—including to Paris on several occasions. If seeing Clouseau fumble on the streets of Paris isn't French enough for you, then Sellers's ridiculous French accent should certainly do the trick. —C.M.

Ratatouille (2007)

Ratatouille might just be the movie that, to me, best captures the spirit of Paris. The filmmakers spent a week there, visiting sights and eating at famous restaurants, in order to bring the city to life through animation . Between the stunning scenes and the score, Ratatouille embodies the romance, the culinary history, and the ineffable feeling of opportunity in the French capital. It also manages the incredible feat of making animated food look absolutely delicious. —S.W.

Watch now: Free with Disney+ subscription ; rent from $4, amazon.com

The Red Balloon (1956)

The only short film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon tells the simple story of a young boy who befriends a red balloon—one that seems to have a mind of its own—and follows it through the streets of Paris. By the time the 38-minute movie comes to an end, you'll become completely enamoured with the strange friendship and view the balloon as a living, breathing human being—sort of like a mix between E.T. and Up . The final few minutes of the movie are about as magical as it gets, and show off the skyline of Paris quite beautifully. —C.M.

Sabrina (1954)

One of Audrey Hepburns earliest starring roles, Sabrina Fairchild is the shy, moon-eyed daughter of the Larabee family's chauffeur, who watches the lives of her father's rich employers while hiding in trees or gazing out her window. After a failed suicide attempt, Sabrina attends culinary school in Paris for two years, where she chops off her hair, gets a chic new wardrobe, and learns how to make the perfect soufflé. When she returns home post-makeover, she attracts the attention of both Larabee sons (played by William Holden and Humphrey Bogart), with the dramatic love triangle propelling the rest of the film's plot. I'd lie if I say watching Sabrina as a child didn't make me long to escape off to Paris myself, if only to come back with a show-stopping Givenchy ball gown and precious lap dog of my own. Hey, it still could happen. —C.M.

Three Colors: Blue (1993)

The first—and best—of Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski's Colors series, a three-film exploration of the French revolutionary principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, Blue tackles the first topic through the lens of the individual. That individual, played by Juliette Binoche, is a grieving wife whose unexpected freedom comes after her daughter and the composer husband to whom she has subjugated herself are killed in a car accident. In an attempt to sever ties with her former life, she leaves the countryside and moves to Paris, rendered by Kieslowski in ravishingly formal, somber tones, only to find out, as so many film characters have, that just because you’re done with the past doesn’t mean the past is done with you. —J.A.

Taken (2008)

While so many of the movies on this list celebrate the architecture and beauty of Paris, only one properly destroys it: Taken . Join Liam Neeson and his particular set of skills on a rampage through the City of Love in pursuit of his daughter, who as the title aptly suggests, has been taken by a gang of sex traffickers. Pierre Morel, a French filmmaker whose resume also includes From Paris with Love , directs rapid-fire action sequences that take you on a tour through (sometimes literally) Paris's most recognized landmarks . The result is a movie that is endlessly watchable, enjoyably quotable, and just plain badass. —L.K.

The Triplets of Belleville (2003)

Full disclaimer: Just a fraction of this surrealist animation film takes place in Paris. But Gaulish reference points throughout the movie (the Tour de France; a style that recalls 1930s Montmartre) help maintain a sense of the place. While rescuing her cyclist grandson from kidnappers, an elderly, feisty heroine finds herself in the knock-off city of Belleville, and is taken in by a trio of eccentric old performers. The film charms and chills, dipping into dark corners before reaching chuckle-worthy highs. There is very little dialogue but an energized direction and catchy soundtrack means it doesn't even matter. The swirling animation, creepy and brilliant, will stay with you long after closing credits.  —E.F.  

La Vie en Rose (2007)

If you've ever watched a movie that takes place in Paris, chances are you've heard at least a few strains of “La Vie en Rose,” the city's unofficial anthem and the song that made Édith Piaf a musical icon. La Vie en Rose , featuring Marion Cotillard in her Oscar-winning lead role, shows non-linear snippets of the French singer's life and rise to fame, taking place all throughout Paris (including a climactic performance at the Olympia music hall). The costumes, makeup, and set designs of the 2007 biopic are all fantastic, but the real reason to watch La Vie en Rose is to watch Cotillard's mesmerizing, uncanny performance—just get ready to play the soundtrack on repeat for the next few weeks. —C.M.

The Dreamers (2003)

Thirty years after  Last Tango in Paris ,  famed Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci returned with another steamy drama set in the City of Love. This one, which takes place during the student riots of 1968, is sweeter than its predecessor, serving as an homage not only to Paris itself but also to the maelstrom of passions and ideas that young people have sought out there since time immemorial. Watch it on a double bill with  Regular Lovers ,  another story of young love against the backdrop of the ’68 riots starring Louis Garrell, released two years later and directed by Louis’s father, legendary French director Philippe Garrell. — J.A.

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22 Best Movies Set In France That Will Transport You There

Looking for the best movies set in France to add to your watch list? From drama, and romance, to comedy, this list has all the best movies filmed in France.

France is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. From its beautiful cities , and cute villages, to captivating landscapes, and not forgetting its charming capital, Paris, it’s no surprise that France has been a set for many movies.

However, if a holiday to France to see the magnificent sights in person isn’t on your calendar in the upcoming weeks, don’t worry. I’ve put together a list of the 22 best movies set in France that will transport you there.

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From drama, romance, and adventure, to thrillers, these movies not only show the streets of Paris but also other communes in France.

Whether you’re a Francophile who just loves everything French or you want a glimpse into the country before you visit, these movies based in France will mesmerize you.

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Best Movies Set in France

Watching movies filmed in France is a great way to get a glimpse of the country if you haven’t visited or even heal your nostalgia.

So, without further ado, here are some of the best movies set in France that have received numerous accolades and critical acclaim.

1. Les Intouchables/The Intouchables (2011)

Genre: Biography/Drama/Comedy

IMDB: 8.5/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 75%

Les Intouchables is a heartwarming tale with comedic moments inspired by a true story about an unexpected friendship that blossoms between a quadriplegic and his caregiver.

Philippe (François Cluzet) is a wealthy man left paralyzed after a paragliding accident who hires Driss (Omar Sy) as his caretaker.

Much as Driss’s initial plan was just to get a stamp to show that he was denied the job so that he can continue getting unemployment benefits, he ended up getting the job.

Although Philippe soon realizes that Driss is an ex-con, he chooses not to fire him as he is the only person that treats him normally without any pity.

Despite the fact that most of the film comprises indoor scenes, you get to see sights around France during Philippe and Driss’ adventures, including paragliding in the French Alps.

The film was so successful that it won a BAFTA award for Best Foreign Language Film, while Omar Sy won a César Award for Best Actor, after all, he is one of the best French actors . Up until 2014, it was the most-watched French film in the world.

2. Amélie (2001)

Genre: Romance/Drama

IMDB: 8.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Amélie , played by Audrey Tautou, a famous French actress explores 50+ sights across Paris in this feel-good rom-com, making it one of the best movies filmed in France, especially in the Parisian neighborhood of Montmartre.

Amélie battles with loneliness herself but makes it her life goal to make others happy. You’ll often find her improving the moods and lives of others from afar without wanting any recognition.

A true and selfless tale, Amélie will tug at your heartstrings and have you rooting for the titular character to find her happiness.

Besides its beautiful soundtrack and compelling story, Amélie will take you on a journey through Paris, especially in Montmartre .

Some of the filming locations you can easily recognize when you visit Paris include, Amélie’s work Place, Cafe des Deux Moulins which is still a functioning cafe in Paris , Rue Lepic, Abbesses Station, Gare de l’Est, and more.

The movie won 4 César Awards, including Best Film and Best Director, and 2 BAFTA Awards.

Apart from this, it received several other nominations, including at the Academy Awards. It’s also one of the best French movies recognized on the international scene.

With all these accolades in its pocket, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Amélie is one of the best movies set in France.

3. Ratatouille (2007)

Genre: Animated/Adventure/Comedy

IMDB: 8.1/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 96%

Ratatouille is one of the best-animated movies based in France. It is one of the most impressive movies by Pixar’s studios and tells the story of Remy, a rat whose love for cooking takes him to Gusteau’s restaurant in Paris.

Remy’s (voice of Patton Oswalt) dream of becoming a renowned French chef comes to fruition with the help of Linguini (voice of Lou Romano), a kitchen worker who wants to keep his job.

The film pays a lot of attention to detail with regard to French food , especially Ratatouille, a traditional French meal that Remy and his counterpart try to perfect to impress critics.

Ratatouille has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature.

4. Before Sunset (2004)

Rotten Tomatoes: 94%

Before Sunset is the 2 nd installment in the Before trilogy, succeeding Before Sunrise and preceding Before Midnight . This film should not be missed if you want to watch some romantic movies set in France.

It has Jesse, played by Ethan Hawke, and Céline, played by Julie Delpy, as its lead pair. Jesse and Céline’s love story picks up in Paris, nine years after their romantic rendezvous in Venice.

Because of their catch-up session, we get a walking tour of the City of Love and its arrondissements.

The movie garnered accolades for Richard Linklater’s direction and Ethan and Julie’s chemistry, including an Oscar nomination for the writing (adapted screenplay).

5. La Haine/Hate (1995)

Genre: Crime/Drama

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

La Haine follows a story of three men — Vinz, a Jewish man played by Vincent Cassel, Saïd, an Arab man played by Saïd Taghmaoui, and Hubert, a Black man played by Hubert Koundé who have grown up in the same French suburban ghetto.

Unlike other movies set in France that romanticize Paris and its neighborhoods, this one focuses on the daily struggles and racial profiling immigrants face in a poor immigrant-heavy neighborhood near Paris.

The film shows Police oppression and tensions in the community that leads to a series of unfortunate events that unfold in 24 hours.

La Haine was nominated for a Palme d’Or, while its director Mathieu Kassovitz won the Best Director Award at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. It also won 3 César Awards and a Lumières Award for Best Film.

6. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

Rotten Tomatoes: 97%

Portrayed in Brittany in Northern France, on an island called Saint-Pierre-Quiberon, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is one of the most impactful romantic movies set in France.

Marianne, a painter, has been commissioned to paint a wedding portrait of Héloïse, unbeknownst to her.

Marianne observes her muse during the day as her hired companion and paints at night. When she finishes the painting, she feels as though she is betraying her to give away her painting without her knowledge.

Fast forward, not to spoil the entire movie for you, the two fall in love and Héloïse agrees to pose for Marianne to be painted.

Besides this endearing love story, the movie also shows beautiful scenes on the island, and the landscape will transport you to the French countryside.

7. Midnight in Paris (2011)

Genre: Fantasy/Romance/Comedy

IMDB: 7.7/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 93%

Midnight in Paris tells the tale of a writer who goes back in time every night at midnight to 1920s Paris and experiences life in that era.

It stars Owen Wilson in the titular role of Gil, the writer, accompanied by a star-studded supporting cast comprising Rachel McAdams, Kurt Fuller, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates, Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, and wait for it, Tom Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Various other luminaries are characters in the movie, like Ernest Hemingway, Joséphine Baker, and Pablo Picasso.

The movie got critical acclaim and Woody Allen won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Best Writing (Original Screenplay), while the movie got nominated for Best Film.

8. La Vie en Rose (2007)

Genre: Biography/Musical/Drama

IMDB: 7.6/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 74%

La Vie en Rose is the name of an iconic French song sung by famous French singer , Édith Piaf that catapulted her to being recognized as the national chanteuse of France.

The song’s popularity reached such heights that this biographical musical film was made based on her life played brilliantly by Marion Cotillard.

The movie takes us on a journey through Piaf’s life right from her messy childhood in Normandy, when she started singing at a club in Paris, to when she became a national emblem as a singer until her death bed.

Not only was Marion’s performance lauded, but she also won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, a César Award, and a Lumières Award for Best Actress.

The film also won several awards, including an Academy Award, 3 BAFTA awards, and 4 César Awards, apart from being nominated for several others.

9. Pierrot le Fou (1965)

Genre: Crime/Romance/Drama

IMDB: 7.5/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 87%

Pierrot le Fou is based on a 1962 novel, Obsession by Lionel White. Ferdinand, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, flees Paris with his ex-girlfriend Marianne, played by Anna Karina, leaving behind his wife and children, citing an unhappy marriage.

A series of mishaps ensues with the runaway couple hijacking a dead man’s car to get away from the gangsters that were following her.

They live a life on the run from thereon. The ending will answer the reasoning behind the title.

Out of all the movies set in the south of France, this one stands out as it showcases stunning scenes of Toulon and the French Riviera amidst the chaotic life of the 2 main characters.

10. Les Misérables (2012)

Genre: Musical/Romance/Drama

Rotten Tomatoes: 70%

Les Misérables , a musical period film set in Montfermeil and based on Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name, is a classic and one of the best movies about France. The original story is so famous that many adaptations have been made since then.

Hugh Jackman brilliantly plays the titular character of Jean Valjean, a French peasant pursuing a life of redemption.

The ensemble cast of Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, and Sacha Baron Cohen are all incredible as well.

The movie won multiple Academy, BAFTA, and Golden Globe Awards, on top of several Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.

11. Hugo (2011)

Genre: Adventure/Drama

Hugo eponymously titled, based on The Invention of Hugo Cabret book shows the life of a 12-year-old orphan (Asa Butterfield)) who lives at Gare Montparnasse, a train station in Paris.

The story follows his life as an orphan and how he navigates his new life and the challenges presented to him including theft and a new job that follows in his father’s footsteps as a clock maintainer.

Just like many of his other films, a movie directed by Martin Scorsese is bound to win a number of accolades.

For its visually stunning scenes and enthralling sounds, the movie won 5 Oscars and 2 BAFTA awards, on top of Martin grabbing a Golden Globe. It also received nominations in several other categories, including Best Film.

12. Beats Per Minute/120 BPM (120 battements par minute) (2017)

Genre: Drama

IMDB: 7.4/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 99%

Unlike other movies that take place in France, this moving drama is a film with a cause. Beats Per Minute is one of the best movies filmed in France about people with HIV AIDS living in Paris.

This thought-provoking movie has HIV AIDS youngsters fighting for something they believe in — to combat the deadly life-threatening immunodeficiency disease.

The film showcases members of the ACT UP Paris activist group trying to raise awareness and demand subsequent action from people in power.

With its moving story, it won six César and Lumières Awards, including Best Film, and a Grand Prix at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.

13. Chocolat (2000)

IMDB: 7.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 62%

Out of the movies based in France, this feel-good heart-warmer has Juliette Binoche playing a single mother who moves to a French village in Burgundy with her 6-year-old daughter and opens a chocolaterie.

At first, the villagers are skeptical due to her different way of life — non-married, non-religious, and always dressed in colorful clothes compared to the local women, but eventually, they warm up to her.

The film shows how the mother-daughter duo settles in their new life and make friends, but not with a chilling drama.

Alongside cast members like Johnny Depp and Judi Dench, Juliette Binoche shows off her incredible talent in this film.

Chocolat got nominated for Best Film, Best Actress for Juliette Binoche, and Best Supporting Actress for Judi Dench at the 2001 Academy Awards.

It also received nominations across various categories for the BAFTA and Golden Globe Awards, but unfortunately did not win any of them.

14. The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

Genre: Comedy/Drama

Rotten Tomatoes: 68%

The Hundred-Foot Journey is an adaptation of a 2010 eponymous novel by Richard Morais of the same name.

The movie is set in the picturesque medieval town of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, located in the South of France.

It tells the tale of two competing restaurants across the street from each other — a Michelin-starred French restaurant and a family-owned Indian bistro.

Helen Mirren (Madame Mallory) owns Le Saule Pleureur, the upscale restaurant, while the other, called Maison Mumbai, is run by a Muslim family from Mumbai headed by Om Puri (Abbu Kadam).

How far will the rivalry go between these 2 restaurants? You have to watch it to find out!

And in case you’re wondering, the film’s name indicates the distance between the two restaurants which is 100 feet.

15. An American in Paris (1951)

IMDB: 7.2/10

An American in Paris is one of the best musical movies that take place in France. It stars Gene Kelly and debutante Leslie Caron.

Gene’s character is an artist (painter) named Jerry, while Leslie’s character, who plays his love interest as Lise, is already with someone else.

The movie is a mismatch of a musical and a tangled love story that sees Jerry falling for the girlfriend of his close friend, Lise, and him (Jerry) being admired by a wealthy woman who shows interest in both his art and him personally. Who will end up with who? I’ll let you find that out yourself.

The movie was nominated for 8 Academy Awards and won 6, including Best Picture. Aside from this, Gene Kelly won an Honorary Academy Award for the 17-minute-long choreography of the climactic ballet sequence.

16. Paris, Je T’aime (2006)

Genre: Romance/Drama/Comedy

Rotten Tomatoes: 86%

One of the best movies about France is Paris, Je T’aime , an anthology film that takes you through almost all the neighborhoods of Paris .

It comprises 18 short stories (initially supposed to be 20) representing 18 arrondissements of the City of Love with an ensemble cast starring Juliette Binoche, Natalie Portman, Willem Dafoe, Gaspard Ulliel, Miranda Richardson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Aïssa Maïga, Elijah Wood, Olga Kurylenko, and Emily Mortimer, among others.

Apart from this, Gérard Depardieu not only directed one of the shorts but also acted in it.

The film was a nominee at the Cannes Film Festival of 2006 in the Un Certain Regard category.

17. La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (1969)

IMDB: 7.1/10

Filmed in the beautiful locales of Côte d’Azur in a villa perched atop a hill with mesmerizing views of the Mediterranean Sea, La Piscine is one of the most captivating movies set in the south of France.

It stars Alain Delon as Jean-Paul, Romy Schneider as Marianne and Jane Birkin as Pénélope.

The plot starts with Jean-Paul, a writer, and his girlfriend, Marianne, going on a vacation in the summer to their friend’s villa.

They’re later joined by Marianne’s ex-boyfriend, Harry, and his daughter, Pénélope, and what follows is a story of passion, jealousy, s*xual tensions, and even murder.

The movie was well-received and stood out for its daring and gripping tale.

18. Summer Hours (2008)

In Summer Hours , a family gathers for the matriarch’s 75 th birthday and news of her failing health.

The family home is a lovely estate with a vineyard on the outskirts of Paris, where her three children — two brothers and their sister, spent their childhoods.

They reminisce the good times shared while growing up and now have to decide how to relinquish family belongings, along with several precious items and priceless artifacts.

After her death, the 3 children don’t agree on what to do with their newly inherited estate. How will they handle this situation? You’ll have to watch the full drama as it unfolds.

The critically acclaimed film starring Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, Jérémie Renier, and Edith Scob received numerous nominations at various Film Festivals.

19. Funny Face (1957)

Genre: Musical/Romance

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Starring legendary actress Audrey Hepburn and American actor-dancer Fred Astaire, Funny Face is one of the best musical romantic movies set in France with songs by the Gershwin brothers.

It tells the story of Maggie Prescott a fashion magazine editor that wants to launch a fresh face as the next top model, Dick Avery (Fred), a fashion photographer of the magazine, and Jo (Audrey), a shy bookshop assistant who becomes his muse.

Initially uninterested, Jo subsequently agrees because Dick agrees to help her realize her dream of seeing Paris and attend a philosophy lecture by a professor she idolizes.

During their time in Paris shooting at the city’s famous landmarks , Jo and Dick fall in love.

The movie received multiple Academy Award nominations and a Palme d’Or nomination at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.

20. Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

Genre: Animated Musical/Drama

Rotten Tomatoes: 72%

For a movie released in the late 20 th century, The Hunchback of Notre Dame might be one of the best Disney animated movies based in France of that time.

It might not have gotten the recognition it deserves because of the underlying dark theme, but the portrayal of medieval France will give you quite the authentic experience, albeit on film.

You get to see many sights around the country in a period-accurate setting that you can visit on your next trip (except the actual inside of Notre Dame since it caught fire and is undergoing restoration).

21. Taxi (1998)

Genre: Action/Crime/Comedy

IMDB: 6.9/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 81%

Taxi is a French action-comedy starring Samy Naceri, Frédéric Diefenthal, and Marion Cotillard about a taxi driver (Samy) who agrees to drive around a police inspector (Frédéric) to be able to get back his driving license the policeman had taken from him due to a traffic law he had broken.

The police inspector, Émilien, is not taken seriously at work, so he wants to solve a high-profile robbery case involving a German gang with the help of the taxi driver, Daniel Morales.

All this plays out in the picturesque streets of Marseilles in the south of France.

The movie won 2 César Awards on top of receiving nominations for Best Film, Best Director, Best Music, and Most Promising Actor and Actress.

22. The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

IMDB: 6.6/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 57%

The Da Vinci Code , starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou as Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu, respectively, is one of those movies that take place in France that gives you a comprehensive tour of the country like no other movie does.

Imagine getting an inside tour of The Louvre, for example. As a result, you get to explore Paris and some of its lesser-known sites.

The film shows Robert Langdon, a professor from Harvard university being pinned as the prime suspect in the murder of Louvre curator, Jacques Saunière.

What follows is the search for the Holy Grail which is believed to be in one of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings.

The movie faces a lot of criticism, especially from the catholic church for its controversial display of biblical events that contradict what religion teaches.

If you’re searching for movies set in France on Netflix that have controversial theories, The Da Vinci Code is one not to miss.

Final Thoughts on the Best Movies Filmed in France

With a number of movies set in France, it can be hard to select a few, but I hope that my personal selection helps you cure your nostalgia or even inspire you to visit France soon.

From these 22 movies made in France, did any particular one(s) catch your attention? Have you watched any of them before? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

More Posts to Inspire You

• Most Famous French Singers
• 22 Best French TV Shows On Netflix You Should Watch

17 Most Famous French Writers Of All Time

• 17 Famous French Love Poems
• 7 Beautiful Poems About France You’ll Love
• 14 Famous French Poems That Will Mesmerize You
• 17 Famous French Love Songs
• 17 Famous French Songs
• 19 Best Songs About Paris

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Esther is the face and voice behind Dreams in Paris! She has always been obsessed with Paris even before she moved there. She has lived in Paris for a couple of years, and that obsession has not changed! That love for Paris, plus her passion for writing led to the birth of Dreams in Paris! She now shares all the practical tips and guides she’s picked along the way to help you plan a memorable trip to the city of love! You can learn more about her here !

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10 French Movies That Can Transport You to Paris

With trans-Atlantic travel all but suspended, the closest you can get to Paris may be onscreen. These movies will take you there.

By Jason Farago

While your travel plans may be on hold, you can pretend you’re somewhere new for the night. Around the World at Home invites you to channel the spirit of a new place each week with recommendations on how to explore the culture, all from the comfort of your home.

“America is my country, and Paris is my hometown,” wrote Gertrude Stein. Me too; or, well, almost. For the last few years I was shuttling between New York and the French capital, where my now-husband worked, and in that time Paris came to feel like a city where I had history, whose streets I could navigate by muscle memory. Now that trans-Atlantic travel is all but suspended, the closest I can get to Paris is onscreen — but, luckily, the view is fantastic.

Paris was the site of the first movie screening, back in 1895 (though the Lumière Brothers shot those first pictures in Lyon). It remains the home of Europe’s largest, most vibrant film industry — France exports more movies than any country, bar the United States.

Here I’ve picked 10 movies that transport me back to Paris, from the early days of sound cinema to the age of streaming. I’ve omitted many French movies made in English, some shot on soundstages (“An American in Paris,” “Moulin Rouge!”) and others on location (“ Funny Face ,” “Midnight in Paris”). Instead I’ve selected films I rely on when I want to escape America for Paris … which is quite often these days.

Girlhood (2014)

Paris today is so much more than its touristic, tree-lined core; it’s continental Europe’s most diverse city, where French mingles with Arabic and Wolof and you’re more likely to hear Afro trap than Édith Piaf. This assured coming-of-age film by Céline Sciamma follows a young Black teenager as she shuttles across the racial, economic and cultural divides between Paris proper (or “Paname,” in the girls’ slang) and its suburban housing estates, whose architecture the director films with rare style and sympathy. Aubervilliers, Bondy, Mantes-la-Jolie, Aulnay-sous-Bois: these nodes of Greater Paris, birthplace of singers and stylists and the world’s greatest soccer players , deserve the spotlight too.

Amazon, YouTube, Google Play, iTunes

35 Shots of Rum (2008)

The most intimate and most Parisian film of Claire Denis , very probably France’s greatest living director, follows a widowed father, who is a train driver, and his only daughter, a student, as they hesitantly step away from each other and into new lives. The cast (including Mati Diop , who’s since become an acclaimed director herself) is almost entirely of African or Caribbean origin, yet this is the rare film that takes Paris’s diversity as a given, and its portraits of Parisians in the working-to-middle-class north of the capital have a fullness and benevolence that remain too rare in the French cinema. Just as beautiful as its scenes of family life are Ms. Denis’s frequent, lingering shots of the RER, Paris’s suburban commuter railway, which appears here as a bridge between worlds.

Love Songs (2007)

The near entirety of this gray-steeped musical — directed by Christophe Honoré and with a dozen tunes written by the singer-songwriter Alex Beaupain — takes place in the gentrifying but still scruffy 10th Arrondissement , where I put back a few too many drinks in my 20s. As its young lovers sing on some of Paris’s least photogenic streets, on their Ikea couches or in their overlit offices, the capital turns into something even more alluring than the City of Light of foreign fantasies. This is the film to watch if you miss everyday life in contemporary Paris, where even the overcast days merit a song.

Hulu, Amazon

Full Moon in Paris (1984)

Paris had a very good 80s: think Louvre Pyramid, think Concorde, think Christian Lacroix . Éric Rohmer’s tale of an independent young woman, keen to hang onto both her boyfriend and her apartment, offers the most chic dissection of Parisian youth — big-haired models dancing in Second Empire ballrooms, and lovers philosophizing at cafe tables and one another’s beds. There’s a killer ’80s score by the electropop duo Elli et Jacno , but what makes its beauty so bittersweet is its sublime star Pascale Ogier , who died shortly after the film’s completion, age 25.

Amazon, YouTube, iTunes

C’était un rendez-vous (1976)

It’s just eight minutes long, it has no dialogue, but this is the wildest movie ever made in Paris; it’s a miracle that no one died. Early one morning, the director Claude Lelouch got in his Mercedes, fastened a camera to the bumper, and just floored it : down the broad Avenue Foch (where he clocks 125 miles an hour), through the Louvre, past the Opéra, through red lights and around blind corners and even onto the sidewalks, to the heights of Sacré-Cœur. Every time I watch it I end up covering my eyes and then laughing at the insanity of it all: cinéma vérité at top speed.

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

It’s 5 p.m. on June 21, the longest day of the year, and the pop singer Cléo has gone to a fortune teller to find out: is she dying? And for the rest of Agnès Varda’s incomparable slice of life we follow her in real time — one minute onscreen equals one minute in the narrative — across the capital’s left bank. She walks past the cafes of Montparnasse, down the wide Haussmannian boulevards and into the Parc Montsouris, where she meets a soldier on leave from the front in Algeria: another young Parisian uncertain if he’ll live another year. As Cléo puts her superstitions aside , the streets of Varda’s Paris serve as the accelerant for a woman’s self-confidence.

HBO Max, Criterion Channel

Breathless (1960)

Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature is so celebrated for its innovative jump-cuts and careering narrative that we forget: this is, hands down, the greatest film ever made about an American in Paris. As the exchange student hawking the New York Herald Tribune on the Champs-Élysées, Jean Seberg invests the movie with a breezy expatriate glamour, feigning French insouciance but hanging onto American wonder. And if her language skills are iffy — my French husband imitates Seberg’s Franglais when he wants to mock my accent — she embodies the dream of becoming someone new in Paris, even if you fall for the wrong guy.

HBO Max, Criterion Channel, YouTube, iTunes

Bob le flambeur (1956)

The suavest of all Paris gangster films — and my go-to movie for days sick in bed — orbits around the handsome narrow streets of hillside Montmartre and, just south, the seedy nightclubs and gambling dens of Pigalle. Bob, the elegant, white-haired “high roller” of the title, is a retired bank robber after one last big score, but Paris’s old underground, and its old codes of loyalty, are fading away. The cast is undeniably B-list, and genre conventions cling to their roles like barnacles: the world-weary but wise cafe proprietress, the hooker with a heart of gold. But watch as Melville’s hand-held camera trails Bob in his trench coat and fedora, or follows a garbage truck around the Place Pigalle like a ball in a roulette wheel. Paris looks like a jackpot.

Casque d’or (1952)

We’re in Paris’s working-class northeast in this aching period drama of the belle epoque, directed by Jacques Becker and starring Simone Signoret as the titular golden-haired prostitute caught between two lovers. It’s based on a true story of a courtesan and the gang murders she inspired — but Mr. Becker paints the scene like a dream of the 19th-century capital, of cobblestoned alleyways, smoke-choked bistros and horse-drawn paddy wagons.

Criterion Channel

Boudu Saved From Drowning (1931)

Jean Renoir’s early satire stars Michel Simon as a prodigiously bearded tramp who, one fine morning, walks halfway across the Pont des Arts and jumps into the Seine. Saved by a kindly bookseller, Boudu moves into his apartment and promptly turns his family’s life upside down . The movie’s skewering of middle-class values has not lost its bite, but its outdoor shots of the Latin Quarter, a university neighborhood not yet overrun by tourist-trap cafes, have become a poignant time capsule.

Criterion Channel, Kanopy

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Jason Farago , critic at large for The Times, writes about art and culture in the U.S. and abroad. In 2017 he was awarded the inaugural Rabkin Prize for art criticism. More about Jason Farago

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23 Films Set in France to Watch Before Visiting

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read the disclaimer here .

France is a huge country with such diverse landscapes. When I think of France, I think of Paris, vineyards with grapes for miles around and beaches along the coastline. The films set in France also reflect my ideals.

I recently wrote a whopping blog post on films set in Paris , and now it’s all of the films set in France’s turn.

So, if you read this list, and the first thing you think is “where is  Amélie  you daft woman? Or  An American in Paris?  Or  Moulin Rouge  for crying out loud?!” Relax, cool your jets.

They are all on this list:  84 Films set in Paris to watch before visiting

But they’re no good for wanderlust-inspiring movies if you’re heading to the French Riviera or Lyon. For that, you’ll need this more general list of films set in France!

23 Films set in France you MUST watch

1. The Rules of the Game  (1939)

Director:  Jean Renoir

Language:  French

2.  Bonjour Tristesse  (1954)

Director:  Otto Preminger

Language:  English

3.  To Catch a Thief  (1955)

Director:  Alfred Hitchcock

Read my blog post on  To Catch a Thief  Film Locations in Cannes, France.

4.  Adieu Philippine  (1962)

Director:  Jacques Rozier

5.  Jules et Jim  (1962)

Director:  François Truffaut

6.  A Man and a Woman  (1966)

Director:  Claude Lelouch

7.  Le Boucher  (1970)

Director:  Claude Chabrol

8.  Diamonds are Forever  (1971)

Director:  Guy Hamilton

9.  Day for Night  (1973)

10.  the duellists  (1977).

Director: Ridley Scott

11.  Moonraker  (1979)

Director:  Lewis Gilbert

12.  Manon Des Sources  (1986)

Director:  Claude Berri

13.  Dirty Rotten Scoundrels  (1988)

Director:  Frank Oz

14.  Cyrano de Bergerac  (1990)

Director:  Jean-Paul Rappeneau

15. The Man in the Iron Mask  (1998)

Director:  Randall Wallace

16.  Chocolat  (2000)

Director:  Lasse Hallström

Language:  English/French

17.  Marie Antoinette  (2006)

Director: Sofia Coppola

Language:  English/French.

Read my blog post on  Marie Antoinette  Film Locations in France (Versailles and Paris).

18.  A Good Year  (2006)

Director:  Ridley Scott

Language:  English/French/Russian

19.  Welcome to the Sticks  (2008)

Director:  Dany Boon

20.  Coco Before Chanel  (2009)

Director:  Anne Fontaine

Language:  French/English

21.  In Touchables  (2011)

Director:  Olivier Nakache & Eric Toledano

22.  Farewell, My Queen  (2012)

Director:  Benoit Jacquot

23.  The Hundred-Foot Journey  (2014)

And those are my top films set in France I think you should watch! Have you seen any? Are there any you think I’ve missed? Let me know in the comments below!

84 Films Set in Paris to Watch Before Visiting

Hey! I wrote this. And I'm the human (and hair) behind Almost Ginger. I live for visiting filming locations, attending top film festivals and binge-watching travel inspiring films. I'm here to inspire you to do the same! Get in touch by leaving a comment or contacting me directly: [email protected] .

4 thoughts on “ 23 Films Set in France to Watch Before Visiting ”

Carcassonne down in the south of France ,medieval walled village and castle where they filmed Robin Hood prince of thieves with Kevin Costner .You won’t be disappointed

Thanks so much for your comment, Dianne! You’re absolutely right and I wrote a guide to all the filming locations in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: https://almostginger.com/robin-hood-prince-of-thieves-locations/

Since this film isn’t set in France, unfortunately, it doesn’t meet the requirements for this blog post. Plus, it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it location. But I’m sure Carcassonne is a beautiful place!

Hi Rebecca,

Lovely list, i am quite a fan of French films and a pretty frequent visitor to France too. Hope you don’t mind me pointing this out but both ‘To Catch a Thief’ and ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ you have listed as French language films but are in fact English language.

Regards Scott

Thanks so much for your comment Scott! I love French films too. You’re absolutely right and I have no idea why they are listed as French – this post is in desperate need of updating and I hope to get to it sooner rather than later!

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25 Top Movies Set In France To Watch Before Going

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Laugh, cry, and fall in love with these atmospheric and thought-provoking movies set in France sure to transport you there. From Paris to Provence, spark that wanderlust, while also gaining insight into French history.

Table of Contents

French Cinema Has Perfected The Art Of Entertainment

French cinema is well-known for its skilled political and social commentary and unique artistic – and oftentimes creative – approach. Many of the stories are character-driven, filled with emotion, and place a strong emphasis on storytelling. It’s also no secret that French films debut all over international film festivals, raking in the awards.

Of course, films set in France promise an international flair and interest too – and not all are made by French film producers and directors. Many showcase France’s top tourist attractions and breathtaking landscapes. Who can resist that delicious French cuisine? Below, uncover just a few of our favorites, showcasing a variety of actors and producers.

Best Contemporary Movies Set In France

These are our top picks for more recent movies released after 2000. Meet eccentric characters, and learn more about WW2. Many of these award-winning films are popular with both critics and viewers. However, the box office numbers aren’t always in agreement.

Amélie (2001)

If you mainly enjoy contemporary movies based in France, the first one that probably comes to mind is Amélie , a French romantic comedy directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

The titular quirky heroine, played to perfection by Audrey Tautou, decides to overcome her personal struggles with grief and loneliness by bringing happiness to others.

The film was famously overlooked for the Cannes Film Festival in the year of its release because the selectors watched a version without its iconic score (composed by Yann Tiersen) and deemed it “uninteresting.” Legions of critics and fans proved them wrong when it went on to become the highest-grossing and most highly acclaimed French movie that year.

Watch even more of the best romance movies from and set in France .

Midnight In Paris (2011)

Okay, yes, Woody Allen is very canceled . However, there are so many brilliant stars in Midnight In Paris –like Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, and Adrien Brody – that we cannot cancel the entire film.

The fantasy-comedy sees a struggling screenwriter drawn back in time to early 20th century Paris, rubbing shoulders with ex-pat icons like Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway.

Midnight In Paris premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and went on to win major critical acclaim, including an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. It’s the perfect movie to watch if you enjoy fantasy mixed with romance .

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Most tourists might be drawn to Paris by the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, but French cinema fans always make time to see the Moulin Rouge. The late-night hot spot is immortalized in Baz Luhrmann’s musical drama Moulin Rouge! , one of his famous Red Curtain Trilogy films.

The story follows a young English poet, played by Ewan McGregor, as he falls in love with the club’s cabaret star and side-hustle courtesan, played by Nicole Kidman.

The masterstroke is the use of MTV generation music, popular songs contrasting perfectly with the melodrama of the plot and the glamor of the City of Light location. Francophiles will most enjoy Moulin Rouge! – and if you are looking for even more, try these Paris-set books to read afterward.

The Truth (2019)

The release of The Truth was almost entirely overshadowed by news of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a real shame as it could have been one of the most popular movies set in France in recent years – if anyone had been allowed to leave the house to see it.

The story follows a showbiz family – aging actress Fabienne Dangeville (played by Catherine Deneuve) and her screenwriter daughter Lumir (played by Juliette Binoche) – as they reunite for the publication of Fabienne’s memoir.

The tension is off the charts, and the leading ladies are fantastic, though it must be said that Ethan Hawke, as Lumir’s husband, Hank, also plays his part to perfection.

Hugo (2011)

Hugo is one of the most widely-lauded and critically acclaimed movies, but it was a real flop with audiences upon release. And let’s be real, this is very strange for a Martin Scorsese film!

The story – about a young boy who lives alone in the Gare Montparnasse railway station in Paris and is lured into adventure – failed to resonate with cinema-goers. And yet, the Academy came calling, with eleven nominations (more than any other film that year).

Critics have praised Hugo’s extravagance, stimulating cinematography, and impressive soundscape. However, none of this made much of a difference at the box office. It just goes to show: good and popular don’t always go hand in hand!

Le Divorce (2003)

If you’re looking for a traditional romantic comedy, move along. Le Divorce takes the tropes of the rom-com genre and turns them on their heads. It might still have a happily ever after, but no one’s going to make it through this “love” story unscathed.

Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts co-star as American girls trying to figure out love in the city that’s most famous for it. There are legal disputes over possibly forged artwork, infidelity, murder, fashion, and – of course – divorce.

Leslie Caron shines in her supporting role as a meddling mother-in-law , and you’re sure to get a few laughs out of the inevitable clashes between French and American customs.

Ratatouille (2007)

On the face of it, Ratatouille sounds ridiculous: a rat dreams of becoming a chef , and forms an unlikely alliance with a garbage boy in a French restaurant, using him as a puppet to live out his fantasy. How could that possibly stand up as one of the best films set in France?

And yet, it does; it was even voted by international critics to be named one of the 100 greatest motion pictures of the 21st century and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in the year of its release.

Children delight in the flashy Pixar production, while adults revel in the warm nostalgia and quick humor of this delicious tale playing out on screen.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

If you’re tired of the same old plots in movies that take place in France during WWII, Quentin Tarantino has made something special just for you. Inglorious Basterds is an alternate history , showing the possible outcomes of assassination plots against Nazi leaders.

From the opening scene, with an SS soldier interrogating a French farmer he suspects of harboring Jewish refugees, this film will have your jaw dropping and your gut churning.

After its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009, it went on to become Tarantino’s highest-grossing film to date and received a slew of Academy Awards and BAFTA Awards nominations and wins.

A Good Year (2006)

A Good Year might have been a box office bomb, but the cinematography is stunning and the performances aren’t as bad as some snooty critics made out.

Russell Crowe plays Max, a workaholic finance guy with fond memories of childhood summers spent at his uncle’s vineyard in the south of France. After his uncle’s death, Max returns to the vineyard and finds himself caught between his high-stress big-city life and the romance of winemaking.

There are inheritance dramas, romantic dramas, accidents, and miscommunications – dramas galore in this cozy French film. You know we are huge fans of any vineyard-set movie here at TUL. Santé!

Dunkirk (2017)

Remember when everyone was all abuzz about Dunkirk because Harry Styles had his first acting role in it? It’s a shame that all the brouhaha overshadowed the quality of the film itself, which was lauded by critics not only as one of the best movies set in France but also the best war films of all time .

Christopher Nolan spent decades refining his vision and planning the production of this WWII story, told in three parts (from land, air, and sea). The result is an incredibly evocative depiction of the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940.

The film received a slew of Academy Award and BAFTA Award nominations, securing wins for sound, mixing, and editing.

Movies Based On Real People

With history lovers on our team – and an undergrad history major – we love a good biopic. While some of these movies might make bigger concessions for the big screen, it doesn’t mean they are any less devour-worthy. Learn more about French and non-French figures based in France with these movies.

La Vie En Rose (2007)

We’ve all heard, and maybe even been moved to tears, by Édith Piaf’s signature song, La Vie En Rose . This biographical musical film , directed by Olivier Dahan and starring French actress Marion Cotillard, explores the story behind the song through a non-linear series of events drawn from Piaf’s life.

Cotillard’s performance is mesmerizing, earning her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2007 – the first time it was awarded for a French-speaking role. It’s undoubtedly one of the best internationally co-produced films about one of the country’s greatest musical exports.

Marie Antoinette (2006)

“Let them eat cake!” Sofia Coppola had a vision for telling the story of the last Queen of France before the French Revolution, which she brought to life in Marie Antoinette .

With Kirsten Dunst in the titular role, this visually stunning and arresting film captures the decadence and discordance of life in the court at Versailles. Coppola offers a stylized vision of a turbulent time in French history, humanizing its most polarizing figures for a modern audience.

This is one of those great historical movies about France best enjoyed with a plate of delicious macarons and a glass of fine wine.

Julie & Julia (2009)

Why do so many of the best movies based in France revolve around food? Perhaps it’s because French cuisine and French cooking have become emblematic of comfort, indulgence, and joy. Julia Child taught us that, as Julie Powell learns in Julie & Julia , the movie based on Powell’s blog-cum-best-selling-memoir.

Powell lives in modern-day New York and seeks to break out of a lifestyle rut by cooking every single recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering The Art Of French Cooking in one year. What makes this movie shine, though, is the parallel story playing out in Paris, with Meryl Streep starring as Julia Child, learning to cook and leaning on her wonderfully supportive husband, played by Stanley Tucci.

Along with some of our favorite stars of all time, with a Smithie on our team, we are always pretty biased toward Julia Child.

Colette (2018)

Colette tells one of the greatest literary stories you’ve probably never heard, with Kiera Knightley shining in one of her signature period drama roles.

This biopic seeks to restore the name and reputation of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette , a girl from rural 19th-century France who was swept up in the deception of her libertine husband. Forced to ghost-write her husband’s bestselling novels, she becomes the unseen hand behind his apparent genius.

With romantic affairs, high-stakes conflict, and fascinating true history, this is one of the best movies for book lovers.

Coco Before Chanel (2009)

Coco Chanel, beyond the grave, no doubt hopes she’s remembered for her classy suits and fragrant perfumes – but there was a lot more to her life than that, not all of it glamorous.

The biopic Coco Before Chanel explores her early life, from an Aubazines orphanage to a cabaret bar to the arm of a rich Englishman. Though the film’s timeline ends before her more controversial choices during World War II, it provides a lot of context for them.

Naturally, fashion is the film’s strongest point, winning one of the coveted Cesar Awards for Best Costumes . No collection of France-set movies is complete without this tribute to the country’s iconic designer.

Inspired By Favorite Books

From well-known French classics to bestselling and popular fiction, watch the best movies based on your favorite books set in, about, and from France .

The Da Vinci Code (2006)

It’s fitting that the ultimate airport thriller became one of the best movies to watch on a plane. The Da Vinci Code took the world by storm, first in print and then on screen .

Fans – including us – forgive the clunky dialogue and factual reaches as they follow symbologist Robert Langdon (played by Tom Hanks) on a scavenger hunt through France’s most recognizable artworks and landmarks.

With the help of French cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) and eccentric expert Sir Leigh Teabing (Geoffery Rush), Langdon hunts down a treasure that has been jealously guarded for centuries, pursued by creepy emissaries of a pious religious order . Sure, it’s schlocky, but it’ll keep you distracted on your flight to Paris.

And, for fans of Dan Brown, his other bestselling novel, Angels & Demons , went on to become a fast-paced thriller set in Rome and at the Vatican .

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1996)

It’s a toss-up whether the story of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame is better known as the epic Victor Hugo novel or one of the most perennially popular Disney kids’ movies set in France – it really depends on who you ask.

The millennials who grew up watching and rewinding a tired VHS copy might be surprised to know just how much of the Disney animation was actually drawn from Hugo’s original text. Sure, they played down the antiziganism and attempted genocide, and focused more on the star-crossed lovers angle, but it’s still a remarkably close read of one of the most popular stories of 19th-century France.

Les Misérables (2012)

Anne Hathaway’s hair! Russell Crowe’s singing! Love it or hate it, no list is complete without Les Misérables . Victor Hugo’s greatness truly fell victim to – or thrived from – the big screen.

The story follows Jean Valjean, a parolee on the lam who seeks redemption in caring for a factory worker’s daughter. It’s set in 19th-century France and plays out across the lead-up to the June Rebellion .

This epic film was decades in the making and smashed opening-day records for musical films upon its release. Although some of the vocal performances drew harsh criticism, the adaptation still stands as one of the most visually stunning and emotionally arresting movies about France.

Chocolat (2000)

Anyone with a sweet tooth will love Chocolat , one of the most delicious films set in France. It’s based on the 1999 novel by Joanne Harris , translating its subtle magical realism to the screen.

Juliette Binoche stars as a single mother who opens a chocolaterie in a small village in the French countryside; her confections slowly begin to change the lives of the locals, who overcome their biases and repair their broken relationships by the end credits.

This is a wonderful, feel-good film, perfect to watch snuggled up on the couch with a family block of Cadbury’s finest. It’s truly one of our favorites as foodies and romance lovers. Plus, if religion isn’t quite your jam and going against the grain is, you’ll cheer for Vianne.

The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

When Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey come together, you just know you’re going to get something uplifting that’s beautiful to watch.

The Hundred-Foot Journey takes a standard comedy set-up – a head-to-head battle between a swanky Michelin-star restaurant and an up-start home-style Indian eatery – and transports it to southern France, with the imitable Helen Mirren in a leading role. The restaurateurs enter into a battle for the hearts and palates of locals, with sabotage and insults played for laughs.

Critics have called it “the most soothing brand of cinematic comfort food,” the perfect description for one of the most delightful movies based on equally worthy books .

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)

It took over twenty years for Patrick Süskind’s novel about a serial killer to make it to the silver screen, but Perfume: The Story of a Murderer was worth the wait.

It opens with the sentencing of a notorious murderer, then flashes back to show how a young orphaned boy with a preternatural sense of smell became the monster on trial.

The cinematography of this film is spectacular, making it one of the most visually impressive movies based in France, as well as one of the most captivating. You won’t find yourself rooting for this anti-hero, but you won’t be able to look away all the same. We highly suggest reading the book before you watch the movie.

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Older Movie Releases

Here at The Uncorked Librarian, our writers (and readers) champion new releases as well as older cinema. For lovers of those timeless films, these are just a few more titles we recommend pre-2000s. You might also enjoy our timeless movie romance list featuring a few films set in France.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre is broader than most people realize. Along with high-stakes horror and spooky suspense, he also directed one of the best crime dramas.

In To Catch A Thief , Cary Grant stars as a retired cat burglar who sets out to prove he is not responsible for a series of jewel heists on the French Riviera. The beautiful setting is the perfect backdrop for the intricately plotted whodunnit, with many reviewers citing it as the film’s strongest element.

If you like to watch the dubiously wealthy scheme together, betray each other, and undertake ill-advised love affairs, this is the perfect Hitchcock film for you.

An American In Paris (1951)

An American In Paris is definitely one of the best movies that take place in France – we’re still watching it over seventy years later, and its title has slipped into the lexicon.

The musical romantic comedy stars Gene Kelly as Jerry Mulligan, a WWII veteran living in Paris as an artist. It’s best remembered for its dance sequences, including a 17-minute ballet scene at the film’s climax, and music composed in large part by George Gershwin (fun fact: he also wrote the poem for which the film is named).

It went on to win a slew of awards, most notably the Academy Award for Best Picture, alongside Best Story and Screenplay, Best Costume Design, Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, and more.

Funny Face (1957)

It’s hard to imagine being as beautiful as Audrey Hepburn and yet still feeling self-conscious about your “funny face”- but that’s what she asks us to believe about her character in Funny Face .

Hepburn plays an unassuming bookseller turned fashion model while Fred Astaire plays the photographer who sees her potential (and falls in love with her, to boot).

George and Ira Gershwin were riding high off their Academy Award wins for An American In Paris , and thought they had another hit on their hands when it was released; unfortunately, it flopped, only to be revived when Hepburn shot to stardom with My Fair Lady in 1964.

Ever After (1998)

Live-action remakes might be all the rage now, but Ever After was way ahead of the curve when it first came out in the ‘90s. It’s a realistic take on Cinderella , set in 16th-century France.

Don’t worry, the stepmother is still wicked, the shoe is still made of glass, and the Prince is still charming – it’s just that the only ‘magic’ is the chemistry between the two leads, played by Drew Barrymore and Dougray Scott. Pull this one up when you’re after movies set in France that you can watch with the entire family.

Where to grab top movies and books :

• Express VPN – Using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) allows you to view movies worldwide – and they help keep your information safe. Our writers couldn’t have such diverse film reviews without a VPN.
• Amazon Prime Video – Stream thousands of ad-free movies and TV series on demand with Prime Video.
• Audible Plus : From Amazon, listen to Amazon Originals, podcasts, and audiobooks. They add new titles every week.

Travel Across Europe With More Movies

We love a good movie to transport you abroad. A few more of our favorite lists include:

• Scotland-Based Movies To Watch
• Ireland Movie List
• Popular Films For Greece
• Movies For Norway Travelers

Sheree Strange

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The Best Movies About France to Watch Before Your Trip

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It is always the right time to be planning a trip to France! We have gathered the best movies about France to watch before your trip. One of the most enjoyable ways to prepare for your French adventures is to explore the country through films. French cinema is world renowned and we’ve included some of the best in this collection, all with English subtitles. We have rounded out our list with some fantastic movies in English that were filmed in France. They will all help enhance your future trips and keep you entertained from home while you craft your itinerary. 

I have asked fellow travel writers to share the films they most recommend to friends who are preparing for trips to France. All of these films are available to stream on Amazon Prime and many are also available on Netflix, Kanopy, and other streaming services.  Queue up your top picks and enjoy your French travels from home!

Jump to Your Favorties

Table of contents, the best movies set in france.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Language: French ( 2007) PG-13

This mesmerizing drama was directed by famed American painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel. Based on Jean-Dominique Bauby’s bestselling memoir, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly received four Oscar nominations and ranks in the BBC’s 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.

At 43, Jean-Dominique Bauby has it all: wealth, health, and a glamorous life as the Parisian editor of Elle magazine when he is suddenly paralyzed by a massive stroke. He wakes up after weeks in a coma in a hospital in the northern French seaside town of Berck. 

Bauby can hear and see perfectly but cannot move or speak, a condition known as locked-in syndrome. The only thing Bauby can do is blink his left eyelid. With great effort, he learns to blink in an alphabet code and thus dictate his extraordinary memoir.

Rather than being depressing, the film is joyful and inspiring. It takes us through a moving tour of Bauby’s memories and imagination. The settings include Paris and Lourdes and the windswept dunes and wide sandy beaches of France’s northern coast.

Internationally known actor Mathieu Almaric plays Bauby. Max Von Sydow delivers a riveting performance as his frail, heartbroken father.

Watch this poignant and fascinating film for beautiful visuals not just of Paris, but of Lourdes and France’s northern beaches. It is also a favorite among French learners .

  Contributed by Ingrid at Second-Half Travels.

Les Choristes

Language: French (2004) PG- 13

Les Choristes is a heart-warming film set in France about the healing power of music and the change a teacher can bring to the lives of their students. The film has even been nominated as the French entry in the Academy Awards for the Best Foreign Language Film. 

Les Choristes (also known as The Chorus) is a French film about a kind and gifted music teacher who brings a change in the students at a severely administered boys’ boarding school. He works positively with the effect of music on the lives of students. The film was set at the Chateau de Ravel in Puy-de-Dome, France. 

The film is directed by Christophe Bartatier and it stars Gerard Jugnot as Clement Mathieu and Francois Berleand as Rachin. This beautifully directed movie shows that music can bring a great change in people’s lives. Since the film is surrounded by music and the relationship between teacher and students, the music lovers and teachers will especially enjoy it.

Les Choristes reflects the French melancholie and gives you a better understanding of what France looked like 40 years ago. Indeed, the country has changed a lot over the last decades and Les Choristes will be a sentimental journey back to France’s past. It is a must-watch movie before visiting France on a vacation.  

Contributed by Paulina at Paulina on the Road

French Kiss

Language: English (1995) PG-13

French Kiss is the perfect rainy Sunday afternoon 90’s rom-com. Set in stunning and uber-romantic Paris and the South of France, we follow neurotic Kate (Meg Ryan) whose fiancé has just declared that he has fallen in love with another woman. Kate journeys to France in an effort to win him back, meeting Luc (Kevin Kline) a wily rogue who agrees to help her win Kate’s fiancé back. Of course, Luc has an ulterior motive, but will his heart win over his dastardly plans?

Whilst the story is wonderful and whimsical, the real showstopper is the scenery. With locations in Paris and Provence, viewers can enjoy lush scenes in vineyards and rustic French country homes. Provence is known for its fields of purple lavender and superb Rosé wines that are produced in the region. The film concludes in Cannes, a city mostly known for its very famous film festival. Cannes sits on the Mediterranean Sea and has a wonderful promenade lined with opulent hotels and restaurants.

French Kiss treats viewers to a journey from Paris to the South of France and, of course, to two strangers who fall in love. If you love 90’s rom-coms and France, I can’t think of a more perfect movie than French Kiss.

Contributed by Missy at Travels with Missy 

Mr and Mme Adelman

Language: French (2017) R

Mr and Mme Adelman is a clever, witty, and complex film about a captivating couple. We journey with them from their first meeting until a death 45 years later. It is daring in that it tells a story of over four decades with plenty of unexpected twists, laugh-out-loud scenes, and fascinating character development. 

The film was written by co-stars and real-life couple Doria Tillier and Nicolas Bedos, so there is an authenticity and connection that brings the film to life. Bedos also directs the film, and his character might strike some as too like the real-life director.

Spanning 45 years, we see the drama of the couple’s relationship unfold against the backdrop of French news and culture from 1971 through to the present. There is chemistry, beauty, and excitement in their early years; drugs, children, and confusion as the years go on; and a much more mature and tender love by the end of the film.  All of this is intertwined with the life of a famous writer– their inspirations and how they are received by the mercurial public. Expect to be surprised and moved as you watch. 

If you are traveling to France, you will enjoy seeing the modern history that is laced throughout the film and it may inspire you to learn about major events and people. You will also enjoy scenes in Paris and Étretat that will inspire you to want to visit. 

Erica at Trip Scholars

The Best Movies Set In Paris

Les Misérables

Language: English (2012) PG-13

Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable is one of the greatest novels of the 19th century, some may have read the book in school but most probably know the story about human struggle because of the West End musical and the 2012 movie starring Hugh Jackman, Russel Crowe, and Anne Hathaway, who won a Best Supporting Oscar for her portrayal of Fantine. 

The story starts when Jean Valjean is released from prison and skips parole. Valjean is a kind man who has rotten luck and is relentlessly pursued by Javert, a policeman who is determined to bring him back to prison. Even though Valjean is able to reinvent himself time and time again, he is not safe from Valjean. Intertwined in the plot is Fantine, a factory worker who eventually resorts to prostitution to support her daughter, Cosette, who is being cared for by the Thenadier family. Eventually, Fantine dies and Valjean buys Cosette’s freedom before they run to Paris to get away from Javert. Fast forward a couple of years to the time of the June Rebellion of 1832 where the plot intensifies and takes unexpected turns. 

Les Misérables talks about a point in French history where Parisians rose up against the monarchy. In Paris, visitors can go to the Musée des Égouts de Paris (Paris Sewer Museum) to imagine where Valjean hid from Javert during the revolution or visit the Luxembourg Gardens, where Cosette met Marius whom she marries, or sit on one of the benches in the Champ de Mars like Valjean and take in the scenery. 

Contributed by Bernadette at Explorer Chick

Language: French (2001) R

Amelie is the kind of movie that will make you want to travel to Paris as soon as you watch it. The movie tells the story of Amelie (actress Audrey Tatou), a 20-something girl who lives and works in Montmartre. She spends her days on a mission to make the lives of those surrounding her better – from her father, who she pushes to be more adventurous; to her co-worker, who she manages to match with a client of the café where she works. She also goes on a mission to play tricks and pranks to people who misbehave in the neighborhood – such as the greengrocer who regularly humiliates his disabled employee. 

Most importantly, Amelie is on a mission to find who the mystery man who abandoned a book of passport-size photos by a photo booth is. Finding him marks the beginning of romance, with motorbike rides around the city. 

Amelie is a great, feel-good movie and the soundtrack is fabulous. Watching it, you will be able to admire some of the most iconic places in Montmartre, which you will be able to visit, too!

Contributed by Claudia Tavani at My Adventures Across The World

Julie and Julia

Language: English (2009) PG-13

Julie and Julia highlights beautiful and tasty food from France . French cuisine combines unique techniques with the fresh ingredients that come from local farms and markets. The movie shows the joy of cooking and eating delicious French food.

In the film, Julie Powell decides to cook her way through Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in one year. While Julie learns how to make French dishes with the help and guidance from Julia Child’s book, we learn about both Julias’ lives. 

The movie beautifully presents Julia Child’s love and admiration for French food. Together with the Julias, we learn about Paris in the fifties and how to cook 365 dishes in 365 days.

This movie can teach you about French culture and give you some pointers on what to order at restaurants or dishes to try at home. It will also tell you the secret of delicious French dishes… butter!

Contributed by Ania from The Travelling Twins

Language: French (1960) NR 

No collection of French films would be complete without including Breathless. It is often recognized as one of the top twenty films ever made and was powerfully influential. It is the first feature length film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard; it was the breakthrough film for Jean-Paul Belmondo, who stars as Michel; and it co-stars Jean Seberg in one of her most appreciated roles as Patricia. Breathless is one of the early and influential French New Wave films and helped to change the industry.

Michel is a thief who flees from Marseilles to Paris and kills a police officer on his way. He hides out with Patricia, who is an aspiring American journalist. The story takes them around quintessentially hip 1960 Paris with a standout beatnik jazz soundtrack. Breathless broke all of the rules when it was released and made way for the cinema we are all familiar with today. To fully appreciate the film, we need to see it within historical context. The jump cuts, the lingering scenes that don’t drive the plot, the filming with hand-held cameras– they were all revolutionary. 

It is a great film to watch before your trip to France because it highlights the powerful French influence on cinematography. It will also leave you longing to wander down the Champs-Élysées and the other Parisian landmarks that fill the scenes. 

Language: French (1995) NR

La Haine is a must watch film for everyone who wants to see beyond sentimentalized and romantic views of Paris. The title is taken from a line of one of the main characters, Hubert, “la haine attire la haine!”, “hatred breeds hatred!” We follow three friends in the 24 hours after the police have severely wounded a young Arab man from the projects of Paris and the city erupts in riots.

La Haine was written, co-edited, and directed by 28 year old Mathieu Kassovitz, who won the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival for the movie. It was shot in stark black and white with superb direction and an excellent soundtrack. The talented young director and cast bring a vitality and clarity to the film that makes it unforgettable. The three friends are Vinz (Vincent Cassel), a Jewish young man bursting with frustration; Hubert (Hubert Kounde), a reflective Black boxer; and Said (Said Taghmaoui), a street-smart younger Arab– all trying to find their way in a decaying society.

The film grapples with racism, poverty, police brutality, and immigration in a realistic way. It highlights the underbelly of Paris in 1995 and the underserved people living in the projects. It is also thought provoking in light of modern challenges around the world. Watching it before your trip to Paris will give you a deeper understanding of the real struggles of many Parisians.

The Intouchables

Language: French (2011) R

The Intouchables is a heartwarming and, in some instances, funny movie about a unique friendship. The movie is set in Paris and follows the story of Philippe, a wealthy man who had a terrible accident and is now bound to a wheelchair. He is looking for a new personal carer to help him with daily tasks. 

The other main character is Driss, a young man who just got out of prison after six months and must look for a job. He is not motivated to work but must apply, so he picks the carer job, thinking he won’t be accepted. However, Philippe is intrigued by Driss and decides to give him a chance and hire him. 

He appreciates that Driss doesn’t pity him but rather treats him like a real person. Although there are some initial difficulties the two soon become close friends and manage to learn a lot from each other. The Intouchables is inspired by a true story and is the perfect comedy that can also be a little bit sad. 

It is worth watching before your trip because it looks critically at Paris’s different social classes and many problems that the city faces.

Contributed by Victoria at Guide your Travel

The Best Romantic Movies Set in Paris

Hunting and Gathering

Language: French (2007) NR

Hunting & Gathering is the adaptation of the best-selling novel of the same name by award winning French writer, Anna Gavalda. It is a one of the great romantic French movies to watch for everyone traveling to Paris who wants to get a glimpse of its people.

The film is telling the story of four Parisians: Franck, an overworked cook; his grandmother, Paulette; Camille, an anorexic artist working in a cleaning crew; and Philibert, a socially awkward offspring of an impoverished noble family. 

The bunch, who couldn’t be more different, end up as roommates in the worn-out apartment of Philibert. Each of the group is deeply troubled by their own struggles, and their initial hostility slowly evolves into a remedy against their personal loneliness. 

Everyone who is visiting Paris for the first time and who wants to draw more out of France’s capital than just visiting the sights should watch this movie. It has a wonderful cast including Audrey Tautou, who you probably know from the iconic French movie Amélie, in the role of Camille. Even though the film is set in Paris, it is not a film about Paris. It’s a film about four Parisians, each representing a very different lifestyle that shows a piece of the Parisian reality. 

Contributed by Lena at Salut From Paris

Midnight in Paris

For a romantic and charming film directed by Woody Allen set in Paris, France, I recommend Midnight in Paris. Not only is it a lighthearted and endearing film, but it’s also educational, exploring Paris’s artistic history. It follows Gil, played by Owen Wilson, on a small trip to Paris with his fiancée, played by Rachel McAdams. Gil is utterly enamored with Paris, and dreams of escaping his life in America to live in a tiny Paris attic with a skylight, like his literary and artistic heroes did in the 1920s. One night, while he wanders around Paris at midnight, he discovers that he’s able to travel back in time to the 20s. He proceeds to meet renowned artists and his literary idols, including Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Cole Porter, and Man Ray. This film is what inspired me to start my 1-month Europe itinerary in Paris. Not only does the cinematography cast Paris in a dreamy and enchanting light, but it also showcases some great places to check out, including Sacré-Coeur, the Seine riverside walk, Restaurant Polidor, and the Palace of Versailles. Overall, I wholeheartedly recommend “Midnight in Paris” for those interested in visiting France, as it will both educate you on Paris’s history and inspire you to visit some great sightseeing spots around the city! Contributed by Mia at Walk a While with Me

Moulin Rouge

“So exciting, the audience will stomp and cheer,” the song ‘Spectacular, Spectacular’ in Moulin Rouge promises, and this 2001 Baz Luhrmann extravaganza definitely delivers. The movie follows young Christian, who moves to Montmartre in turn-of-the-century Paris in search of freedom, beauty, truth and love. He falls in love with Satine, a performer and courtesan from the famed Moulin Rouge nightclub. Filled with reimagined pop music, this tragic musical dramedy is a love poem dedicated to Paris and the romantics who made the city what it is today.

Travelers to France can follow in Christian’s footsteps and take the train from London to Paris as he did in the beginning of the film. Once in Paris, head to one of the most beloved neighborhoods in Paris, Montmartre. Aside from being the picturesque backdrop for Moulin Rouge, this artistic village was once home to such giants as Picasso, Matisse, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (an artist featured as a character in the movie). 

Stop by the film’s namesake, the Moulin Rouge, a real-life cabaret which opened in 1889 and is known for the can-can dance style it introduced to the world. Performances are available daily, so you can immerse yourself in the Belle Époque cabaret world of Moulin Rouge . And if the romance of the film inspired you, don’t miss Le Mur des Je t’Aime (the I Love You Wall) for a sappy photo opp in front of the tiled wall splayed with “I love you” written in over 250 languages.

Contributed by Mary at Wanderu

The Best Movies About Versailles

Marie Antoinette

Language: English (2006) PG-13 The film Marie Antoinette captures the essence and opulence of 18th century France, particularly in the royal courts. A light lesson on politics during this period is balanced with fantastical dresses, luxurious living, lavish architecture and drama. Marie Antoinette is played by sweet and innocent Kirsten Dunst, while Louis XVI is portrayed by Jason Schwartzman. All together with the edgy and alternative direction of Sophia Copolla, the film has an addictive plot, start to finish. Great for teenagers and young adults looking for a dramatic and catchy retelling of historic events. The film follows the naive and young Marie Antoinette at the age of 15-19 as she navigates politics in the 18th century. Marie is married off to Louis XVI of France and lives out her days at the opulent Versailles Palace. Scandal, gossip and intrigue ensue as Marie finds her place amongst royalty. The Marie Antoinette movie is based at Versailles Palace, one of the most famous landmarks in France. Built by Louis XIV, the Sun God, in 1661, Versailles was the seat of power and money for over a century. If you plan on visiting the Palace of Versailles outside of Paris proper, the film does a great job of portraying the decadence of the halls and galleries of Versailles and showcasing many parts of the grounds and interiors. Haley of Haley Blackall Travel

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The best films set in the french countryside.

Back to Burgundy (Ce Qui Nous Lie)

Language: French (2017) NR

Have you ever wanted to become a winemaker in France? Or thought about getting into business with your family? Back to Burgundy gives you a realistic, yet somehow still appealing, account of the struggles of running a vineyard with your siblings. 

In the film, oldest son Jean returns to his childhood home in Burgundy when his father falls ill. After a conflict with his father years back, he moved to Australia to start a vineyard there. He’s estranged from his brother and sister, who have remained in their little town. When their father dies, they must decide to continue with the business or sell. All have their own demons to battle as they try to figure out how to revive the vineyard and pay their massive debt.  

Against the backdrop of Burgundy and the changing seasons, the siblings find a way to trust each other again and work together. Despite their struggles with money, romantic partners, in-laws, competitors, and each other, they manage to produce a great wine.  

This French family drama shows that you can always come home again. It’s a heartwarming story, stacked with a great cast, gorgeous views of the French countryside, and copious amounts of red wine. If you love wine and want to be transported to France , this is a great movie to watch. 

Contributed by Sophie at Just Heading Out

A Year in Burgundy (2013), A Year in Champagne (2015), A Year in Port (2016)

Languages: English and French, 13+

Pour yourself a glass and join renowned wine importer Martine Saunier as she visits with her favorite wine-making families from France. Each of the three films spans a year in Burgundy, Champagne, or Port.  We get to know the families, their struggles, and their successes through the seasons. You will appreciate wine more after watching any of these films and will be well prepared to enjoy local wines on your trip to France.

The three documentaries follow mostly small vintners as we gain understanding of the terroir and personal history of families who make each wine. We also appreciate the amazing amount of tenacity and creativity that goes into every bottle. We learn about the ancient methods of growing grapes and making wine in each region. 

The cinematography is beautiful and will make you want to travel to the French countryside to see the vineyards in person. If you are moved to want to work on a French vineyard, consider adding volunteering or working for a season into your travel plans!

The Best Movies Set in Provence

A Good Year

Language: English (2006) PG-13

A Good Year is a gentle, feel-good film with a hint of romance, a large helping of nostalgia, and some gorgeous scenery from around Provence and the South of France.

The main character of the film is Max (Russell Crowe), a British man who works in the soulless and harsh London financial world.  His Uncle dies and leaves his vineyard and house in Provence to him and so he travels there to sell the property.  What begins as another financial transaction turns into a trip down memory lane as he remembers his childhood and becomes attached to the area and the inhabitants.  There are some hiccups in the sale as an intriguing woman turns up claiming to be his uncle’s daughter and Max’s interest in another woman makes him begin to wonder whether he wants to sell the property at all.

If you’re thinking about a trip to the French countryside and exploring vineyards, whether that’s in Burgundy, Champagne, or Provence, you probably have images of traditional villages, romantic atmosphere and hazy sunlight flooding the area.  This film will show you all that, get you excited for it and make you wonder whether you might actually like to buy a French property and live a life with good wine, food and weather!  If you’re just planning to visit the coastline of the Cote D’Azur or even Monaco then it will inspire you to travel inland to the villages to explore more.

Contributed by Kristy at Lost in Landmarks

My Father’s Glory

Language: French (1990) G

My Father’s Glory is a great film to watch for people dreaming of visiting Provence, in Southern France. This is the first of a series of two films based on Marcel Pagnol’s childhood in Marseille . Marcel Pagnol was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. Regarded as an auteur, Marcel Pagnol became in 1946 the first filmmaker elected to the Académie Française. 

The film is set in Marseille and the surrounding countryside in the 1900’s and it is based on Pagnol’s autobiography of the same name. Young Marcel grows up in the big city, under the strict rules of his father. In summertime, the family moves to the countryside and there Marcel meets a boy of his same age named Lili. The two boys soon become good friends. Lili shares with Marcel – a city boy – all the secrets of the countryside.

The film stars Philippe Caubière, Nathalie Roussel, and Didier Pain, three popular French actors of that time. It is a lovely, easy-going film perfect to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon as you dream of your trip to the south of France. It is also a trip back in time to beautiful Marseille after the First World War.

Contributed by Elisa from France Bucket List

For more great films set in Provence try Manon des Sources , Jean de Florette, and Marius Et Jeannette .

The Best Movies Set in the French Riviera

Language: French (2012) R 

Renoir is a biopic inspired by the artist himself, impressionistic in lighting, characters, and plot. Many scenes feel like sumptuous film versions of his paintings, with the gorgeous lighting of the French Riviera taking center stage. 

The story centers around Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet) at the end of his life as he paints his final model, free spirited Andree Heuschling (Christa Theret). It takes place in 1915 at his idyllic country estate along the Cote D’Azur which serves as a backdrop for many paintings and scenes in the film. His middle son Jean (Vincent Ruttiers) returns home to recover from injuries as a soldier in WWI. Both father and son become enchanted with the strong and beautiful Andree. 

Inspired by real life events, the film captures Jean and Andree early in their lives, before Andree becomes a film actress and Jean becomes one of the greatest directors of all time. Tip: Add Jean Renoir’s classics La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) to your watch list. 

If you appreciate a strong plot and riveting action, find another movie. This storyline dapples in scenes the way Renoir dappled light across his canvas. The not-fully developed characters in the film mirror the soft impressions and dramatic brushstrokes of the people in his paintings. This is a film to watch on the largest screen you have, the beauty of the film is what makes it a standout. 

This is a great movie to add to your playlist before your trip to France. If you are traveling to the French Riviera, you will delight in the stunning scenes of the area. When you are on your trip, be sure to visit the Musee Renoir to see the actual estate he lived in. If you are traveling to Paris, this film will help you appreciate his significant collection at Musée d’Orsay even more. 

For more great films set the French Riviera try To Catch a Thief , And God Created Woman, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

The Best Movies Set in the Dordogne

Language: English (2000) PG-13

Grab a box of chocolates to enjoy while you are charmed by the lovely Dordogne, where much of this film is set. The scenes with the traditional Gaberes boats were filmed in Beynac. The boats have been decked out for Johnny Depp and his companions, but long ago they were used to ship goods from the region to the port in Bordeaux. Plan to ride on one (or maybe kayak) when you visit!

Looking for more about the Dordogne?

The best french kids movies.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Language: English (1996) G

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is perhaps one of the best animated Disney movies set in a real place. The majority of the film takes place at the famous Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. 

Based on the classic novel by the same name, the movie, produced and released by Walt Disney, follows the story of Quasimodo, a bellringer with a disability, who spends much of his life locked away in the bell tower at the church. Out of fear of ridicule and rejection, Quasimodo avoids going out in public, making friends with the gargoyles that adorn the church.

The animated musical drama is one of the more serious and darker Disney cartoons ever released. It addresses some very tough issues like loneliness, rejection, bullying, unacceptance based on appearance, and even persecution, lust, and murder.  While the movie may be G-rated, it is perhaps best suited for older children rather than toddlers or kids under the age of 6 due to the difficult nature of some of the topics. However, the film teaches an important lesson on acceptance and can serve as a great conversation starter with children. 

In the end, Quasimodo gains acceptance and is hailed a hero in Paris and after saving the life of an immigrant woman who had befriended him.

The animation captures Notre Dame and Paris beautifully and is a great way to introduce children to Paris prior to a trip to France.

Contributed by Melissa from Parenthood and Passports

Ratatouille

Language: English (2007) G 

One of the best movies about France to watch before going to France is Ratatouille. This is a comedy animation film that is suitable for all ages. What makes this a great movie is that it is a lot of fun and is set in Paris. 

The movie is about a rat named Remy who has a dream of becoming a chef, as opposed to the other rats that appear in this movie. He ends up at the kitchen of a restaurant in Paris where he sees the garbage boy of the restaurant trying to fix a soup. Remy secretly fixes the soup instead, but the garbage boy spots him. The owner of the restaurant wants to fire the garbage boy for altering the soup, but the soup turns out to be a success. The garbage boy may keep his job if he can make the soup again. 

  Remy and the garbage boy decide to work together in secret. This collaboration was a success, and Remy starts working together with the garbage boy from now on, and through this Remy can fulfill his dream of being a chef. 

Through this movie you get a good impression of the food of Paris and the atmosphere of the city, which makes you want to visit Paris even more! It is a great kid’s movie set in Paris but also enjoyable for adults.

Contributed by Dymphe at Dymabroad

For more great kids films set in France try The Red Balloon,  Hugo, and The Painter.

Going to France with kids or teens?

The best movies about france.

We hope you have found some films to inspire your travels to France!  What are your favorite film recommendations for people traveling to France? Leave your suggestions in the comments to help other readers. Or tell me what you thought of any of the films in the article. 

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21 thoughts on “The Best Movies About France to Watch Before Your Trip”

What a great list!! Les Mis is my favorite musical ever so I think I’ve seen every version, multiple times haha. And Julia and Julia and Midnight in Paris are so good too! I love how you split the movies up by region. There are lots of these I still need to see.

Thanks, Maggie! I’d love to know if you have any other Les Mis recommendations, it sounds like you are the person to ask! I always enjoy watching films related to where I’m traveling to, and there are so many options in France– I thought it would be nice for people to get to watch movies set in particular areas. I’m glad you liked it!

i’s loving this list!!… actually i had forgotten how much i adore “Amelie,” and i’ll definitely have to rewatch that film before my next trip to france! i’m also excited to check out “Mr and Mrs Adelman.”

Amelie is one of the best and always worth a re-watch! I hope you enjoy Mr and Mrs Adelman as much as I did!

I love the idea about watching movies about France before a visit. Always gives me ideas of places to visit and sets the mood for the visit. A great variety in the movies you have chose. Sure makes me wish France was on my travel plans.

Me too, Linda! I always learn a lot watching in advance and it is a great way to build anticipation and excitement– even if a place is still years away in our travel plans. I’m so pleased you enjoyed the collection!

I have only seen a couple of these movies and they were quite fun. I think I would like to see Julie and Julia. It sounds quite culturally immersive.

Julie and Julia is a great one and it will make you want to visit a French restaurant in your hometown or try some French cooking!

All of these suggestions really make me miss France! This calls for a movie night very soon.

Me too, I can’t wait to travel there again! I hope some movies help to tide you over. 🙂

I can’t wait to watch some of these before my trip! We’ll be in France for 2 months!

Two months, that will be wonderful! If I remember right, you are going soon. If so, enjoy!

Well, I know what I’m queuing up on all my streaming platforms now! This is such a great list of movies to watch and a few I haven’t seen before! Super!

Thanks Missy, I hope you enjoy them as much as we have!

Chocolat is my all-time fav French film. My daughter and I used to watch every year at Easter. I can’t wait to watch some of the movies in your list. Thank you!

I always liked “American Dreamer” with JoBeth Williams and Tom Conti. It is a clever rom/com set in Paris with an excursion to Vaux le Vicompte.

Love this idea of watching films before visiting France so that you can get a feel for the place!Les Miserables is my favorite, but Ratatouille is probably second.

Happy to report that I’ve seen at least eight of these movies! I love movies that are set in Europe, so I’ll definitely take a look at a couple more from your list.

I love French movies, even if it means watching with subtitles. Priceless was one of my favorites, so I was hoping to see it on this list, haha! But somehow I think Americans show more of the french beauty, so those are always nice to watch as well 😍

I love this list! Les Misérables is my favorite musical and Ratatouille is my favorite Pixar movie! I think I’ve watched around 10 of them, but I can’t wait to watch the rest! 😍

Thanks for this wonderful list – a lot of these movies are already on my favourites list – can’t wait to see the rest!

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15 Incredible Movies Set in France to Inspire Your Next French Vacation

France is a fabulous travel destination that has plenty to offer for potential travelers. From elegant cities, nice beaches, and gorgeous mountain views to delicious food and advanced winemaking and drinking culture, in France, there’s something for everyone.

If you’re dreaming about your next vacation in Paris or simply want to know more about the French lifestyle, here are 15 great movies set in France that are worth your attention. Whether it’s a comedy or a drama, these films perfectly showcase France’s cities and landscape, local culture, cuisine, and of course – romance and passion that the French are famous for.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy a good story — with a glass of some French wine, maybe?

Paris (2008)

French movie “Paris” centers around Pierre (Romain Duris), a cabaret dancer with a heart condition waiting for a heart transplant. As Pierre is spending his days watching other peoples’ lives from his balcony, his sister Élise (Juliette Binochewith) with three kids decide to move in. Other parallel and intertwining storylines in the movie feature various people that Pierre and Élise meet in their daily lives: their neighbors, a baker, a local vegetable market vendor, etc. “Paris” is a sentimental movie with great actors and gorgeous Parisian views.

Paris, I Love You / Paris, Je T’Aime (2006)

One of the best movies about Paris, which is actually more like an art project, “Paris, Je T’Aime” tells 18 separate stories all set in different neighborhoods in Paris. Each of the stories is an independent film with its own directors, writers, cast, different filming and storytelling techniques — the only thing that connects them is the beautiful city. “Paris, Je T’Aime” is packed with famous actors such as Gerard Depardieu, Natalie Portman, Elijah Wood, and others. It is a must-see film for Paris-lovers and those who want to spend their next vacation in the French capital.

Paris Can Wait (2016)

“Paris Can Wait” is a great movie set in France full of breathtaking scenery, representation of the local cuisine, and romance. The story follows Anne (Diane Lane), a wife of a successful movie producer (Alec Baldwin) that unexpectedly ends up on a road trip from Cannes to Paris with her husband’s business associate Jacques (Arnaud Viard). Instead of driving her to Paris as promised, Jacques is taking Anne through the French countryside, stopping for gourmet dinners and romantic viewpoints, providing her with a new lust for life.

One Wild Moment / Un moment d’égarement (2015)

If you’re looking for a real passionate French drama, “One Wild Moment” should definitely be on your list. The film follows two divorced fathers, Antoine and Laurent (played by François Cluzet and Vincent Cassel), who spend their vacation in Corsica with their respective young daughters: seventeen-year-old Louna and eighteen-year-old Marie. One evening at the beach Louna seduces Laurent, and so the drama begins…

Back to Burgundy / Ce qui nous lie (2017)

Set in the picturesque Burgundy, “Back to Burgundy” is an emotional story of three siblings that reunite at their home after their father falls ill and eventually dies. Without having anyone to consult with, Jean, Juliette, and Jérémie have to take some serious decisions about their family’s vineyard and the upcoming harvest. A heartwarming drama about family struggles, “Back to Burgundy” is also a great movie for those who want to better understand the specifics of the French wine-making culture.

A Good Year (2006)

“A Good Year” is probably one of the best-known movies set in Provence. Directed by Ridley Scott, the film is based on Peter Mayle’s best-selling novel and tells the story of a London banker Max Skinner (Russel Crowe), who relocates to Provence to sell his uncle’s vineyard. After spending a few days in the French countryside, Max discovers the new laid-back lifestyle and meets a beautiful woman (Marion Cotillard) that makes him reevaluate his priorities. Set among the gorgeous lavender fields in Southern France, “A Good Year” is an easy rom-com perfect for a cozy evening at home.

Swimming Pool (2003)

Another movie set in Provence, “Swimming Pool” is an erotic thriller directed by the famous French director François Ozon. It follows Sarah Morton (Charlotte Rampling), a British crime novelist who decides to spend some time in her publisher’s country house in Southern France to overcome writer’s block. All seems to be going well until a young attractive woman (Ludivine Sagnier) claiming to be the publisher’s daughter shows up. Beautiful and charming filming locations of the French countryside set an interesting contrast to the film’s unexpectedly thrilling storyline.

Midnight in Paris (2011)

Directed by Woody Allen, “Midnight in Paris” is one of the most magical and romantic movies set in the French capital. It features Owen Wilson as a screenwriter and aspiring novelist named Gil who comes to Paris for a holiday with his frustrating fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). One evening, Gil finds himself walking alone through the empty streets when a vintage car pulls over, and Gil is transported back in time to the Paris of the Lost Generation. Here he meets many of his literary heroes and a charming lady Adriana (Marion Cotillard).

The Intouchables / Intouchables (2011)

A must-see for French cinema lovers, “The Intouchables” is a hilarious and heartwarming comedy based on a true tale of friendship. It centers around Philippe (Francois Cluset), a wealthy and quite isolated quadriplegic man living in Paris, and Driss (Omar Sy), his streetwise caregiver with a criminal record. As the two men from contrasting worlds become friends, Driss encourages Philippe to have a little more fun and adventures in life despite his disability.

Things to Come / L’Avenir (2016)

“Things to Come” is a French-German drama film starring Isabelle Huppert as Nathalie, a middle-aged philosophy professor whose life is going through some serious changes. After her husband announces he’s been having an affair, her mother dies, and her book-deal falls through, Nathalie suddenly finds the freedom that she never had in her life before. A warm and thoughtful film, “Things to Come” is mainly set in Paris, but it also features other beautiful French locations.

The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014)

One of the most mouthwatering movies set in France, “The Hundred-Foot Journey” is a dedication to the world-famous French cuisine and its culinary delights. An Indian family settles in a small French village where they decide to open a restaurant serving traditional Indian food. Just across the street, there’s another fancy Michelin-starred restaurant run by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren), an expert in sensual French cooking. As the story unfolds, the initial competition and the clash of the two cultures slowly turn into cooperation and friendship.

Le Divorce (2003)

Comedy film “Le Divorce” centers around two American women and their experiences in the French capital. Roxy (Naomi Watts) is an ex-pat poet living in Paris with her French husband, who recently asked for a divorce after falling in love with his mistress. Isabel (Kate Hudson) is Roxy’s sister who came to Paris for a visit and started an affair with a married man. As you can guess, “Le Divorce” is a story of passion and love, full of magnificent views of Parisian architecture and some witty American humor.

Before Sunset (2004)

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, “Before Sunset” is the critically acclaimed sequel to the 1995 film “Before Sunrise”. Filmed entirely in Paris, the movie continues the story of an American man (Ethan Hawke) and a French woman (Julie Delpy) who shared a passionate night together in Vienna. “Before Sunset” shows the couple meeting again nine years later in the French capital and spending an afternoon together. If you’re looking for the most romantic movies set in Paris, this might be your best choice!

My Old Lady (2014)

Another sentimental movie filmed in Paris, “My Old Lady” follows a troubled New Yorker, Mathias (Kevin Kline), who goes to Paris to sell an apartment owned by his estranged father. Little does he know that the property still has residents: an old woman, Mathilde (Maggie Smith), who has a complicated history with Mathias’ father, and her daughter Chloé (Kristin Scott Thomas). Smart and funny, “My Old Lady” is a fulfilling comedy-drama with a great cast and some French romance.

C’est la vie! / Le sens de la fête (2017)

“C’est la vie!” is a witty French comedy about a hectic wedding party held in a sumptuous 17 th -century French chateau. The wedding planner, Max, is trying to make everything perfect as he deals with his short-tempered assistant, unprofessional staff, an egocentric groom, a former admirer of the bride, a free-loading photographer, and other issues that just seem to never end. If you’re looking for an undemanding feel-good movie with some French charm and passion, “C’est la vie!” might just be it.

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10 Movies to Transport You to France

The Best Movies About Paris

If you are missing Paris, here are a few of my favorite movies to transport you to France. How many have you seen? Do you have a favorite movie you watch on repeat? These are the best movies about Paris to transport you for an afternoon.

When I am about to board a plane to Paris and on the plane, my two favorites to watch are Sabrina and Midnight in Paris.

I prefer the new version vs the old (with Audrey Hepburn) because Sabrina is a photographer instead of a cook (old version). I love the introduction, it is so well done and I immediately have to sit in front of the tv and watch the whole movie through to the end. I love picking out all locations in Paris as I watch it. The love story is beautiful!

Midnight in Paris

If you are reading this blog post and you haven’t seen Midnight in Paris, you have permission to click out and turn it on. I promise I won’t be mad. Gil is enchanted with Paris as much as I feel I am so I completely understand his character. Again, this one has a great introduction that is beautifully shot. If you don’t like Woody Allen movies you can skip it. It is quirky and funny but it has the right balance that will carry you through the very end to the last line of the movie. “Actually,  Paris  is the  most beautiful in the rain. ”

A Good Year

I first saw this movie on a date and I was immediately drawn in by the cinematography and the light, plus Russell Crowe isn’t bad to look at 😉 The date wasn’t a keeper, but this movie has been one of my favorites ever since. The film takes you to the South of France and if you aren’t convinced to take a trip in the Summer to Provence yet, you will be by the end.

French Kiss

I first saw this movie when I was younger way before I ever went to Paris and it made me want to go even more. I loved Sleepless in Seattle and seeing Meg Ryan in a film about Paris sold it for me. This is an oldie 1995 but the soundtrack is great and so is the movie.

Ratatouille

My niece and nephew adore this movie and they would be mad if I didn’t include it on the list. If you have kids, this is a great one to watch together. It is an adorable story set about a rat that moves to Paris to follow his dream of being a chef. It’s a Pixar animation.

Moulin Rouge

The story is about love at The Moulin Rouge starring Nichole Kidman. You will want to listen to the soundtrack for days afterward and sing along. “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

Forget Paris

This movie stars Billy Crystal and features Paris in a flashback sequence of a love story. This movie may not be on your radar (it’s from 1995) but it should be. It is a feel-good movie that will have you on the edge of your seat to find out how the love story ends.

The Red Balloon

In 2013, I started a project with red balloons in Paris. I just had this vision in my head and I had to have it come to life. Several friends in Paris told me I needed to see the movie, The Red Balloon. It is 34 minutes long and perfect for small kids to watch on a rainy afternoon. It is a simple story about a boy and his balloon that will capture your attention.

I couldn’t do a movie roundup without a nod to Audrey Hepburn. Funny Face takes place in Paris and includes Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn for singing and dancing numbers. The combination along with the backdrop of Paris and the fashion makes it a must-see movie at least once.

Julie and Julia

This is one of my favorites on the list and it always seems to be on the plane on the way to Paris. I can relate so much to this movie with Julie who writes a blog about trying all of Julia Child’s recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The story goes back and forth from Brooklyn (Julie) to France (Julia) covering their story and how they eventually intertwine at the end.

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Gigi! One of my all time favorites. I love your list. Have seen them all many times! Also, 2 days in Paris by Julie Delpy.

Love each of these movies! Also very excited for the upcoming Julia Child mini-series and documentary.

My husband and I adore Midnight in Paris and our 5 year old is obsessed with Ratatouille!!! Great list!

Thank you! My niece and nephew love Ratatouille too! It is a great way to get the kids to start dreaming of Paris. They call me their “little chef” since I am always in the kitchen and they love to help me cook/bake!

French Kiss, Ratatouille, Sabrina(both versions!) Forget Paris are some of my favs too!

Currently watching Midnight in Paris. It’s great! I love your blog!

Thank you, Catherine! It is such a fun move to watch.

Are you watching call my agent on Netflix? Love letter to everything French

Please find Until September from 1984 and enjoy the Paris locales. Cute story, but the locations are fantastic. Viewed this gem on cable several times in the mid 80’s and would binge watch again.

I love Two for the Road with Audrey Hepburn too. A lovely road trip through France 😊

I haven’t seen it! Adding it to my list. Merci!

I’m so glad you included Forget Paris! I think it’s an underrated gem for sure. It came out the same year as French Kiss (my all-time fave Rom-Com). Those two are significant for me because it was in 1995 that I first visited France and so my love affair began. I’m so glad I was able to celebrate not only my 50th birthday, but my first Christmas in Paris, my 25th year of loving France and my 20th trip there this past December (and first time NOT riding the metro, might I add)! Your blog is helping me get through the uncertainty of when I’ll visit next.

Thank you so much, Rebecca, for taking me to Paris through these ten movie trailers. They made me laugh and it felt good to laugh during these stressful times. I have seen 7 of these movies out of the ten. I was a high school French teacher for 29 years and I always showed THE RED BALLOON to my students. I so love France and particularly Paris. I go there at least once a year and take lots of pictures to last me through the year back in the US. AND I READ YOUR BLOG!!!! Thank you so very much for your ever lovely website and taking me to my second home. Merci mille fois……….

Hi Phyllis,

I am so happy you loved the movie post and all the trailers. It was fun to put together. I had a much longer list but thought 10 was a good amount 🙂 Are there any you will watch that you haven’t seen?

Thank you so much for reading! I will transport you back to Paris anytime you need it.

Stay safe and well, Rebecca

I love watching the movie “Amélie” before every trip to Paris.

Yes, "Amélie" is a great movie! I watched it while I lived in Montmartre and would pass the same spots on my walk.

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Best Movies About Provence, France

Article written by Elisa - Travel Writer & Local in France This article may contain compensated links. Please read disclaimer for more info.

There’s something magical about watching movies that are set in beautiful or historical surroundings. The backdrop can become a character on its own in these kinds of movies, providing a color and depth that would be impossible to achieve any other way.

You can probably remember watching a number of movies where the backdrop captured your attention as much as the plot. And there’s a good chance that one of these movies set in Provence, France , is on that list.

Best Movies in Provence

Beautiful and historical, movies about Provence can seem like they’re a world away from modern life. If you’ve never experienced this effect, then you can start here with this list.

You can also use this list of movies about Provence to sate your wanderlust for Southern France or as travel inspiration for your next trip to Provence.

A Good Year (2006)

A Good Year stars Russel Crowe and Marion Cotillard, but it’s the Luberon scenery that’s the real star here. It’s one of the best Provence movies for beautiful landscape shots and images of a small town that looks like it could come from every dream you’ve ever had about the French countryside.

This movie is based on the novel by Peter Mayle, and it follows failed London banker Max Skinner (Crowe), who inherits his uncle’s vineyard in Provence, where he spent many childhood holidays. When he arrives in Provence, ready to sell everything, Max meets an American woman who says she is his long-lost cousin and that the property is hers…

French locations were filmed at some of the most beautiful hilltop villages of Provence (Bonnieux, Cucuron, and Gordes in Vaucluse), Marseille , and Avignon .

Marius et Jeannette (1997)

Marius et Jeannette is one of the more bittersweet movies set in Provence. It stars Ariane Ascaride as Jeannette, a working-class single mother who works in a supermarket. The director is Robert Guédiguian, who was born and raised in Marseille , where the movie is set.

Jeannette is struggling to support her family with only her supermarket job salary, and she starts stealing paint from a cement factory to get by. This is where she meets Marius, a security guard, and starts a timid relationship and partnership that helps them both.

This is one of those movies in Provence that tells the story of ordinary people in an extraordinary way, and it’s both heart-melting and beautiful.

Jean de Florette (1986)

Based on the book of the same name by French writer Marcel Pagnol, Jean de Florette stars Daniel Auteuil, Gerard Dépardieu, and Yves Montand. It’s set in the small town of Mirabeau , though some scenes were shot in Vaugines and Sommières in the Gard.

The movie is set after the First World War and is a mesmerizing study of small-town life in France. It follows the adventures of Ugolin and his uncle trying to gain access to the spring in the neighbor property to water their flowers. To do this, they conspire to block the spring in order to bankrupt the owner and force him to sell.

This is one of the movies in Provence that you watch for the scenery, the subtle mastery of the actors, and the slow, peaceful turn of life in the French countryside.

And God Created Woman (1956)

This is one of the best movies about Provence simply because it stars the incandescent Brigitte Bardot. Set in St Tropez , a town relatively unknown at the time, the film threw Brigitte Bardot into the spotlight and put Provence and the French Riviera on the map as a holiday destination.

And God Created Woman is about the complicated love triangle between two brothers and Bardot. Bardot as Juliette enraptures numerous men from the wealthy to the naïve. She marries the brother of the man she’s in love with while continuing her wild behavior and putting herself and everyone around her at risk. The only question is, which man will she stay with in the end? 

This movie not only launched Brigitte Bardot, but it also pushed the limits of the depiction of sexuality in American cinema. Today, it seems relatively tame, but the beauty and charm of the French Riviera is still absolutely gorgeous and a good match for Bardot’s beauty.

The Horseman on the Roof (1995)

The Horseman on the Roof is a great choice if you’re looking for films set in Provence with a historical flair. Starring Juliette Binoche and Oliver Martinez, it’s based on the novel by Provence writer Jean Giono and directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau of Cyrano de Bergerac fame.

Set in 1832, in a world ravaged by wars (between France, Austria, and Italy) and an epidemic of cholera, this movie follows two strangers — a beautiful countess searching for her husband and an Italian patriot being hunted by Austrian assassins — discover that their only chance for survival is each other.

Set in the wildly beautiful town of Manosque , in Haute Provence, this movie is everything you might expect from a historical drama. It has sword fights, rooftop escapes, beautiful landscapes, and lots of passionate and secret interludes.

My Father’s Glory (1990)

The first of two Provence movies, My Father’s Glory , is a charming film that seems to meander through the childhood of MacelPagnol, a French novelist and filmmaker. Based on the autobiographical book of the same name, it stars Philippe Caubière, Nathalie Roussel, and Didier Pain.

The movie is set in Marseille after the First World War, where young Marcel (Julien Ciamaca) grows up during the turn of the century in awe of his rationalist dad. When the family takes a summer vacation in the countryside, Marcel meets a boy Lili (Joris Molinas), who teaches him about the secrets of the countryside.

Marcel and Lili become friends soon as they explore the countryside around them. At first sight, this movie seems disjointed and random, like a series of disconnected episodes. But by the end, it has cleverly explored all the important parts that make up childhood in a way that feels very true to life.

Cézanne and I (2016)

If you like your movies about Provence to have some basis in real life, then why not try this beautiful and fraught exploration into the lives of painter Paul Cézanne and novelist Émile Zola?

Cézanne and I is shot in Aix-en-Provence and Mont Saint Victoire . This emotional entry looks at the tempestuous relationship between these two creative geniuses as they grow up in Aix and take very different paths. Zola’s novels receive acclaim early on, while Cézanne’s work is ignored, creating rivalry and strain in their relationship.

Created by writer-director Danièle Thompson, it stars Guillaume Gallienne as Cézanne and Guillaume Canet as Zola.

An Autumn Tale (1998)

Directed by Éric Rohmer, An Autumn Tale is the final movie in a series of four films known as ‘Contes des Quatre Saisons’ or Tales of the Four Seasons. The movie is a beautiful and clever look at the later years of life and what they can mean for many people, and it isn’t afraid to delve into the darker side of getting older.

This isn’t the kind of movie that you watch if you want a lot of action. In fact, it’s the subtlety and wit of this movie that makes it great. Set in the southern Rhône valley , the sense of warmth and simplicity of this movie’s bucolic setting is as heavy and intoxicating as the wine that the characters are preparing to create.

With stars like Alain Libolt, Marie Rivière, Béatrice Romand, and Didier Sandre, as well as Rohmer’s masterful touch, this movie is a true delight to be savored, preferably with a glass of French wine.

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25 French Themed Movies To Watch This year

by Missy | Jun 22, 2019

25 French Themed Movies To Watch This Year

In the mood for a little French culture and romance? Me too! Here are 25 French Themed Movies To Watch This Year. As a writer and  chef with The French Magnolia Cooks , I draw inspiration from the environment and culture. Gardening, fashion, color, landscape, music, terroir…and movies. In other words, the plate is more than food. That is to say, the plate is an expression of our voice at a particular time and in a particular place. To clarify, it’s valuable to pay attention to everything around us. 

Movies are more important to our culture because they respect and reflect the past while inspiring our futures. A great movie evokes emotions, whether good or bad. Most importantly, they make us think.

Personally, I love movies because they take me on a journey away from my daily routine and challenges. Even more, a great movie makes me feel relaxed, grateful and inspired.

As I have said before, The French are all about pleasure. These 25 French themed movies embody wit, history, style, love, and fashion. Hopefully, they will bring you joy.

Warning: these movies may cause you to book a flight to France.

Certainly, there are worse things in life.

Number 25 of 25 

Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) is an American ex-GI who stays in post-war Paris to become a painter, and falls for the gamine charms of Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron). However, his paintings come to the attention of Milo Roberts, a rich American heiress, who is interested in more than just art.

Release date : November 11, 1951

Director : Vincente Minnelli

Number 24 of 25 

Dispatched on an assignment, New York City-based fashion photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) is struck by the beauty of Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn), a shy bookstore employee he’s photographed by accident, who he believes has the potential to become a successful model. He gets Jo to go with him to France, where he snaps more pictures of her against iconic Parisian backdrops. In the process, they fall for one another, only to find hurdles in their way. 

Release date : February 13, 1957

Director : Stanley Donen

Number 23 of 25 

Gaston (Louis Jourdan) is a restless Parisian playboy who moves from one mistress to another, while also spending time with Gigi (Leslie Caron), a precocious younger friend learning the ways of high society. The platonic relationship between Gaston and Gigi changes, however, when she matures, but the possibility of something lasting seems unlikely since he won’t commit to one woman. Gigi refuses to be anyone’s mistress, however, and Gaston must choose between her and his carefree lifestyle.

Release date : May 15, 1958 

Number 22 of 25 

Experience Brigitte Bardot in this odd but beautiful vintage film. A philistine in the art film business, Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) is a producer unhappy with the work of his director. Prokosch has hired Fritz Lang (as himself) to direct an adaptation of “The Odyssey,” but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb at the box office, he brings in a screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) to energize the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife (Brigitte Bardot).

Release date : December 18, 1964

Director : Jean-Luc Godard

Number 21 of 25

Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) and Solange (Françoise Dorléac) are twin sisters who each want to find romance and leave their small seaside town of Rochefort, France. Soon they befriend a couple of visiting carnival workers who frequent their lonely mother’s (Danielle Darrieux) café and hire the girls to sing in the carnival. Wanting a career as a songwriter, Solange falls for an American musician, Andy (Gene Kelly), while Delphine dumps her beau and searches Rochefort for her ideal man.

Release date : April 11, 1968

Number 20 of 25

This movie will make you want to book a flight to Paris! A sequel to “Before Sunrise,” this film starts nine years later as Jesse (Ethan Hawke) travels across Europe giving readings from a book he wrote about the night he spent in Vienna with Celine (Julie Delpy). After his reading in Paris, Celine finds him, and they spend part of the day together before Jesse has to again leave for a flight. They are both in relationships now, and Jesse has a son, but as their strong feelings for each other start to return, both confess a longing for more.

Release date : July 2, 2004 

Director : Richard Linklater

Featured song : Just in Time

Film series : ‘Before’ Trilogy

Number 19 of 25 

In the 1920s, actor George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a bona fide matinee idol with many adoring fans. While working on his latest film, George finds himself falling in love with an ingenue named Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) and, what’s more, it seems Peppy feels the same way. But George is reluctant to cheat on his wife with the beautiful young actress. The growing popularity of sound in movies further separates the potential lovers, as George’s career begins to fade while Peppy’s star rises.

Release date : November 23, 2011

Director : Michel Hazanavicius

Number 18 of 25

Young Coco Chanel (Audrey Tautou) works as a seamstress by day and a cabaret entertainer by night, then she meets a wealthy heir (Benoît Poelvoorde) and becomes his lover and fashion consultant. Tired of the flowery hats, tight corsets and yards of lace that define women’s fashion, Coco uses her lover’s clothing as a starting point to distill an elegant and sophisticated line of women’s clothing that propels her to the top of Parisian haute couture.

Release date : September 25, 2009

Director : Anne Fontaine

Number 17 of 25

Heavy but painfully beautiful. After 19 years as a prisoner, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is freed by Javert (Russell Crowe), the officer in charge of the prison workforce. Valjean promptly breaks parole but later uses money from stolen silver to reinvent himself as a mayor and factory owner. Javert vows to bring Valjean back to prison. Eight years later, Valjean becomes the guardian of a child named Cosette after her mother’s (Anne Hathaway) death, but Javert’s relentless pursuit means that peace will be a long time coming.

Release date : December 25, 2012

Director : Tom Hooper

Story and Novel: Victor Hugo

Music composed : Claude-Michel Schönberg

Number 16 of 25

In this melancholy French social satire, André (Roland Toutain) is having an affair with Christine (Nora Gregor), whose husband, Robert (Marcel Dalio), himself is hiding a mistress. Meanwhile Christine’s married maid, Lisette (Paulette Dubost), is romantically entangled with the local poacher. At a hunting party, trusted friend Octave (Jean Renoir) also confesses his feelings for Christine, as the passions of the servants and aristocrats dangerously collide.

Release date : April 8, 1950

Number 15 of 25

Mystic, maiden, martyr – whatever you choose to call her, it is difficult to dispute that Joan of Arc led a remarkably accomplished life for a peasant girl who never went to school … and never saw her 20th birthday. It all began in 1429, when a teenage girl from a remote village in France stood before the world and announced she would defeat the world’s greatest army and liberate her country.

Release date : October 18, 1999 

Number 14 of 25

Number 13 of 25.

Although the original Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn is superb. This flawless remake with Julia Ormond as Sabrina Fairchild is a HIT! Sabrina Fairchild is a chauffeur’s daughter who grew up with the wealthy Larrabee family. She always had unreciprocated feelings for David (Greg Kinnear), the family’s younger son and playboy. But after returning from Paris, Sabrina has become a glamorous woman who gets David’s attention. His older, work-minded brother Linus (Harrison Ford) thinks their courtship is bad for the family business.

Release date : December 15, 1995 

Director : Sydney Pollack

Featured song : Moonlight

Number 12 of 25

Pierre Lavasseur (Daniel Auteuil), a wealthy tycoon, faces disaster when a paparazzo snaps a picture of him with his longtime mistress (Alice Taglioni). Since Pierre’s wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) owns a majority share of their corporation, Pierre must avoid a divorce at all costs. At his lawyer’s suggestion, Pierre hires Francois Pignon (Gad Elmaleh), a parking attendant who is also in the photograph, to pose as his lover’s “real” boyfriend and thus hide the affair from his wife.

Release date : April 20, 2007

Director : Francis Veber

Number 11 of 25

In this romantic comedy, Brigitte Laurier (Brigitte Bardot), the beautiful daughter of the French premier, falls for the womanizing Michel Legrand (Henri Vidal), one of her father’s aides, and attempts to get him to settle down with her. When Michel can’t curb his flirtations with other women, Brigette makes a play to seduce the married Prince Charles (Charles Boyer), resulting in an entertaining battle of the wills between the gorgeous girl of privilege and her beau.

Release date : July 30, 1958

Director : Michel Boisrond

Number 10 of 25

When aging womanizer Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson) and his young girlfriend, Marin (Amanda Peet), arrive at her family’s beach house in the Hamptons, they find that her mother, dramatist Erica Barry (Diane Keaton), also plans to stay for the weekend. Erica is scandalized by the relationship and Harry’s sexist ways. But when Harry has a heart attack, and a doctor (Keanu Reeves) prescribes bed rest at the Barry home, he finds himself falling for Erica — who, for once, may be out of his league.

Release date : December 12, 2003

Director : Nancy Meyers

Number 9 of 25

When Kate (Meg Ryan) learns that her fiance, Charlie (Timothy Hutton), has become smitten with a young Parisian woman, she boards a plane for France. She is seated next to Luc (Kevin Kline), a small-time crook who uses her to smuggle a stolen necklace, leading Luc to the hotel where she’s staying to confront Charlie. As Kate and Luc get to know each other, their sarcastic rapport grows warmer, and Kate must decide where her heart truly lies as Charlie tries to win her back.

Release date : May 5, 1995

Director : Lawrence Kasdan

Screenplay : Adam Brooks

Number 8 of 25

“Amélie” is a fanciful comedy about a young woman who discretely orchestrates the lives of the people around her, creating a world exclusively of her own making. Shot in over 80 Parisian locations, acclaimed director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (“Delicatessen”; “The City of Lost Children”) invokes his incomparable visionary style to capture the exquisite charm and mystery of modern-day Paris through the eyes of a beautiful ingenue.

Release date : November 2, 2001

Director : Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Number 7 of 25

Born into poverty and raised in a brothel, Édith Piaf (Marion Cotillard) manages to achieve worldwide fame. Though her extraordinary voice and charisma open many doors that lead to friendships and romances, she experiences great personal loss, drug addiction and an early death.

Release date : April 16, 2007

Number 6 of 25

Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy (Catherine Deneuve) cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre (Jean Sorel). When her lovestruck friend Henri (Michel Piccoli) mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais (Genevieve Page), Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients (Pierre Clémenti) grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

Release date : April 10, 1968  

Number 5 of 25

Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is a screenwriter and aspiring novelist. Vacationing in Paris with his fiancee (Rachel McAdams), he has taken to touring the city alone. On one such late-night excursion, Gil encounters a group of strange — yet familiar — revelers, who sweep him along, apparently back in time, for a night with some of the Jazz Age’s icons of art and literature. The more time Gil spends with these cultural heroes of the past, the more dissatisfied he becomes with the present.

Release date : May 20, 2011

Director : Woody Allen

Featured song : I Remember When

Number 4 of 25

A great story told superbly. An all-star cast includes: Glenn Close, Stockard Channing, Sam Waterston  Leslie Caron, Thierry Lhermitte. Story:  Isabel Walker (Kate Hudson) flies to Paris to visit her pregnant stepsister Roxeanne (Naomi Watts). However, her arrival coincides with her brother-in-law, Charles, walking out to live with his Russian mistress. Isabel, forced to stay in Paris, falls in love with the city and begins an ultimately unsatisfying adulterous affair with an older man.  A n unexpected awesome movie ending. 

Release date : August 8, 2003

Director : James Ivory

Number 3 of 25

An irresistible and flawless movie! Hilarious, warm and set on the Cote d’Azur. Irène (Audrey Tautou) loves nice things and loves to have wealthy men pay for them. One night, she mistakes Jean (Gad Elmaleh), a poor bartender, for a potential client and spends the night with him. The next morning, Irène realizes her mistake and leaves, but poor Jean is smitten with her. Later, when a rich dowager mistakes Jean for a veteran gigolo, Irène agrees to tutor him in the art of fleecing wealthy lovers. 

Release date : March 28, 2008

Director : Pierre Salvadori

Number 2 of 25

If you haven’t seen this classic French comedy, find it today.   Clever and fall-out-your-chair hilarious. Wealthy Frenchmen hold a weekly contest to see who can invite the biggest idiot to their dinner parties. One of my all-time favorite movies.

All-Star Cast: Thierry Lhermitte, Jacques Villeret, Francis Huster, Daniel Provost, Alexandra Vandernoot, Catherine Frot.

Release date : July 9, 1999

Number 1 of 25

I saved the BEST for last. For me, a perfect movie. Quintessential Paris, shot on location at the Paris Ritz (not the American Ritz-Carlton).

French private investigator Claude Chavasse (Maurice Chevalier) discovers his client’s wife has been having an affair with an American playboy, Frank Flannagan (Gary Cooper). When the client decides to kill Frank, Claude’s sheltered daughter, Ariane (Audrey Hepburn), throws off the plan and saves his life. The two are instantly attracted to one another, but Ariane doesn’t reveal her name. Frank then hires Claude to locate Ariane, unaware he has sent him on a mission to find his own daughter.

Release date : May 29, 1957 

Director : Billy Wilder

Music composed by : Charles Trenet , Franz Waxman , Maurice de Féraudy , Matty Malneck , Henri Betti

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12 Extraordinary Movies Set In France That Will Inspire You To Visit!

Posted on Last updated: December 15, 2023

Categories France , Travel Via Cinema

Sofia De Vera combines a heartfelt passion for cinema with over 15 years of critiquing for esteemed film publications, wielding academic credentials from the University of Southern California and New York University, to serve as your personal guide through the enchanting worlds of film and television.  Her full guest bio can be found here.

Cinema itself was invented in France, and, besides New York, there is perhaps no city that serves as the setting of movies more than Paris.

France and film are inseparable, and there are some movies, a number of them in fact, that make it hard not to open one’s laptop and book a ticket to the country the minute the movie ends. Below are some of our top picks for films to watch if you’re in the mood for travel inspiration to France!

Have you been to France before?

If so, do you think these films represent the types of experiences you’ll find on a trip there? Or, perhaps you’re French yourself. Do these movies accurately represent your country, or are they filled with tired locales and stereotypes. Ultimately, it’s up to you which movies you watch and which countries you visit, but we can almost guarantee that, after watching these movies set in France below, you’ll at least want a glimpse of Seine sometime soon.

Wondering where to watch? It depends on where you live in the world and which streaming services you have. We link to the streaming service we watch on in each case - be it Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, or elsewhere.

You can get one month free of Amazon Prime (or a 6-month trial for students ) of Amazon Prime and also get immediate access to FREE Two Day shipping, Amazon Video, and Music. While you won't be charged for your free trial, you'll be upgraded to a paid membership plan automatically at the end of the trial period - though if you have already binged all these, you could just cancel before the trial ends.

Apple TV+ also has a one-week trial, and Hulu has a one-month trial (which can be bundled with Disney!). Another option might be using a VPN to access Netflix titles locked to other regions . Netflix is now available in more than 190 countries worldwide and each country has a different library and availability. US Netflix is (understandably) one of the best. 

While we wish everything could just be in one place - for now, it seems these are the best streaming platforms to watch on.

Page Contents

1. Ratatouille (2007)

2. mission impossible fallout (2018), 3. amélie (2001), 4. hunchback of notre dame (1996), 5. julie and julia (2009), 6. breathless (1961), 7. la haine (1995), 8. portrait of a woman on fire (2020), 9. the intouchables (2011), 10. paris can wait (2016), 11. les misérables (2012), 12. the da vinci code (2006).

One of Pixar’s best, Ratatouille is not only one of the most impressive animated films ever made, but it’s one of the most moving cinematic love letters to France that one will ever see put to film (and, as you’ll see farther on down this list of the best movies set in France, that’s absolutely saying something).

Telling the story of Remy, a rat that loves to cook, Ratatouille has everything that a perfect France-set film needs — great music, great food, love and so much more. When Remy finally gets a chance to prove himself (albeit secretly and through a surrogate), the shots of the high-end French restaurant are enough to tickle your taste buds with visuals alone. The animated landscape and background of the film are the exact same, and they still look phenomenal to this day.

Ratatouille drops you into France and doesn’t let you leave for an hour and a half, but trust us, you’re not going to want to go anywhere else. Full of heart, never cynical, and surprisingly culturally attentive, Ratatouille will almost certainly get you excited to go to France yourself, and, if it doesn’t, it’ll at least get you hungry.

Only about the middle third of Mission Impossible: Fallout takes place in Paris , France, but, as one of the best-shot and visually impressive action movies released in decades, we think it deserves a spot on this list simply because of some of the amazing views of the city we get in this film.

On display in Fallout: the Trocadéro Esplanade near the Eiffel Tower, Le Grand Palais, and the Arc de Triomphe. Now, it’s likely that any French New Wave snob would scoff at us for putting a Mission Impossible film this high on the list, but watch it for yourself and you’ll see — there’s few other major studio films that give you a better look at modern Paris and the surrounding area than this one.

For lovers of travel via cinema , filming also took place in other dramatic locations in London , New Zealand , Norway , and the United Arab Emirates . For this reason alone it is a must-watch.

Fun fact: Tom Cruise actually broke his ankle while filming Mission Impossible: Fallout . The incident took place while filming in the United Kingdom , not France, but it was in a similar scene to many of the ones in Paris that features Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt jumping from building to building.

Cruise, dedicated to performing his own stunt as always, described the production-halting incident like this: “I was chasing Henry [Cavill] and I was meant to hit the side of the wall and pull myself over,” he said. “But the mistake was my foot hitting the wall,” he explained. “I knew instantly my ankle was broken and I really didn’t want to do it again so just got up and carried on with the take.”

No French-set movie list is complete without Amélie , the odd, surreal, and commercially successful 2001 film from director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Set in Montmartre, a district in Paris, Amélie is a whimsical romantic comedy that is without a doubt one of the most visually impressive displays of Paris and France that has been on screen.

The film is the most successful French-language film in the United States for a reason; its beautiful, colorful sequences capture the eye and the mind, beckoning the viewer to come join Amélie on her journeys through Paris.

The film is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a bit idealistic, but there are few better options out there to get you into the Parisian spirit of old than Amélie.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame may be Disney’s most underrated animated film, and it’s a shame, because the movie musical, released in 1996, is not only one of the best-animated films released before the year 2000, but it’s one of the most fun and exciting representations of historical France on film.

As is always the case, anything is possible with animation, and in Hunchback, this is no different. The buildings, many of which of course you can still visit on your own trips, are drawn as imposing and powerful. Sadly, however, as we probably all know, Notre Dame was ravaged by a fire and is currently undergoing restoration but nearby Charles Cathedral (one of Frances UNESCO World Heritage Sites) can still be visited should you wish to experience a similar feeling.

The streets are filled with period-accurate peasants, and the systems and rulers in place in the film are all historically accurate. It’s a darker, more nuanced film than almost anything else Disney had released at the time, and that alone makes it worth a watch; however, its fantastic depiction of medieval France makes it an essential viewing when it comes to the best movies set in Paris .

You can’t talk about France without talking about food, so perhaps it is unsurprising that there are multiple food-based movies on this list. Julie and Julia , released in 2009 and directed by cinema-legend Norah Ephron, tells the separate but interconnected stories of two women: chef Julia Child and young New Yorker Julie Powell.

Powell’s story takes place in New York City in 2002, but Child’s story is based in Paris in the 1950s. The set and costume design of these portions are stunning, some of the best we’ve ever seen, and there’s no film (besides those made in the time period itself perhaps) that we can think of that captures the magic of mid-century France better than Julie and Julia.

That’s not to mention all of the amazing shots of scenes of food as well. Check it out – not only will you be inspired to visit France yourself, but you’ll probably fire up the stove before the credits have even rolled!

One of if not the most iconic films of the French New Wave movement, Breathless , directed by the legend of world cinema Jean-Luc Godard, is so accurate and raw in its portrayal of late 1950s France that the shots of the city featured in the narrative film might as well be considered documentary footage.

This was a hallmark of the New Wave movement of course — realistic footage shot on smaller, portable cameras than were previously unavailable — but Goddard’s imagery is even more striking than his contemporaries.

His black and white shots of the Parisian streets feel like undiscovered homemade videos, even upon rewatch, and we can bet that seeing them will make you want to go take your own, albeit on better cameras than Goddard even had available.

La Haine tells the story of three men — a Jewish man, a Black man, and a Muslim – across the period of one day and one night.

The men, all of whom are friends, each come from a poor immigrant neighborhood in the suburbs of Paris, and the film, one of the most critically acclaimed French films of all time, is a powerful, impactful, and heavy-hitting piece of cinema. La Haine is probably the hardest film to watch on this list — you won’t find anything here that resembles the beautiful, sweeping shots of Amélie — but it is essential viewing for those who want an understanding of the darker side of the country they’re planning to visit. 

Wendy Ide of The Times perhaps stated it best in her review “ La Haine is one of the most blisteringly effective pieces of urban cinema ever made”. With praise like that, how could we not include it as one of the best movies set in France?

Leaving the dark corners of the city for the exposed and open landscapes of the country, Portrait of a Lady on Fire , released in 2020, is one of the most beautiful and impactful French films in recent memory.

Directed by French filmmaker Céline Sciamma and starring actresses Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel, the film is a historical romance movie, though its themes are far more wide-reaching than that alone.

The beautiful shots of the water and land, shot in Saint-Pierre-Quiberon in Brittany, are some of the most stunning we’ve ever seen, and if they don’t compel you to take a train to the modern French countryside, we hardly know what will.

Telling the inspiring true story of a rich aristocrat who becomes great friends with his hired caretaker, The Intouchables is one of the most commercially successful French films of all time.

However, the movie is so much more than a moneymaker, and the heartwarming tale of friendship and love at its center is sure to resonate with all audiences. It helps too, of course, that the film features a number of impressive and awe-inspiring shots of the French world.

Seeing François Cluzet and Omar Sy go on a wild paragliding adventure through the French Alps is all we need to book our tickets to France today.

The story in 2016’s Paris Can Wait is one that we can only hope to experience someday — an impromptu road trip through the French countryside sounds exactly like what we all could use right now. Starring Alec Baldwin alongside Diane Lane, this light romance movie is not the best-reviewed film on the list, but it certainly captures the French imagination as well as any other movie set in the country.

Much of the landscape footage feels documentary in nature, and it makes sense, as director Elanor Coppala had only directed nonfiction films up until this point in her career.

An iconic novel and medium-defining musical, Les Misérables the film may not have as much staying power as the sources on which it is based, but if you’re looking for a movie to show you the slums of the city up close and personal (we’re not sure why you’d be looking for that but stick with us) then 2012’s version of the Les Misérables epic is the film for you.

The film was met with quite a bit of criticism from critics and fans alike upon release, but one thing is for certain when it comes to Les Misérables, the set design was not the problem. For this reason, we’ve included it on the list. You can say as much as you want about Russel Crowe’s tenure as Javert (heaven knows plenty of other folks on the internet have written enough about that), but the backgrounds and scenery of Les Misérables the film bring the story together in a way unmatched by any version of the tale before.

It’s almost as if you can smell the wet and dingy streets that the characters are singing on and, while we certainly wouldn’t want to spend much time on them in that state, many of those same locations and areas still exist today and are absolutely ready for you to visit now!

The Da Vinci Code is not a good film. We know this, you know this, and almost anyone who has seen the film probably knows this as well. However, The Da Vinci Code is an incredibly enjoyable film, and it just so happens to take place, in part in France, so we’ve added it here at the tail end of our French-set movie list.

The inside look at The Louvre at the outset of the film is incredibly fun to watch, and even though Tom Hanks and company eventually leave French borders, the convoluted tale is irreversibly tied to France. We also like the Da Vinci Code because it features a few locations that aren’t always seen in movies about Paris. The Da Vinci code seems like a film that couldn’t stay away from the Eifel Tower if it tried, but, surprisingly, the locations we visit in the film are all, for the most part, accurate and lesser-known.

We can’t guarantee you’ll make any life-changing religious discoveries at these locations of course, but, and we can’t believe we’re saying this either, if you use The Da Vinci Code as your guide to Paris, you’ll end up on a shockingly comprehensive tour of the city.

So, there it is! Our top 12 films to get your wanderlust stirred up in the direction of the city of love. Have you booked your flight yet? Gotten a train ticket?

These dozen movies all depict and explore the country of France in different manners, but they all, in some way, respect and honor the country that attracts so many. Happy watching, and happy travels!

• Trip Advisor

movie theater - best movies about france Pixabay

Movies to watch before you visit France

By Naomi Dalton

A great way to start immersing yourself in French culture and language before visiting France is to watch a few French movies or movies set in France. The first French-language film I ever watched was Les Visiteurs with actor Jean Reno (of Leon fame). We were in French class at school and our teacher let us watch the film as it was the last double lesson before we finished for the holidays. Prior to that, I’d always been too lazy to watch foreign language films - reading the subtitles seemed like too much work! 

But we all found Les Visiteurs very funny (and certainly preferable to doing French grammar exercises!). It was about a Gallic knight and his dim-witted servant who were transported from 12-Century medieval France to the year 1993 after a wizard’s spell goes wrong. Their endeavors to get to grips with their new reality, their interactions with modern life and the people around them, and their attempts to get back to where (and when) they came from is highly entertaining - and if it can impress a 15-year-old British kid, I’m sure you’ll love it! 

That began my love affair with French cinema and anything to do with France in general. Other personal favorites of mine include Amélie , Midnight in Paris, Les Choristes and Intouchables.

Here is a list of films we’ve put together which we think will help bring France and the French language alive for you. We’ve included a range of comedies, historical movies, and English-language films set in France, to cater for a range of tastes. Enjoy!

Movie Trailer of Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (Sony Pictures Classics)

Old French Classics

Les tontons flingueurs (monsieur gangster) (1963) .

This black and white French classic is really funny, especially the dialog. When former gangster Fernand (Lino Ventura) receives a call from a dying friend, a mob boss nicknamed "The Mexican", asking him to take care of some criminal business as well as his soon-to-be-married daughter, he reluctantly accepts. Some of the fellow mobsters aren’t too pleased about this outsider coming onto the scene, however, and come after him. Fernand is more than capable of defending himself against the onslaught of the mob, and this results in a series of comical killings.

La Grande Vadrouille (Don't Look Now - We're Being Shot at) (1966) 

Not convinced by the direct translation of the original French title (‘The Great Stroll’), this movie was released in the US under the name ‘Don’t Look Now - We’re Being Shot At’, which gives a more direct references to the themes of the film. 

Arguably one of the best French movies of all time, La Grand Vadrouille combines adventure, comedy and WWII, and held the box office sales record in French movie theaters until Titanic in 1997. In this movie, several ordinary Frenchmen help British WWII pilots avoid Nazi capture, and go on epic journey through occupied France until they reach the Swiss border.

Un Homme et une Femme (A Man and a Woman) (1966) 

The definition of a French movie classic, Un Homme et une Femme is certainly one for those who enjoy an old-fashioned romantic black and white movie. In this film, a widow and a widower find their feelings for each other extend beyond friendship. However, they are both afraid to commit due to their past tragedies, so they decide to take things slowly.

La Fille de d’Artagnan (Revenge of the Musketeers) (1994) 

In France in 1654, musketeer D'Artagnan's daughter is being raised in a convent. When the mother superior is murdered, Eloïse suspects a plot to murder the king. In an attempt to prevent the assassination and avenge the murder, she goes out in search of her father and the three musketeers. Starring French actress Sophie Marceau (also of ‘Braveheart’ fame).

Le Hussard sur le Toit (The Horseman on the Roof) (1995) 

Based on a novel by Jean Giono and adapted by JP Rappeneau, this movie stars Juliette Binoche (also of Chocolat fame) and Olivier Martinez. It will take you back to the beginning of the 19th century in Provence during the plague epidemic. In a time of war and disease, a young officer bravely tries to help a young woman find her missing husband.

Movie trailer of La Grand Vadrouille (Don't Look Now - We're Being Shot At!) (Studio Canal UK, YouTube)

Very famous comedies

Humor from different countries doesn’t always translate well (hence the term ‘lost in translation’). But these movies make references to French people that everyone can somehow relate to. 

Les Bronzés or Les Bronzés font du ski (French Fried Vacation 1 & 2) (1978-9) 

This is a parody movie highlighting the flaws of the French middle class during the 70s. French vacationers arrive at a typical ‘Club Med’ tourist resort on the Ivory Coast in West Africa, determined to forget their everyday problems and emotional disappointments. Games, competitions, outings, sunbathing and sunburn are intertwined with a succession of casual affairs. In the second movie, the vacationers return, but this time to a skiing resort. Both movies are filmed in a ‘Mockumentary’ style.

Les Visiteurs (The Visitors) (1993)

A French knight (Jean Reno) and his dim-witted servant are transported from 12-Century medieval France to the year 1993 after a sorcerer’s magic spell goes wrong. They embark upon a hilarious journey as they try to understand the modern world and people around them, search for their descendants, and try to get back to where (and when) they came from.

Le Diner de Cons (The Dinner Game) (1998) 

You might have heard of the American remake of this movie called Dinner for Schmucks in 2010 with Steve Carrel. The French original (which we prefer to the remake) was the top grossing French film at the French box office for 1998, in second place overall behind Titanic. Pierre Brochant, a Parisian publisher , attends a weekly "idiots' dinner", where guests, prominent Parisian businessmen, must bring along an "idiot" for the other guests to ridicule. At the end of the dinner, the evening's "champion idiot” is selected. But as Pierre’s life begins to fall apart during the film, it is his ‘idiot’ who stands by him.

Tanguy (2001) 

Tanguy is a 28-year-old teenager who doesn’t want to leave his parents’ home, so they hatch a plan to get him out. Today in France, we call such a person a “Tanguy” because of this movie!

Intouchables (2011) 

One of the biggest successes in French cinema. This is a very touching comedy about difference (disability, race etc). After he becomes a quadriplegic following a paragliding accident, Phillippe, an aristocrat, hires Driss, a young man from the projects, to be his caregiver.

Movie trailer of Intouchables (Movieclips Trailers, YouTube)

French Historical movies

The longest day (1962) .

The Longest Day is a black-and-white film account of the D-Day events in 1944, told on a grand scale from both the Allied and German perspectives. To reflect this, the film had three directors: Ken Annakin for the British and French exteriors, Andrew Marton for the American exteriors, and Bernhard Wicki for the German scenes. It stars many well-known acting legends, including Henry Fonda, Sean Connery, Richard Burton, John Wayne and Roddy McDowell. This will be a particularly interesting film if you’re planning to visit the D-Day beaches in Normandy on your trip to France.

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) 

An interesting film to watch if you plan to visit Rouen in Normandy, where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. This movie stars actors Milla Jovavich and John Malkovich, and tells the story of Joan of Arc, the 15th century French war heroine and religious martyr. The story begins with young Joan as she witnesses the atrocities of the English against her family. She subsequently has visions that inspire her to lead the French in battle against the occupying English forces. Her success against the English allows Charles VII to take the throne. Eventually, Joan is captured by the English, tried and executed for heresy. 

Renoir (2012) 

A movie about the famous painter’s life. In Paris, you will be able to visit the famous Renoir museum.

Marie Antoinette (2005) 

You may like to watch this film particularly if you’re planning a visit to the Palace of Versailles just outside of Paris. Marie Antoinette was directed by Sofia Coppola and starred actress Kirsten Dunst. It’s an account of the life of France's most iconic but ill-fated queen, Marie Antoinette. The film depicts her betrothal and marriage to Louis XVI at the age of 15, her reign as queen at age 19, the end of her reign, and ultimately the fall of Versailles. 

The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)

Starring Leonardo Di Caprio, John Malkovich, Gérard Depardieu and Jeremy Irons, The Man in the Iron Mask is about the legend that King Louis XIV had a twin brother that was being imprisoned to keep him from governing the country. In fact, if you are visiting the French Riviera, we can arrange for you to visit the island and the former prison where the prisoner was held, just off the coast of Cannes. 

Coco Avant Chanel (Coco Before Chanel) (2009) 

Another French-language film starring French actress Audrey Tautou (who starred in the major film Amélie. This film gives an account of how Coco Chanel became one of the most famous haute couture designers of all time.

Movie trailer of Coco Before Chanel (Sony Pictures Classics)

French Ambiance Movies

Le fabuleux destin d’amélie poulain (amélie) (2001) .

Directed by well-known French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, starring Audrey Tautou. This film is a must if you are visiting Paris! It includes very nice scenes of Montmartre and a great romantic love story. Amélie is an innocent and naive girl in Paris with her own sense of justice. She decides to help those around her and finds love along the way - but can she find the courage to let love into her life?

Paris, Je t’aime (Paris, I Love You) (2006) 

Another lovely movie to watch if you’re visiting Paris. Through the neighborhoods of Paris, love is veiled, revealed, imitated, burned out, reinvented and awakened. In Paris, love is all around.

A Good Year (2006) 

A movie by Ridley Scott starring Russel Crowe and Albert Finney. A lovely film to watch if you’ll be visiting Provence, as it includes some very pretty scenes of the region. A British investment banker inherits his uncle's chateau and vineyard in Provence, where he spent much of his childhood. He discovers a new laid-back lifestyle as he tries to renovate the estate to be sold.

Midnight in Paris (2011) 

A gorgeous portrayal of Paris in this outstanding movie by Woody Allen with an all-star cast. featuring Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams, and French actress Marion Cotillard and former First Lady of France Carla Bruni. The movie is full of nostalgia as a successful screenwriter, Gil, dreams of moving to Paris and becoming a novelist. By a touch of magic, he is astonished to find that he is able to travel back to 1920s Paris at the stroke of midnight each night to meet his literary idols. 

Moulin Rouge (2001)

Starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, Moulin Rouge will allow you to feel the cabaret ambiance of the 19th and early 20th century in Paris.

8 Femmes (8 Women) (2002) 

This French-language murder mystery film features some of the most famous French female artists. Set in the 1950s in an isolated mansion in the snowy French countryside, a family reunites for the holiday season. But there’s no time for celebration - their beloved patriarch has been murdered and the killer is one of the eight women closest to the man of the house. Funny situations arise as dark family secrets begin to be revealed. Eight women. Each a suspect. One of them is guilty. Who dunnit?

Ratatouille (2007) 

A nice animated movie about a rat who becomes a chef in a famous restaurant in Paris and befriends a young kitchen worker. 

Taxi (1998) 

Directed by Gérard Pirès and starring Samy Naceri and Marion Cotillard, Taxi is a comedy about a taxi driver in Marseilles (Samy Naceri) who avoids a speeding ticket by agreeing to serve as the arresting officer's (Frédéric Diefenthal) personal chauffeur. A French action movie with some funny moments.

Julie & Julia (2009) 

Starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, this is a great movie about French cooking - perfect if you’ll be doing a cooking class on your trip to France! Julia Child's story of her start in the cooking profession is intertwined with blogger Julie Powell's 2002 challenge to cook all the recipes in Child's first book.

Movie trailer of A Good Year (Fox International, YouTube)

We hope you enjoy watching some of these movies, and if you don’t have a trip to France planned - we hope these inspire you to visit !

All of these movies are available to buy from Amazon.com

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Travelers Reviews

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Wow ! Wow ! Wow ! We had the best 23 day trip to France. I normally plan our vacations, but after finding the France Just For You website, I knew we had to let the experts plan our 30th Anniversary. Every Bed & Breakfast was excellent. They were so beautiful and the welcome was fantastic at every one. FJFY thinks of every detail. Directions, train tickets, dates marked on maps. It’s all organized. One of our highlights was meeting all the FJFY travel agents at their new offices in Langeais!

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I was going to plan a trip for my daughter and I and quickly got overwhelmed. We didn't want to go on those tours that have you going for morning until night. We wanted to be able to take our time and enjoy our trip. That's when I found Emiliee. We wanted to stay for 3weeks and really experience France, and Emiliee did just that. Her guide books were more than I ever dreamed they would be. Every B&B we stayed at was beautiful. The hosts were wonderful and welcoming. We had the most wonderful trip and Emiliee took care of every detail. I would highly recommend them.

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There's a legitmate reason everyone is giving 5 star reviews. Truly personalized service. The guidebook and app were tailored to our requests, and the small details included, gave us great insight into the nuances of travelling in France. When an unavoidable problem came up, Emilie and Clelia were on it literally within minutes, getting it resolved. If you enjoy the freedom of travelling on your own, yet not having to worry about the details, then FJFY is an indispensable resource. I recommend them without hesitation. And I say this as someone who travels frequently, yet rarely submits reviews. Thank you to the ladies of FJFY. Where to next, Emilie?

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A Great Cultural Experience What we loved most about our wonderful trip was the special activities that FJFY hand picked and tailor made for our interests. We did an awesome cooking experience in Provence, a fun food and wine walking tour with in Nice and a very enjoyable and informative walk in Lagrasse with Carlos. We visited many local markets which were fun, learnt so much history and ate some lovely food. Coming from Australia, it was a challenge to drive on the opposite side of the road but my husband did really well. The personalised app works a teat, with links that direct you to your accommodation. A well organised trip

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We worked with Emilie to craft a 10 day trip that customized one of the trips on their website and were wonderfully pleased with our whole experience. The b&b hosts and various guided events we participated in all treated us wonderfully and were clear that Emilie had visited & vetted each property (and even rooms!) The personal tour book we received to follow allowed us to choose our activities in each area (Paris, Normandy & Loire Valley), but gave us Emilie's thoughts on her favorites - she has excellent taste! We highly recommend working with France Just For You and would do it again ourselves in a heartbeat!

We had the most amazing trip to France which was so carefully curated by Laura at France Just For You. All of our interests were catered for with a fun and interesting itinerary! Laura took the time to find out where we wanted to travel in France and what we wanted to do there and made sure there were plenty of options. Everything was taken care …

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The 10 Best French Movies Set in France, 2024

Last updated on March 27th, 2024 at 08:24 am

Table of Contents

Wondering which are the best movies set in France? I’ve got you covered.

We all have those days when we just want to binge-watch movies and for me, I love movies set in France.

I mean who doesn’t love a romantic movie, especially when France is the setting?

It’s a country that’s long captured the hearts and imagination of people from around the world. 

Is it any wonder that so many filmmakers have used France, in particular Paris, as the backdrop for their films? 

From romantic comedies to period dramas, our top ten French movies will have you hooked.

Get ready to be transported into a world of elegance, charm, and joie de vivre.

The Montmatre Movie Tour

Take the Montmatre Movie Tour and see where scenes from movies such as Moulin Rouge, Midnight in Paris and Amélie were shot.

Be the star in your own movie as you step into Parisian Hollywood in this 2.5-hour walking tour.

Chocolat (2000)

Starring: Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp and Judi Dench

Chocolat Film Locations in France:

• Flavigny-sur-Ozerain, Côte-d’Or
• Sarlat, Dordogne
• Beynac, Dordogne
• Thionville, Moselle
• Noyers-sur-Serein, Yonne

The Plot of Chocolat

This one holds a special place in my heart. My daughter was a competitive figure skater and she skated to the music from Chocolat.

Set in the late 1950s this comedy-drama tells the story of Vianne Rocher (played by Juliette Binoche) who arrives in a small French village with her young daughter.

She opens a chocolaterie, which immediately causes a stir among the conservative townspeople. Set in their ways they didn’t embrace change.

One of the villagers who takes a shine to Vianne is Roux, another outcast. As a gypsy Roux is also not accepted, which of course, complicates things. 

As Vianne continues to challenge the traditions of the village she finds herself almost shut down. However, her new friends in the village and loyal customers stand by her.

The movie ends with a celebration and an understanding that everyone is different and unique in their own way.

The Setting of Chocolat

The main drawcard for Chocolat is the town of Flavigny-sur-Ozerain where so many of the scenes were shot.

Sitting on a hilltop overlooking the picturesque Ozerain Valley, it made the perfect location for Vianne’s chocolate shop.

There were many shots of the village and a few scenes set in and around the church.

But this wasn’t the only location used in France. Two historical villages in the Dordogne region were also featured,

Sarlat and Beynac. Sarlat is home to the famous black truffle and is celebrated every year with the Fête de la Truffe . 

And Beynac is a Medieval village, listed as one of the most beautiful villages in France. It changed hands many times between the French and the British and was once the stronghold of Richard the Lionheart.

Amélie (2001)

Starring: Audrey Tautou and ‎Mathieu Kassovitz‎

Amélie Film Locations in France: there are many but I’ve listed the most popular. 

• Rue des Trois-Frères, Paris 18
• Café des Deux Moulins, Montmartre, Paris 18
• Canal Saint-Martin, Paris 10
• Gare de l’Est, Paris 10
• Rue Lepic, Montmartre, Paris 18
• Rue Mouffetard, Paris 5
• Grand escalier de Montmartre, Paris 18
• Rue Ernest Roche, Paris 17
• Le Verre à Pied Bar, 118 Rue Mouffetard, Paris
• Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, Paris 18
• Épicerie “Au Marché de la Butte”, Paris 18

The Plot of Amélie

It’s a French movie classic! Whimsical and heartwarming you instantly fall in love with the quirky characters. Plus, it is set in one of the most romantic cities in the world .

Amélie is a movie about a young woman of the same name, Amélie Poulain, who is lonely and painfully shy.

Set in Paris she works as a waitress in a small café , Café des Deux Moulins.

One day, she discovers a small box in her apartment which she realises must have belonged to the former owner. She decides to return it anonymously, which inspires her to start helping more people trying to make their lives better.

By doing this she starts to open up and move away from being the introverted person she’s always been. She befriends a reclusive artist, helps a coworker find love, and even plays matchmaker for her father. 

Along the way, she falls in love with a man named Nino, who shares her passion for collecting discarded photos from photobooths.

Amélie decides to take a chance and pursue her own happiness.

The Setting of Amélie

Another movie set in and around the streets of Montmatre . But this time with the focus on the western district, which is more suburban.

Paris itself is split into 20 arrondissements and Montmatre is number 18.

Café des Deux Moulins , where Amélie worked as a waitress, is a real café you can go to.

There’s movie memorabilia on the walls and it doesn’t look that much different to how it looked in the movie. 

It was named after the two windmills that were nearby when Montmatre was still a country village separate from Paris.

The two windmills are the Moulin Rouge, a cabaret venue, and Moulin de la Galette, a French restaurant.

Marché De La Butte, located on Rue des Trois Frères, was called Monsieur Collignon’s in the movie. It was the épicerie just around the corner from Amélie’s apartment where she would catch up on the local gossip.

A trip to Rue Lepic shouldn’t be missed. In the heart of Montmatre, you’ll recognise some of the artisan shops. Selling all sorts of speciality goods it is one of the liveliest streets in the area.

And the score of this movie is really lovely too and well worth a listen.

Moulin Rouge (2001)

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor and Jim Broadbent

Moulin Rouge Film Locations in France: Set in Paris , Moulin Rouge, was unfortunately not filmed on location. Most of the movie was filmed in a studio in Australia. However, Baz Luhrmann does a fantastic job of reeling you into the gritty world of the Moulin Rouge and the atmosphere of Montmatre.

BOOK YOUR VIP TICKETS TO THE MOULIN ROUGE >>>

The Plot of Moulin Rouge

As a lover of musicals, this film for me has it all, singing, dancing and elaborate costumes and sets.

Set in Paris in the early 20th century, the film tells the story of a young writer, Christian, who falls in love with cabaret actress Satine.

Christian dreams of becoming a writer and on arriving in Paris is swept up into the bohemian culture of the Montmartre district. It’s here where he meets a group of artists and performers who frequent the Moulin Rouge cabaret. 

Hired to write a new show for the Moulin Rouge Christian meets Satine.

They begin a secret love affair, even though Satine has been promised to the wealthy Duke of Monroth, who is financing the Moulin Rouge’s new production. 

The show is a hit but tragedy strikes.

Satine falls ill with tuberculosis and in the emotional final scenes of the movie, she dies in Christian’s arms.

The Setting of Moulin Rouge

Although not filmed on location the Moulin Rouge is very much a real place. Having been to the evening show there I can highly recommend booking tickets.

I did the Cabaret Show with Champagne , and it was fantastic. 

The Moulin Rouge was founded in 1889 by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller. The cabaret was known for its extravagant shows, which featured can-can dancers, acrobats, and other performers.

When I went the can-can dancers were still performing topless.

It really was the symbol of Parisian nightlife at the turn of the 20th century.

However, it wasn’t without controversy. The performers and the nightclub were thought of as vulgar and looked down upon by the more conservative of Paris society.

Montmartre itself is the hub of Bohemian Paris and attracts artists, writers, performers and creatives of all types.

Sitting in one of the many cafés in Place du Tertre (Artist’s Square) you can drink in the atmosphere, and imagine life as it was in 1899 for Satine and Christian.

The Bourne Identity (2002)

Starring: Matt Damon, ‎Franka Potente‎ and Julia Stiles

Bourne Identity Film Locations in France:

• 104 Avenue Kléber, Paris
• Passage Plantin, Paris
• Gare du Nord, Paris 10, Paris
• Pont Neuf, Paris 1, Paris,
• Seine River, Paris
• Jardin des Tuileries, Paris 1, Paris
• Hôtel Regina, Paris 1, Paris
• Place des Etats-Unis, Paris 8, Paris
• Boulevard de Denain, Paris
• Hotel de la Paix, 4 rue Louis Bonnet, Paris
• La Grande Arche de la Défense near Paris
• Rue de Jarente, Paris 4, Paris
• Pont des Arts, Paris 1, Paris
• 2 Place du Marché Sainte-Catherine, Paris

The Plot of Bourne Identity

I was lucky enough to meet Matt Damon when I was in LA. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tongue tied. He was just lovely and nothing like his character in this movie.

Bourne Identity is an action-packed thriller which follows the story of Jason Bourne.

He wakes up on a fishing boat in the Mediterranean Sea with no memory of who he is or how he got there.

As he tries to piece together his identity, he discovers he has a set of highly specialized skills. Realising he’s being hunted by a team of assassins trying to eliminate, him he needs to uncover the truth about his past, and quickly.

With the help of a woman named Marie, he uncovers the truth about his past and his role in a secret CIA program called “Treadstone”.

In a chase across Europe, there are many twists and turns which leave us on a cliffhanger waiting to find out more.

STAY AT THE HOTEL REGINA WHERE THE MOVIE WAS FILMED – CHECK AVAILABILITY>>>

The Setting of Bourne Identity

Although not all of the movie is filmed in France Paris does have a starring role and it’s easy to take the Metro to get each one.

Bourne’s Paris apartment is located at 104 Rue du Jardin. Although the actual filming took place at 104 Avenue Kleber, just north of Trocadero.

Gare du Nord, which has appeared in many movies, is where Jason Borne leaves his red bag containing his money and several identities in the luggage lockers. 

The Hotel Regina, a five-star hotel near the Tuileries Gardens, is where Bourne discovers his alter ego John Michael Kane was staying. Marie goes into the lobby and cleverly gets the phone records from the hotel clerk. 

And of course, there is always the background of the Seine River.

Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris saw Bourne meet up with Treadstone Chief.

And then the Pont des Arts is where Jason Bourne mysteriously disappears.

So many great locations to enjoy.

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Starring: Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman

Marie Antoinette Film Locations in France:

• Chateau de Versailles, Versailles
• Opéra National de Paris Palais Garnier , 8 rue Scribe, Paris 9
• Fontainebleau, Seine-et-Marne
• Château de Chantilly, Chantilly, Oise
• Vaux-le-Vicomte, Seine-et-Marne
• Chateau de Millemont, Millemont, Yvelines
• Hotel du Soubise, Paris

The Plot of Marie Antoinette

I’ve always been fascinated by Versailles and Marie Antoinette . On a trip to Paris a few years ago we’d planned to go only to find it didn’t open on a Monday.

The movie tells the story of Marie Antoinette, the Archduchess of Austria , and her journey to becoming Queen of France.

We meet her leaving Austria and arriving in Versailles as a teenage bride.

Her arrival in Versailles is met with hostility and resentment from the courtiers. And she struggles to adapt to her new life and the demands of the court.

Indulging in lavish parties, fashion, food and entertainment, she has no idea of the suffering, poverty and hunger of the people of France.

As the French revolution starts to take hold, and her lavish lifestyle continues, she is forced to flee Versailles to the Tuileries Palace in Paris.

The family are arrested and imprisoned and the movie comes to an end with Marie Antoinette’s execution by guillotine.

GET YOUR TICKETS FOR THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES HERE >>>

The Setting of Marie Antoinette

A lot of the movie was indeed filmed at the Palace of Versailles .

Originally built as a hunting lodge for King Louis XIII in 1624, it was Louis XIV, who transformed it into a palace. He then moved the royal court from Paris to Versailles in 1682.

Still one of the most popular tourist attractions in France the lavishness of the palace continues to draw people in.

One of the most spectacular areas is the Hall of Mirrors where courtiers would wait for an audience with the King.

The chandeliers, the gold and all the gilded details are simply dazzling.

But Versailles isn’t just about the inside of the palace. There is also Les Jardins, over 800 hectares of land designed by 17th-century landscape designer André Le Nôtre.

There are numerous statues, pools, perfectly shaped shrubbery and fountains. 

Further on is the Queen’s Hamlet, Domaine de Trianon, a place where she could escape the formalities of course and relax.

It’s worth booking a Tour of Versailles Palace , and don’t my mistake of trying to go on a Monday.

You can also do the Tour of Notre Dame which includes the Conciergerie, where Marie-Antoinette was once imprisoned.

La Vie En Rose (2007)

Starring: Marion Cotillard, Sylvie Testud and Gérard Depardieu

La Vie En Rose Film Locations in France:

• Olympia, 28 boulevard des Capucines, Paris 9
• Pontoise, Val-d’Oise
• Rue Berthe, Paris 18
• Rue Ravignan, Paris 18
• Rue du Ranelagh, Paris 16
• Brasserie Julien,16 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, Paris 10

The Plot of La Vie En Rose

I loved this movie, probably because my Dad was such a massive Edith Piaf fan. In fact, one of the pieces played at his funeral was ‘No Regrets’.

The movie follows the life of Edith Piaf from her childhood through to reaching fame. 

We get a look at her tragic childhood where she was brought up in the brothel where her mother worked.

Losing her sight for a short period of time nothing came easy to her. 

Singing on the streets for money she catches the eye of a cabaret owner, who gives her a break in his club.

There, she’s discovered by a wealthy man named Louis Leplée, who becomes her manager and helps launch her career. 

Piaf becomes a star in France and performs around the world, but her personal life is fraught with tragedy and heartbreak.

She has a series of tumultuous relationships, including one with boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins). It ends in tragedy when he dies in a plane crash.

Her life is fraught with tragedy and heartbreak with a series of tumultuous relationships, including one with boxer Marcel Cerdan, which ends in tragedy when he dies in a plane crash.

She becomes increasingly reliant on drugs and alcohol, and dies at the age of 47.

A reported 500,000 people lining the streets for her funeral.

The Setting of La Vie En Rose

Split between Paris, Prague and the studio, the film captures the essence of Paris during different periods in its history.

We go from the gritty streets of Belleville where Piaf grew up, to the glamour of the cabarets where she performed.

We’re given a tantalizing look at Bouillon Julien (Brasserie Julien), an Art Nouveau brasserie in the 10th arrondissement.

It actually was a regular haunt of Edith Piaf as it was around the corner from her lover’s, Marcel Cerdan, boxing gym.

Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, the famous cemetery in Paris, where Piaf is buried was shown in the film’s final scenes.

Ratatouille (2007)

Starring: ​​ Patton Oswalt, Will Arnett and Peter O’Toole

Ratatouille Film Locations in France

• Rooftops of Paris
• Eiffel Tower
• La Tour d’Argent

The Plot of Ratatouille

For me, this is one of the best animated films out there. And as it’s set in Paris, it deserves a place in my Top Ten Films Set in France.

It follows the story of a young rat named Remy who dreams of becoming a chef.

Living in the sewers he becomes separated from his family and ends up in the kitchen of a famous Parisian restaurant called Gusteau’s. 

He becomes friends with garbage boy Linguini. Through a series of events, ends up becoming the chef of the restaurant by controlling Linguini like a marionette with his hair.

However, things become complicated when the head chef of Gusteau’s discovers Remy’s involvement in the kitchen. And tries to expose him as a rat.

Everything comes right in the end and Linguini becomes the official chef with Remy as his trusted sous chef. 

The Setting of Ratatouille

One of the things you’re probably wondering is if Gusteau’s is actually a real restaurant. 

Whilst Gusteau’s itself is fictional it’s based on the very real La Tour d’Argent .

The Michelin-star restaurant is said to be the oldest in Paris serving food since 1582.

Queen Elizabeth II with the Duke of Edinburgh visited back in 1948 as part of their first official trip outside the Commonwealth.

It’s like stepping back in time to another century and is fine dining at its best. You can absolutely see where the inspiration came from for Gusteau’s.

Julie & Julia (2009)

Starring: Meryl Streep. Stanley Tucci and Amy Adams

Julie & Julia Film Locations in France

• Rue Mouffetard, Paris 5th
• Île St-Louis, Paris 4
• Île de la Cité, 4
• Restaurant Deux Magots , 6 Place St-Germain des Prés
• Restaurant Le Grand Vefour, 17 Rue de Beaujolais
• Shakespeare & Company Bookstore, 37 Rue de la Bûcherie
• Restaurant Au Pied de Cochon, 6 Rue Coquillière
• Dehillerin Kitchen Supplies, 18 Rue Coquillière, 75001

The Plot of Julie & Julia

When I first went to see this film at the cinema blogging was still not huge and was very much at the start of its journey.

It was Amy Adams’ character who inspired me to start blogging. And boy aren’t I glad I did.

The movie follows two parallel storylines. The first one focuses on the life of Julia Child, an American chef who introduced French cuisine to the American public through her cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”.

It shows her struggle to be taken seriously as a chef in Paris and to get published. 

The second storyline follows the life of Julie Powell, a young woman who works as a government employee in New York City.

Feeling unfulfilled in her job she decides to challenge herself by cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook in just one year.

She starts a blog to document her progress, and it gains popularity really quickly.

As the two stories unfold, they intersect at various points, showing how both women are connected by their love of cooking.

I recently cooked one of Julia’s classics, Coq Au Vin, and you can see the recipe here >>>

The Setting of Julie & Julia

Although a large part of the movie was filmed in New York Paris still played a big part.

When Julia went to buy kitchen supplies as part of her time at cooking school Cordon Bleu she went to E. Dehillerin . Which is also where the real Julia Child went. Established in 1820 it has everything you could possibly need, and some.

If you’re a fan of hot chocolate then you need to go to Les Deux Magots in St-Germain. It’s where Julia and Paul went on their first Saturday in Paris to order a café complet . Their chocolat chaud is superb.

Every month they’d also visit Le Grand Véfour a Paris institution. Known for its oppulent decor and extravagant menu prices, it’s welcomed many famous guests since its inception in 1784.

And last but not least, is Au Pied de Cochon . This famous brasserie was a favourite haunt of Julia’s and where she’d enjoy her traditional onion soup after a night out.

Midnight in Paris (2011)

Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams and Marion Cotillard

Midnight in Paris Film Locations

• Church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Paris 5
• Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris
• Hôtel Le Bristol – 112 Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris 8
• Flea Market, Saint-Ouen, Seine-Saint-Denis
• Musée Rodin – 77 rue Varenne, Paris 7
• Musée de l’Orangerie – Jardin des Tuileries, Paris 1
• Place de l’Abbé Basset, Paris 5
• Palais Garnier, Place de l’Opéra, Paris 9
• Pont Alexandre III, Paris 7
• Shakespeare & Company – 37 Rue de la Bucherie, Paris 5
• Café du Trocadéro, 8 Place du Trocadéro, Paris 16
• Luxor Obélisque, Place de la Concorde, Paris 8
• Pont Neuf, Paris 1
• Jardin de Monet a Giverny, Giverny

The Plot of Midnight in Paris

I love this Woody Allen movie as it indulges my obsession with Paris in the Golden Age of the 1920s.

Just the thought of being able to step back in time into another era fires the imagination.

The musical score draws you in too with a lovely mix of Parisian-style music and of course, some roaring 20s classics.

The story follows Gil Pender, a disillusioned Hollywood screenwriter, and his fiancée Inez as they visit Paris with her parents.

Struggling to finish his first novel Gil falls in love with the charm and nostalgia of Paris.

One night, while wandering the streets of Paris, he is mysteriously transported back to the 1920s. He meets legendary artists and writers of the time, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Pablo Picasso.

I mean can you imagine that?

Travelling back every night at midnight he meets and falls in love with Adriana. She’s a muse and lover to some of the most famous artists of the time, including Picasso and Modigliani.

As his time travel continues, Gil must choose between his love for Adriana and his life in the present.

STAY AT THE HOTEL BRISTOL WHERE THE MOVIE WAS SHOT – CHECK AVAILABILITY >>>

The Setting for Midnight in Paris

If this movie doesn’t make you fall in love with Paris and book a trip straight away, I don’t know what will. There are so many iconic locations featured in this movie.

The Hôtel Le Bristol is where Gil and Inez stay during their trip and quite a few scenes are shot here.

But for me, it’s the Latin Quarter that I love, in particular rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève.

It’s in this area where Gil sits on the steps of the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont waiting to be transported back in time to the 1920s.

Flea markets are a big thing in France so it’s great to see Gil and Inez take a trip to Le Marché aux Puces de Saint Ouen , one of the biggest flea markets in the world.

And as you would expect there are many scenes showing Gil walking along the river Seine.

One memorable scene shows a distraught Zelda Fitzgerald trying to jump into the river after a little too much champagne.

Another scene I love is where Gil spends time talking to Ernest Hemmingway about his book at Le Polidor .

It’s one of the oldest bistros in Paris and was indeed a favourite haunt of Hemmingway, amongst many others.

And finally, there’s Musée des Arts Forains , a fairground museum that hosts a party when Gil is in the 1920s.

If you’re a lover of all things vintage then you’ll enjoy seeing the old Carousel ride and other fairground amusements.

Monte Carlo (2011)

Starring: Selena Gomez, Leighton Meester and Katie Cassidy

Monte Carlo Film Locations

• Pyramide du Louvre, Cour Napoléon, Musée du Louvre, Paris 1
• Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre, Paris 18
• Eiffel Tower , Paris
• Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport
• Avenue de la Porte Neuve, Monaco-Ville, Monaco
• Hall de l’Hôtel de Paris, Place du Casino, Monte Carlo, Monaco

The Plot of Monte Carlo

I have to admit I absolutely loved this movie and have seen it countless times. It’s just so easy to watch and features so many wonderful parts of Paris.

It was a firm favourite of my daughter when we were living in Lake Arrowhead. With snow falls of 10ft+, we were often snowed in. 

The story follows Grace, a recent high school graduate from Texas who dreams of travelling to Paris with her best friend Emma. Unfortunately, Grace’s mum decides she needs a chaperone in the form of her upright stepsister, Meg.

Things go from bad to worse when the trio lose their tour bus, gets caught in the rain and has no idea where to go.

Then their luck changes when Grace is mistaken for British socialite Cordelia Winthrop Scott. Before they know it all three are whisked way to Monte Carlo for a charity auction. 

One thing leads to another and eventually, Grace is found out and everything comes tumbling down around them.

Whilst it wasn’t an Oscar-winning movie it was good escapism. A great feel-good movie that as you would expect with a romantic comedy, has a happy ending.

The Setting of Monte Carlo

All the usual tourist locations are featured including the Eiffel Tower where the girls have to sprint down the steps to try and catch their tour bus.

A scene on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur where Meg meets her love interest Riley.

And the girls are seen striding through Musée du Louvre as part of their tour.

Filming in France actually only took two weeks as the majority of the movie was shot in Hungary.

However, the most notable Monte Carlo settings were on Larvotto Beach, Port Hercule Harbor, and within Hotel de Paris .

What’s Your Favourite Movie set in France?

I hope you enjoyed my round of the Top 10 Films Set in France, and what I consider to be the best French Movies.

Have I missed one of your favourites? Let me know if I have as I’m always looking to add to my French movie list.

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Kylie Lang is the founder of Life in Rural France. She moved to France in 2016 and lives in the beautiful Charente region in the Nouvelle Aquitaine. Through the blog, she showcases the best places to visit in France, especially in the South West. From chateaux and winery tours to hotels and restaurants, she has first-hand experience of life in France.

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Beautiful Movies Set in Provence, France

There are many movies about France (and set in France), and understandably so. The country’s vibrant cities , picturesque medieval villages , snow-capped mountain peaks and dramatic coastlines create a spectacular, colourful backdrop for any French cinema set.

In the south of France, the beautiful region of Provence has been the scenic filming location for a variety of movie blockbuster movies over the last century, including ‘A Good Year’, ‘The Horseman on the Roof’, and the classic, ‘To Catch a Thief’ starring Hollywood royalty Grace Kelly and Cary Grant.

If you are interested in learning more about the best movies about Provence, France, and would like to discover some fun facts along the way, continue to read about our favourite Provence movies below!

Cezanne et Moi (2016)

One of the most interesting French movies in recent years, Cezanne et Moi features a host of French actors including Guillaume Gallienne as Cezanne the Impressionist painter, and Guillaume Canet as Emile Zola, the 19th-century novelist. Based on a true story, the pair met in the schoolyard in Aix-en-Provence and developed a strong friendship with shared hopes and dreams.

Following their move to Montmartre in Paris and subsequent returns to Aix, the movie depicts the parallels between both of their lives as one flourishes and becomes rich and famous, and the other faces countless rejections and hardships, thus, testing their friendship to the very limits.

Admirers of the French painter or the novelist will enjoy observing the patchwork landscapes of Cassis , Aix-en-Provence and the mountains and towns that inspired Cezanne such as Montagne Sainte-Victoire and L’Estaque. It’s one of the best movies set in Provence providing inspiration to anyone wishing to visit this bucolic region.

Paris Can Wait (2016)

As the name suggests, this lighthearted rom-com is all about Anne (played by Diane Lane) and her extended, yet unexpected, journey across France to her intended destination, Paris. While the plot may leave you wanting, the movie’s swoon-worthy locations make up for any lack of sustenance.

Of all the movies filmed in Provence, France, this one packs a lot of sightseeing into its modest length. It starts out in Cannes, before heading towards Aix-en-Provence and past the majestic Mont Sainte-Victoire. They then head up into the Luberon – see if you can spot some iconic hilltop towns as they drive by! – before weaving through picturesque lavender fields and strolling by the Pont du Gard. They then head up through the rest of the country, taking in many more sights, before eventually arriving in Paris .

If you loved “Under the Tuscan Sun” (also starring Diane Lane in the lead role), you’ll enjoy this languid spin through the French countryside. Directed by Eleanor Coppola, it’s the ideal movie to watch when planning your next trip to the South of France.

A Good Year (2006)

Hollywood actor Russell Crowe teams up with director Ridley Scott once more, post – ‘Gladiator’, to act in a very different role. ‘A Good Year’ is a romantic comedy that sees Crowe star alongside Marion Cotillard, Albert Finney and Tom Hollander. And it makes the list as it’s set in the French countryside of beautiful Provence, France.

This entertaining movie set in the south of France was filmed mostly in the Luberon region . It follows the journey of Max Skinner, an arrogant, workaholic British investment broker who inherits his uncle’s vineyard and chateau and ultimately, after a rocky start and fracas with a bicycle, finds love with Fanny Chenal (Marion Cotillard), that is, after much back and forth to London and plenty of dodgy dealings!

The movie showcases Provence at its finest. The vineyard and estate that Max inherits from his uncle (Albert Finney) is still a working winery known as Chateau La Canorgue in Bonnieux. The wine shop and vineyard can be visited , but they make it clear on their website that they want people to come for the wine, and not just for the opportunity to snap a selfie at this iconic spot.

Viewers of ‘A Good Year’ by Peter Mayle will also be treated to scenes in Gordes and Place de l’Etang in Cucuron, surrounded by twinkling lights, plane trees and the iconic Cucuron bassin .

My Summer in Provence / Avis de Mistral (2014)

While there are arguably better ways to spend an hour and forty-five minutes of your time, My Summer in Provence ( Avis de Mistral in French), does allow you to escape into the rustic scenery of Provençal landscapes – if you can withstand the cliché plotline.

Rose Bosch directs this French drama/comedy in which two Paris siblings, and their deaf-mute younger brother, get sent to the Provence countryside to stay with their grandparents. What ensues is a predictable tale of teenagers coming around from their phone addictions and eventually taking to their surroundings – helped by their respective love interests of course..

This Provence film takes place primarily in Les Alpilles and the Camargue area, which is an interesting change from the usual Luberon or Cote d’Azur locations. Expect plenty of olive groves, charming small villages, local fetes, and seaside scenes.

Related Reading: Best French Films on Netflix

Love Actually (2003)

Box Office smash ‘Love Actually’ is a festive-themed romantic comedy set primarily in London, UK and directed by Richard Curtis. It was mostly filmed in and around the iconic landmarks of the English capital and showcases the complex lives of several characters played by big-name actors such as Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightly and Laura Linney.

In the movie, Colin Firth’s character, a writer called Jamie, finds his girlfriend in bed with his brother, and subsequently, he flees to the South of France to write. While staying at a house in the Var, he meets a Portuguese woman named Aurelia. Many scenes were also filmed in and around Marseille, including the proposal scene which is supposedly taking place in Portugal but is actually also filmed in the French city.

Fans of ‘Love Actually’ who are visiting can pop into Bar de la Marine on Quai de Rive Neuve and relive the moment whilst on holiday in Provence. The bar boasts a typical 1930s setting, delicious food and views of the Old Port.

Swimming Pool (2003)

Taking a break from romantic comedies, Swimming Pool is a Thriller/Drama from director François Ozon. Starring Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier, the fictional story follows British Crime Novelist Sarah Morton (Rampling) as she takes up at her publisher’s holiday house in the South of France. But her plans to write in solitude become unhinged when the publisher’s daughter Julie (Sagnier), turns up unannounced.

A series of romantic trysts and mysterious encounters ensue as the two women cohabitate, all the while feeding material for Sarah’s new novel.

The film is set in the Luberon, and while it largely takes place at the country home in Ménerbes, various scenes show off a little more of the surrounding area of Oppede Le Vieux, including Le Petit Cafe which features in the film.

Mr Bean’s Holiday (2007)

In a nod to the days of silent movies, haphazard Mr Bean, played by Rowan Atkinson, returns with more fun and awkward escapades, this time on holiday in the south of France.

The basic plot line begins with Mr Bean winning a trip to Cannes in a raffle, and on his journey south via train from Gare de Lyon in Paris, chaos ensues after a series of chance encounters.

Viewers and visitors to Provence will recognize Gare TGV d’Avignon where he disembarks the train, the region of Vaucluse, where the 1940’s war scenes were set, and Boulevard de la Croisette in Cannes, where the annual film festival takes place. Other locations to look out for on Mr Bean’s Holiday include Avenue Olivula & Chemin de Saint Michel, home to Plateau Saint-Michel, a panoramic observation point with coastal views in upscale Villefranche-sur-Mer.

French Kiss (1995)

The 90’s romantic comedy movie ‘French Kiss’ starring Meg Ryan and Kevin Cline was filmed on location in Paris and along the glittering Cote d’Azur in the south of France.

This modern-day love story is about Kate (Meg Ryan), an American history teacher who flies to France to confront her cheating husband-to-be. On the flight, she meets a charming, yet annoying thief Luc (Kline) who uses her to smuggle diamond jewellery into Europe. Unbeknownst to Kate, Luc’s plan is to use money from selling the necklace to purchase a vineyard in the region . The problem is that Luc’s movements are also being monitored by the French gendarmerie.

The movie is filmed in Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris , a firm favourite of Hollywood movie directors, and then in the Intercontinental Carlton Hotel in Cannes.

The charming village of Valbonne, 15 minutes inland is also used to film several scenes and fans can head for Chateau Val Joanis in Pertuis, Vaucluse where the movie’s grape harvest scenes were filmed. It is one of the movies with the best scenery on our list and fun to watch too.

‘French Kiss’ also stars talented French actor Jean Reno as Inspector Jean-Paul Cardon.

Taxi (1998)

Taxi is a French film encompassing the action/crime/comedy genres written by Luc Besson and directed by Gerard Pires. It is said that Besson wrote the movie script in just 30 days while awaiting the green light for The Fifth Element to go ahead.

Daniel (Samy Naceri) is a pizza delivery guy living in Marseille , who consistently defies traffic laws and the local gendarmerie. While in a relationship with Lilly, played by Marion Cotillard, he leaves his job to become a taxi driver in his modified Peugeot 406. What ensues is a thrilling cat and mouse game between Daniel, a police inspector and a group of German robbers.

Relatively unknown actors and the city of Marseille were originally chosen due to budgetary constraints, however, as the movie progresses, we begin to see that the city becomes a focal point and scenic star of the show.

Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

Woody Allen directs this romantic comedy starring the dashing Colin Firth, and the brilliant Emma Stone. Set in the French Riviera, you’ll be delighted to recognize many popular towns, such as Nice, Menton , and Antibes.

The film, which is set in the 1920’s, follows an English Magician (Firth) who travels to the South of France in an effort to denounce an American so called spiritualist (Stone). But things don’t always go to plan, and the former rationalist finds himself wondering if magical powers really do exist.

During the movie, you’ll be treated to sights of grand French villas (in their heyday), the Nice observatory, sultry beaches in Saint-Raphaël, and the Casino Barrière in Menton.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

The 1955 movie ‘To Catch a Thief’ is a romantic, jewel heist mystery starring Hollywood royalty Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.

In this, one of the centuries’ timeless films set in Provence, John Robie, (Grant) is a retired jewel thief who attempts to prove his innocence after being suspected of a new crime following a series of thefts in the area. At the same time, he attempts to romance heiress Frances Stevens played by Grace Kelly. Alfred Hitchcock directs this early cinematic masterpiece which takes place in the resplendent South of France.

In the film, Cary Grant’s villa is located in Saint-Jeannet, one of the aptly named ‘perched villages’ a couple of miles northwest of Nice. Crime capers ensue on the roads around the pretty villages of Le Bar sur Loup and Tourettes sur Loup, before continuing into the principality of Monte Carlo, home to one of the world’s most iconic casinos.

Nice flower market where Grant’s character meets the insurance man from Lloyds played by John Williams was not filmed in the real Cours Saleya in the Old Town which still exists today, but in a recreated area a few blocks north on Boulevard Jean Jaures. The reason for the location switch? Practicality. The road was wider to film on.

Fans of old movies and cinematic greats will adore this classic while gaining a rare glimpse of French culture and fashion in the Cote d’Azur in the 1950’s.

Transporter 3 (2008)

In the third and final instalment of this action thriller genre, British actor Jason Statham continues his role of professional ‘transporter’ Frank Martin, who in this movie, returns to France to deliver ‘packages’ with no questions asked.

Frank is on a fishing trip with Inspector Tarconi when his companion receives a call about a car evading a police chase. That evening, the same vehicle crashes into Frank’s home containing a wounded transporter named Malcolm who is wearing a metal device around his wrist. Without giving too much of the plot away, Frank is tasked with returning the young woman in the back of the car, Valentina (Natalya Rudakova), a kidnapped daughter of a government official from Marseille to Odessa, Ukraine.

Frank’s house in the movie was built on a set in Cassis in Provence and it also serves as a terrace for La Presqu’ile Restaurant in Port Miou. Visit the area to marvel at crystalline jade-coloured waters and hike the coastline within the Calanques National Park .

The Horseman on the Roof (1995)

One of the finest movies set in south of France, based on the novel by Jean Giono is ‘The Horseman on the Roof’ starring renowned French actors Juliette Binoche and Olivier Martinez.

This French-language movie is set in the early 1830s, when the countries of France, Italy and Austria were at war, plus, unfortunately, there was also a cholera epidemic going on.

In 1832, Angelo (Martinez) meets Pauline (Binoche), and both begin to search for Pauline’s husband in a country ravaged by war and disease. For the movie, Olivier Martinez learned to ride a horse, fence and speak the Italian language. It is also noted that Keanu Reeves was interested in the script and met with director, Jean-Paul Rappeneau for the role, but a French actor was preferred for the part.

Francophiles will recognize the opening party scenes were filmed in historic Aix-en-Provence and that many pieces of exterior footage were taken in Avignon. In fact, the movie travels to over 50 locations in Provence to film including Chateauneuf-Miravail in Correns (the first organic village in France), beautiful Sisteron with its citadel and mountainous backdrop and Gorges de la Meouge awash with abundant flora and fauna.

For those wishing to learn more about this region of France and be entertained via the silver screen for a short while, this is one of the best movies in Provence to watch.

Ronin (1998)

With a stellar cast including Robert de Niro, Jean Reno, Stellan Skarsgard, Sean Bean and Natascha McElhone, Ronin tells the story of a team of special operatives hired to steal a briefcase containing mysterious contents.

After a thrilling start to the movie in Montmartre, Paris, filming makes its way to southern France where one of the most elaborate car chase scenes in movie history takes place on the streets of Villefranche-sur-Mer.

A total of 80 cars were destroyed during the making of the movie, such was the director’s vision to get each scene exactly right. Although De Niro and McElhone didn’t drive the vehicles themselves, the cast did commandeer former Formula 1 racing driver Jean-Pierre Jarier to do the honours! One of the most memorable movies made in France, primarily for the car scene.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

I loved watching this fantastical movie as a kid, and while it’s a bit of a stretch to include it in a list of Provence films – one of my favourite scenes was shot right here in the South of France.

Most of the film follows the family of inventor Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) as they travel in their magical family car, named Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, throughout stunning locations in England and Germany. But the iconic beach scene – where the Truly Scrumptious (Sally Ann Howes) character is introduced – is filmed on Cap Taillat near St. Tropez .

The remote beach makes for an idyllic backdrop to this scene. Want to visit it yourself? Follow this guide .

Similar Posts

The Best Hotels in Aix-en-Provence, France

Discovering Provence’s Hidden Gems – Château de Cadenet

Best Day Trips from Nice, France

Walking the Ochre Trail – Breathtaking Natural Beauty in Provence

The Best Day Trips From Aix-en-Provence, France

Must-Read Books About Provence (& Beautiful Provence Coffee Table Books)

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The 100 best French movies of all time

Got a few months to spare? These are the 100 best French movies ever released – ranked by our global critics

In the popular imagination, ‘French’ is often used as a euphemism for pretentiousness, and that’s especially true for its movies. For mainstream audiences, the country’s films are painfully stylish, achingly cool and totally impenetrable, laden with philosophy, avant-garde structures and emotionally unreadable characters. It’s not entirely untrue: after all, pioneering New Wavers like Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda prided themselves on confounding viewers. But the truth is, few countries can claim to have exerted as strong and consistent an influence over global moviemaking as France. Once you start digging into the history of French film, though, you’ll discover pleasures unlike those found anywhere else in world cinema.

Admittedly, though, knowing where to start can be difficult. Consider this your tourist pamphlet. On this list of the 100 best French films of all-time, you’ll find everything from well-known crowd-pleasers like Amélie  and Criterion-canonised classics to obscure gems sure to challenge even deep-diving Nouvelle Vague obsessives. No matter your experience level, you’re sure to discover something surprising. 

Written by  Tom Huddleston, Geoff Andrew, Dave Calhoun, Cath Clarke, Trevor Johnston, Joshua Rothkopf,  Keith Uhlich  and   Matthew Singer  

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Best French movies

1.  Les Enfants du Paradis (1943)

Director: Marcel Carné

In Marcel Carné’s rich, literary romance from 1945 (‘France’s answer to “Gone with the Wind”!’), four men tussle for the affections of one woman, the conflicted, sphinx-like Garence (Carné regular Arletty), an ice maiden in the league of Marlene Dietrich who, in nearly every shot, has her eyes masked by a beam of light. Such ethereal, delicately cinematic touches add to a film which is content to let a dazzling, witty script (by Jacques Prévert), sumptuous set design and exceptional performers lend the fiction its lifeblood. DJ

2.  La Règle du Jeu (1939)

Director: Jean Renoir

Banned on its original release as ‘too demoralising’, and only made available again in its original form in 1956, Renoir’s brilliant social comedy is epitomised by the phrase ‘everyone has their reasons’. Centreing on a lavish country house party given by the Marquis de la Chesnaye and his wife (Dalio, Gregor), the film effects audacious slides from melodrama into farce, from realism into fantasy, and from comedy into tragedy. Romantic intrigues, social rivalries, and human foibles are all observed with an unblinking eye that nevertheless refuses to judge. The carnage of the rabbit shoot, the intimations of mortality introduced by the after-dinner entertainment, and Renoir’s own performance are all unforgettable. Embracing every level of French society, from the aristocratic hosts to a poacher-turned-servant, the film presents a hilarious yet melancholy picture of a nation riven by petty class distinctions. NF  

3.  The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927)

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

Dreyer’s most universally acclaimed masterpiece remains one of the most staggeringly intense films ever made. It deals only with the final stages of Joan’s trial and her execution and is composed almost exclusively of close-ups: hands, robes, crosses, metal bars, and (most of all) faces. The face we see most is, naturally, Falconetti’s as Joan, and it’s hard to imagine a performer evincing physical anguish and spiritual exaltation more palpably . Dreyer encloses this stark, infinitely expressive face with other characters and sets that are equally devoid of decoration and equally direct in conveying both material and metaphysical essences. The entire film is less moulded in light than carved in stone: it’s magisterial cinema, and almost unbearably moving. TR

4.  Playtime (1967)

Director: Jacques Tati

Tati’s Hulot on the loose in a surreal, scarcely recognisable Paris, tangling intermittently with a troop of friendly American matrons on a 24-hour trip. Not so much a saga of the individual against an increasingly dehumanised décor, it’s more a semi-celebratory symphony to Tati’s sensational city set, all reflections and rectangles, steel, chrome, gleaming sheet metal and trompe-l’oeil plate glass. Shot in colour that looks almost like monochrome, recorded in five-track stereo sound with scarcely a word of speech (the mysterious language of objects echoes louder than words), this jewel of Tati’s career is a hallucinatory comic vision on the verge of abstraction. SJO

5.  Le Mépris (1967)

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Le mépris . That’s ‘contempt’ in French, and that’s the feeling Camille (Brigitte Bardot) increasingly has for her writer boyfriend Paul (Michel Piccoli) during the time he’s summoned to Rome’s Cinecittà film studios and the stunning island of Capri to help Austrian-born Hollywood director Fritz Lang (playing himself) and coarse American producer Prokosch (Jack Palance) improve their movie version of Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’. Much of the film gives us Camille and Paul’s disintegrating relationship as he’s simultaneously seduced and repelled by the world of filmmaking. It shows Godard and his collaborators – especially cinematographer Raoul Coutard, composer Georges Delerue and editor Agnès Guillemot – at the height of their powers, creating scenes and moments of extraordinary visual power, suggestion and beauty. Like Camille and Paul’s love-hate relationship, it’s the ultimate testament to Godard’s complicated relationship with his art. DC

6.  Amélie (2001)

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Arguably the quintessential subtitled film for people who don’t like subtitled films (it’d be a dust-up between this and ‘Cinema Paradiso’), Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s rose-tinted Parisian romance is likely to be the role for which actress Audrey Tautou will be remembered until her dying day. The film is all the more interesting for remaining an eccentric one-of-a-kind that feels every bit the product of its writer-director’s unique sensibility and worldview. Revisiting it now, it still has the same strengths: the experience of watching is like being swept along on a tidal wave of cheeky jokes and oddball observations. DJ

7.  L’Atalante (1934)

Director: Jean Vigo

1934’s ‘L’Atalante’ is the single feature from the then 29-year-old French master Jean Vigo and was made as its director died of TB. The result is not so much a film as an entire artistic vision crammed into 89 of the busiest and most beautiful minutes of celluloid ever shot. Dita Parlo plays Juliette, the smalltown girl married off to Jean (Jean Dasté), captain of L’Atalante, a grubby barge plying the waterways of rural France. Once on board, Juliette is caught between her uncertain love for Jean and her desire to see a world beyond the restrictive confines of the boat. The situation is complicated by the constant interruptions of Jean’s beloved but irascible first mate Pére Jules (Michel Simon). The result is something utterly indescribable, partway between comedy and tragedy, romance and realism, film and dream. TH

8.  Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Director: Agnès Varda

‘Cléo from 5 to 7’ (1962) was French new waver Agnès Varda’s second feature and is filled with the beauty of Paris’s natural light. ‘Hold on, pretty butterfly!’ says Cléo (Corinne Marchand), a fretful and fame-occupied singer, to herself as she prepares to roam the city for two hours while awaiting a possibly momentous doctor’s verdict. It’s experimental and free-wheeling in design – Varda gives us overlapping dialogue, parodic inserts, a documentarist’s eye mixed with a painter’s, found sound and Michel Legrand’s songs, and juxtaposes frippery with political reality. Quietly touching and profound, it epitomises the youthful delight Varda always shows for the tools at her disposal and her sensitive and easeful way of expressing the sways and shifts of life, love and desire. WH

9.  The 400 Blows (1959)

Director: François Truffaut

In 1959 François Truffaut, neglected son, passionate reader, delinquent student and cinephile, wrote and filmed one of the first glistening droplets of the French New Wave, ‘The 400 Blows’, in which Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) demonstrates – unforgettably – that a good brain and bad parents don’t necessarily turn a boy into a talented film director, although they will, one way or another, turn him into a liar. Antoine is an inept thief who winds up incarcerated; somehow, Truffaut turned this saga into one of the most joyous experiences you could ever have in the cinema. The beauty of monochrome ’50s Paris helps, but the magic is in observing the thrill even a maltreated child will snatch from a book, a film or a day truanting at a funfair, through the gaze of a former critic whose elation at getting his hands on a camera burbles through every shot. NC

10.  La Belle et la Bête (1946)

Director: Jean Cocteau

A gorgeous, pin-sharp remaster for poet-dramatist-artist-director Jean Cocteau’s giddy, sumptuous 1946 retelling of the Freudian fairytale about a helpless girl and a kindhearted monster. Slightly pompous preamble aside, this ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is pure joy, a self-conscious but never precious attempt to revisit childhood fantasies and half-remembered dreams. The Beast’s ornate, decaying castle – ringed with thorns and filled with grasping hands – is a place of terror, wonder and mourning, the perfect reflection of its tragic, noble occupant. The tug of love between the monster and the maiden is never overplayed, but neither does the film shackle this beast – he remains unpredictable and threatening throughout. It has been accused of valuing style over substance, but place the film in its historical context and its true intent is revealed: in the wake of unimaginable horror, this kind of fantasy is still achievable, and perhaps more important than ever. TH

11.  L’Armée des Ombres (1969)

Director: Jean-Pierre Melville

You couldn’t imagine a more discreet tribute to the heroes of the wartime French Resistance than this terrific late-’60s thriller by the ex-Maquis member Melville, the director best known for his gangster masterpieces like ‘The Samourai’. Tracing the self-sacrificial exploits from October 1942 to February 1943 of a small group of field operatives – the acerbic Lino Ventura’s ex-engineer, Simone Signoret’s iron-nerved Mathilde among them – Melville’s film adopts a formal essentialism to outline the codes and manners of impassive-looking ‘warriors’ over whom the Damocles sword of discovery, torture and death is ever hovering. The film boasts a startling visual quality, too – the suspenseful twilight escapades are shot with a beautifully muted, steely-grey colour palette by cinematographer Pierre Lhomme – and it is laced with moments of dry, sardonic wit that serve only to emphasise its devastating emotional core even more. Superb. WH

12.  Day for Night (1973)

‘Day for Night’ is hilarious and informative, and in the pantheon of films about filmmaking, it strikes a neat balance between the operatic neuroses of ‘8 1/2’ and the warm, pastel-hued nostalgia of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’. Truffaut stars as indefatigable director Ferrand, shooting a fusty melodrama called ‘Meet Pamela’ and wearing the same sports jacket, shirt and tie combo as he would in ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. He delivers the same coolly detached performance, too, though it works better in this context. The fact that his childish lead (Jean-Pierre Léaud, of course) is too often in a strop to concentrate on the part, or that his star (Jacqueline Bisset) is a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown are accepted as part and parcel of the business. DJ

13.  Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)

Director: Jacques Demy

Jacques Demy’s pastel-hued masterpiece ‘Les Demoiselles de Rochefort’ is a luminous musical about dreams, romance and destiny which lovingly reworks the classic Hollywood ‘putting on a show’ template into an essay on the emotional rollercoaster ride that is movie-going. Released here in a sparkling new print, the film centres on Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac as the ‘pair of twins, born in the sign of Gemini’ looking to escape the sleepy environs of Rochefort for life in the big city. When an all-singin’, all-dancin’ motorcycle roadshow rolls into town, the girls decide to give one last big performance before upping sticks and moving on. Most will be swept off their feet by Michel Legrand’s scintillating jazz-pop score, charismatic supporting turns from Gene Kelly, Danielle Darrieux and Michel Piccoli, and – predominantly – Demy’s own infectious joie de vivre. DJ

14.  The Wages of Fear (1953)

• Action and adventure

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot

Throughout his professional life, France’s Henri-Georges Clouzot suffered comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock – the former's critical reputation languished for it, and he took it hard. Clouzot needn’t have worried: on a good day, he was arguably better. ‘Les Diaboliques’ (1955) is the perfect psychosexual thriller, and this earlier effort is Hitch’s bomb-under-the-table suspense formula burnished to an expert sheen. Literally explosive, the plot concerns a South American oil fire raging out of control, with only the possibility of a nitroglycerine blast to snuff it out. But which poor schmucks will transport the combustible jerricans over miles of bumpy road to the site? Clouzot’s entire body of work deserves to be revisited, but ‘The Wages of Fear’ is ground zero and undoubtedly the place to start. JR

15.  Mon Oncle (1958)

Tati’s first film in colour. Yes, his contrast of the glorious awfulness of the Arpels’ automated modernistic house with Hulot’s disordered bohemianism is simplistic. Yes, Hulot as champion of the individual is oddly de-personalised. And one might even conclude that Tati is a closet misanthrope. Such text-book reservations come and go as this extraordinary film meanders like the Arpels’ concrete garden path. But while some episodes are protracted, many are unforgettably funny, wonderfully observed, and always technically brilliant. Insane gadgets slam and roar, high heels click like metronomes, and even a depressed dachshund in a tartan overcoat obligingly submits to Tati’s meticulous direction. TS

16.  Breathless (1960)

What’s cooler than being cool? Well, Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature is pretty dang ice-cold, an exercise in style-is-substance that didn’t necessarily launch the Nouvelle Vague but ended up defining it. Narratively, it’s a threadbare crime drama about a Parisian thief (Jean-Paul Belmondo) on the run for shooting a police officer who still finds time to fall in love with an American newspaper girl (Jean Seberg). But the plot is really just an excuse to watch two incredibly beautiful people hang out in one of the world’s most beautiful cities. That’s enough to make it utterly entrancing, but what made it groundbreaking were Godard’s flights of directorial fancy: the unconventional jump cuts, improvised dialogue, the score blending classical music with French pop. It revolutionised French cinema – and later Hollywood – but with an air of iconoclastic insouciance that, of course, made it even cooler.

17.  Jules and Jim (1962)

In 1962, Truffaut released an adaptation of Henri-Pierre Roché’s novel ‘Jules et Jim’. It was François Truffaut’s third feature film, but this one was special: the young tyro director and the art collector from another era (Roché had died in 1959, aged 80) came together like, well, Jules and Jim. Roche’s autobiographical story of a Frenchman, Jim (Henri Serre) and a German, Jules (Oskar Werner) whose friendship survives the First World War and their adoration of the same woman, Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) becomes, in Truffaut’s hands, a paean to passion and an ineffably elegant classic. The filmmaking is wildly inventive, but not in a clever-clogs manner. Instead, Truffaut and his cinematographer, the great Raoul Coutard, use handheld camera, freeze-frames, newsreel footage and song in the same way the characters use races, bicycle trips or impromptu jumps into the Seine: to keep life (and cinema) crazy and beautiful at all times. NC

18.  Amour (2012)

Director: Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke’s ‘Amour’ is a devastatingly original and unflinching look at the effect of love on death, and vice versa. It’s a staggering, intensely moving reflection on old age and life’s end, which at its heart offers two performances of incredible skill and wisdom from French veterans Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. The director of ‘Hidden’ and ‘The White Ribbon’ offers an intimate and brave portrait of an elderly Parisian couple, Anne (Riva) and Georges (Trintignant), facing up to a sudden turning point in their lives. Haneke erects four walls to keep out the rest of the world, contained almost entirely within one apartment over a period of some weeks and months. He asks hard questions and creates a highly intelligent and astonishingly performed work. DC

19.  Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

Director: Robert Bresson

Animal as saint: Bresson’s stark, enigmatic parable, a donkey (named after one of the Three Wise Men) is both a witness to and the victim of mankind’s cruelty, stupidity – and love. Taking his lack of faith in theatrical acting to its logical limit, Bresson perversely places the mute beast centre-screen as he passes from owner to owner, giving rides, heaving agricultural machinery, and receiving beatings and caresses in a coolly observed landscape of poverty and folly. The effect could not be more different from that of other films (Disney’s say, or ‘Jaws’) that centre around animals; Balthazar’s death during a smuggling expedition, amid a field of sheep, is both lyrical and entirely devoid of maudlin sentiment. Imbued with a dry, ironic sense of humour, the film is perhaps the director’s most perfectly realised, and certainly his most moving. GA

20.  A Prophet (2009)

Director: Jacques Audiard

For Jacques Audiard (‘A Self-Made Hero’, ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped’), a master of the old-school French thriller, his fifth film offers the chance to pull off both a state-of-the-nation primal scream and a terrific crime flick. He gives us Malik (Tahar Rahim), a French-Arab convict who enters a concrete-and-steel hell to serve a six-year sentence. Corsican inmates rule the roost, led by ageing but vicious César (Niels Arestrup), who forces Malik to kill another inmate in an exceedingly disturbing episode. Malik is now César’s vassal, working for him on the inside and, later, using a series of day-release excursions to represent his criminal interests on the outside. But Malik is a clever individualist and he learns to read and write, and exploits a friendship with another (released) French-Arab prisoner to pursue his own drug deals and invest in a power base within the jail. It bullies and persuades you to love Audiard’s filmmaking style. DC

21.  Caché (2005)

A smart marriage of the thriller genre with a compendium of strong ideas about guilt, racism, recent French history and cinema itself, Michael Haneke’s eighth feature is an unsettling, self-reflective masterpiece. Georges and Anne Laurent (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) are a wealthy middle-class couple who are ostensibly paragons of the Parisian intelligentsia. We watch as the pair agonise over sinister CCTV sent anonymously to their apartment. For the Laurents, it’s the start of a horrific upset that mirrors the disturbing breakdown of familial comfort that characterised Haneke’s ‘Funny Games’, ‘Time of the Wolf’ and ‘Benny’s Video’. The tapes and the flashbacks, we are led to believe, are linked and Georges becomes convinced that the videos are connected to an Algerian, Majid. Haneke crafts the fabric and routine of the couple’s life with cold precision, only to upset their habits violently at regular intervals.

22.  La Grande Illusion (1937)

As relevant as ever, Jean Renoir’s 1937 masterpiece ‘La Grande Illusion’ is a film about common values and decency – the ability in all of us to act with respect and warmth towards those with whom we share bonds stronger and deeper than national boundaries and political divisions. This is an anti-war film, too, of course, made on the eve of one conflict and looking back at another. It concerns three French officers held as prisoners during the First World War by the Germans: aristocratic De Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay), working-class Maréchal (Jean Gabin) and wealthy Jew Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio). The shared purpose of the French is to the fore (one of the film’s many illusions: we can’t be sure such unity would persist in peace). DC

23.  Lift to the Scaffold (1958)

Director: Louis Malle

The great Louis Malle shepherds all the elements of a great thriller into an endlessly entertaining, quickfire 88 minutes in this juicy Parisian noir. It’s satisfying on just about every level: from its grasping, murderous schemers (played by Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet) to its plot that twists and turns in all sorts of deliriously tricksy ways. Then, there’s that classic Miles Davis score, recorded in only two days while the musician was visiting Paris. It brings the film’s existential, melancholy mood to life like few thrillers before or since, and makes Malle’s gem of a film a must-hear as well as a must-see. PDS

24.  Wooden Crosses (1932)

Director: Raymond Bernard

If you associate Champagne with fizzy wines and grand châteaux, this underseen and seriously underrated First World War drama will add a new dimension to the region. Here, it’s the setting for endless struggle in the trenches in a film that brings the French soldiers to salty, stoical life. The battle scenes – including one lengthy nocturnal skirmish in a French town – rival anything from more heralded war movies like ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ and ‘The Big Parade’, yet this film is an emotional as well as technical triumph. One of France’s lesser-known greats, director Raymond Bernard would go on to make an acclaimed five-hour version of ‘Les Misérables’, but this is his masterpiece. PDS

25.  The Chorus (2004)

Director: Christophe Barratier

Mild-mannered, unemployed music teacher Clement Mathieu is hired as a house master at the Fond de l’Etang boarding school for troubled children. From the moment Clement walks through the school gates, he can sense trouble, much of it perpetrated by the repressive headmaster Rachin, who believes that physical punishment is the only way to keep the boys in line. Clement prefers a much more caring approach to schooling and he introduces his pint-sized pupils to the magic of singing.

26.  Les Misérables (2019)

Director: Ladj Ly

On the one hand, that French-Malian director Ladj Ly’s crunching cops-and-criminals drama feels like a spiritual successor to ‘La Haine’ shows, worryingly, how little has changed in Paris’s simmering banlieues in 25 years. On the other… well, it’s not a bad film to be compared with. Like Mathieu Kassovitz’s visceral 1995 drama, Ly offers unsettling social commentary in his fully sketched ensemble of strivers, schemers and seething migrants. But he adds genre thrills to excellent effect, too, as well as the odd semi-surreal touch (the plot revolves around a missing lion cub). Don’t be surprised if we’re still referencing this one in 25 years. PDS

27.  Van Gogh (1991)

Director: Maurice Pialat

This stunningly photographed and skilfully acted film uses an accretion of naturalistic detail to present an emotionally restrained but utterly compelling account of the last three months of van Gogh’s life. Living in Auvers-sur-Oise with his sensitive and knowledgeable patron Gachet (Sety), van Gogh (Dutronc) works quietly and steadily, meanwhile flirting with Gachet’s precocious daughter Marguerite (London). However, his ill health, a brief return to the debauchery of brothels and drink, and his irrational resentment of his brother Theo’s failure to sell his work, provoke erratic swings from brooding introspection to frustrated anger. There’s no attempt to trace the origins and development of his ‘creative genius’; nor, avoiding the hazards of biopic cliché, does it seek to illuminate these dark corners of his subject’s troubled soul. In the leading role, Dutronc displays a physical frailty and stooped sadness that complements Pialat’s beautiful, poignant images. NF

28.  Pierrot le Fou (1965)

Jean-Paul Belmondo mooches up to Samuel Fuller at a party and, naturally, asks him his thoughts on cinema. Fuller replies: ‘Film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word: Emotions.’ His succinct and, let’s be honest, utterly hip rejoinder fluently captures what we’re about to undergo with Godard’s mischievous tenth film, ‘Pierrot le Fou’. We’re launched into the lunatic orbit of Belmondo’s Ferdinand and Anna Karina’s Marianne: Each is an impulsive, alienated, despairing soul who finds solace in the other’s desire for chaos and withdrawal. They head to the south of France in a hail of gunfire and Gauloises. They converse in disjointed, inhumanly droll patter, duff up gas station attendants and eagerly concoct a new civilisation on a deserted beach. As their relationship begins to fray, it all goes horribly wrong. This is a wild-eyed cross-processing of artistic, political and personal concerns, with a story that stutters, splinters and infuriates its way to an explosive finale. DJ

29.  120 Beats per Minute (2017)

Director: Robin Campillo

Have we talked about this film enough? In a time of intolerance, protest and fevered passions, Robin Campillo’s glorious, moving memoir of his time in Aids activism group Act Up in ’90s Paris captures a sense of recurring zeitgeist: just swap in Extinction Rebellion to see how its story of politically engaged young people fearing for their futures still resonates. But there’s a specificity to these characters and this story, too: its incensed, impassioned and hedonistic ensemble feel real; their fears are scary and relatable. But as the title implies, Campillo’s film takes to the dance floor to shake them loose in a flurry of loose limbs and free spirits. A film about the threat of death has never felt so alive. PDS

30.  Buffet Froid (1979)

Director: Bertrand Blier

Rigorously absurd contemporary film noir which presents every character, incident and situation known to the genre, but none of the customary explanations, motivations or consequences. A blackly surreal procession of amoral and/or illegal acts proceed haphazardly from Depardieu’s discovery of his lost penknife embedded in a dying metro traveller, and his subsequent alliance with his wife’s murderer and a police inspector, producing a cherishably Buñuelian depiction of the far-from-discreet crimes of the bourgeoisie. PT

31.  Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

Director: Alain Resnais

Something of a key film in the development of concepts of cinematic modernism, simply because – with a script by nouveau roman iconoclast Alain Robbe-Grillet – it sets up a puzzle that is never resolved: a man meets a woman in a rambling hotel and believes he may have had an affair with her the previous year at Marienbad... or did he? Or was it somewhere else? Deliberately scrambling chronology to the point where past, present and future become meaningless, Resnais creates a vaguely unsettling mood by means of stylish composition, long, smooth tracking shots along the hotel’s deserted corridors, and strangely detached performances. GA

32.  Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013)

Director: Abdellatif Kechiche

‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’ is a minutely detailed, searingly erotic three-hour study of first lesbian love. Written and directed by the French-Tunisian Abdellatif Kechiche, it is the richest film of his career. Nothing about the film’s coming-of-age narrative, nor the rise and fall of its core romance, is intrinsically new or daring, yet Kechiche’s freewheeling perspective on young desire is uncommon in its emotional maturity. Our heroine, Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos, astonishing), begins the film as a precocious high-schooler and ends as a grown woman still with plenty to learn about herself. Unlike so many same-sex-themed films that focus on coming out as the defining gay experience, ‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’ glides past that stage of Adèle’s life in a bold chronological leap, finding more nuanced drama in the evolving challenges of maintaining an unfixed sexuality. GL

33.  Le Samouraï (1967)

Melville’s hombres don’t talk a lot, they just move in and out of the shadows, their trenchcoats lined with guilt and their hats hiding their eyes. This is a great movie, an austere masterpiece, with Delon as a cold, enigmatic contract killer who lives by a personal code of bushido. Essentially, the plot is about an alibi, yet Melville turns this into a mythical revenge story, with Cathy Rosier as Delon’s black, piano-playing nemesis who might just as easily have stepped from the pages of Cocteau or Sophocles as Vogue. Similarly, if Delon is Death, Périer’s cop is a date with Destiny. Melville’s film had a major influence in Hollywood: Delon lying on his bed is echoed in ‘Taxi Driver’, and Paul Schrader might have remade ‘Le Samouraï’ as ‘American Gigolo’. Another remake is ‘The Driver’, despite Walter Hill’s insistence that he’d never seen it: someone on that movie had to have seen it. ATU

34.  A Trip to the Moon (1902)

Director: Georges Méliès

Movies had just been invented when Georges Méliès revolutionised what the medium was capable of. Humans hadn’t even figured out flight yet, and the Paris-born former magician used cinema to imagine what space travel might be like. Granted, it wasn’t a particularly realistic depiction, what with all the top hats and tail coats. But in just 18 minutes, A Trip to the Moon gave birth to sci-fi and fantasy in film, and well over a century later, both genres are still expansions of Méliès’ vision. It’s not just a historical artefact, though. Sure, special effects have come a long way in the 121 years since. But the movie’s signature image, of a cylindrical ‘space capsule’ blasting off from Earth and piercing the literal eye of the moon, retains a kind of immortal magic that lives somewhere deep within every film fan, even if they’ve never seen the whole thing before. MS

35.  Napoléon (1927)

Director: Abel Gance

Bambi Ballard’s 2000 restoration of cinema’s supreme, grandiloquent epic (63 mins longer than the version premiered by Kevin Brownlow in 1979, tinted and with an extended three-screen climax) is the closest we’re ever likely to get to Gance’s original. Despite its simplistic view of Napoleon himself – seen from childhood to the fascistic start of his empire-building as a ‘man of destiny’, guided through hardships and loneliness by his ‘inner eagle’ – the film is completely vindicated by Gance’s raving enthusiasm for his medium. All of the brilliant experiments with film language remain potent, from the montages of flash-frames to the bombastic poetry of the triptych finale; even the gags are still funny. To see this with Carl Davis’s score (lashings of Beethoven) played live is an almost unimaginably thrilling experience. TR

36.  Pot Luck (2002)

Director: Cédric Klapisch

Young French economics student Xavier takes part in a European exchange programme in order to land his dream job. He is sent to Barcelona, where he shares an apartment with a melting pot of nationalities including English rose Wendy, Italian stud Alessandro, kind-hearted Dane Lars and Belgian girl Martine. The strangers quickly bond and embark on a series of misadventures, some of them drawn together by the heady scent of romance.

37.  I Lost My Body (2019)

Director: Jérémy Clapin

In the spirit of grown-up animations like ‘Persepolis’ and ‘Waltz with Bashir’, this odyssey through Paris’s suburbs marries escapism with a philosophical side that’s profound and very moving. Its two-threaded story follows a lovelorn pizza delivery boy – voiced in French by Hakim Faris and in English by Dev Patel – and a disembodied hand with shades of Thing in ‘The Addams Family’ as they overcome obstacles (a lack of meaning and inquisitive pigeons) in the search for something ineluctable but elusive. Full of tough truths yet open-hearted, it’s a rare but winning blend of magical and social realism. PDS

38.  Le Corbeau (1943)

David Thomson calls Clouzot’s a ‘cinema of total disenchantment’. This exposé of a malicious small town in France must be one of the most depressed films to emerge from the period of the German Occupation: everyone speaks badly of everyone else, rumours of abortion and drug addiction are rife, and a flood of poison-pen letters raises the spiteful hysteria to epidemic level. Clouzot’s misanthropy concludes in total defeat; his naggingly over-insistent style occasionally achieves a great blackness. CPE

39.  Belle de Jour (1966)

Director: Luis Buñuel

A perverse valentine to this coolest of Gallic beauties, Belle de jour stars Catherine Deneuve as Séverine, a Parisian housewife dressed in Yves Saint Laurent, who is married to Pierre (Sorel), a handsome, dull doctor. Séverine makes fervent protestations of love but cannot, alas, consummate; instead she succumbs to theatrically erotic reveries — of being whipped by two burly coachmen, pelted with shit while wearing a diaphanous white gown, elaborately bound to a tree. When she hears of a high-class madam (Page) who operates a brothel out of her apartment, Séverine takes a day job as a classy whore servicing middle-aged businessmen. In the age of ‘Desperate Housewives’ and S&M porn, there’s little in ‘Belle de Jour’ that shocks — but that seems beside the point. The film is an act of pure fetishism, and Deneuve its willing object. TB

40.  La Haine (1995)

Director: Mathieu Kassovitz

Twenty-four hours in the Paris projects: an Arab boy is critically wounded in hospital, gut-shot, and a police revolver has found its way into the hands of a young Jewish skinhead, Vinz (Cassel), who vows to even the score if his pal dies. Vinz hangs out with Hubert (Koundé) and Saïd (Taghmaoui). They razz each other about films, cartoons, nothing in particular, but always the gun hovers over them like a death sentence, the black-and-white focal point for all the hatred they meet with, and all they can give back. Kassovitz has made only one film before (the droll race-comedy ‘Métisse’), but ‘La Haine’ puts him right at the front of the field: this is virtuosic, on-the-edge stuff, as exciting as anything we’ve seen from the States in ages, and more thoroughly engaged with the reality it describes. He combats the inertia and boredom of his frustrated antagonists with a thrusting, jiving camera style which harries and punctuates their rambling, often very funny dialogue. The politics of the piece are confrontational, to say the least, but there is a maturity and depth to the characterisation which goes beyond mere agitprop: society may be on the point of self-combustion, but this film betrays no appetite for the explosion. A vital, scalding piece of work. TCH

41.  Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974)

Director: Jacques Rivette

Amateur illusionist Céline (Juliet Berto) and studious librarian Julie (Dominique Labourier) meet in a park and become practically inseparable — so much so that they can try on each other’s identities like best friends swapping favourite apparel. Céline is Julie, Julie is Céline, distinct yet interchangeable: un their varying guises, they dismantle all real-world attachments (a pompous boyfriend and a burgeoning magic career are playfully, hilariously tossed to the wind) so that they can focus on a fantasy. Director and co-writer Jacques Rivette conceived Céline and Julie as a light-comic breather following the heavy experience of the epochal, politically charged ‘Out 1’ (1971). Don’t let the extended running time dissuade you: this is the rare breezy three-plus-hours that manages to explore heady concepts – from the malleability of personality to the fine line separating voyeurism and participation – without once feeling laboured. KU

42.  Le Boucher (1969)

Director: Claude Chabrol

Classically simple but relentlessly probing thriller, set in a French village shadowed by the presence of a compulsive killer. Some lovely Hitchcockian games, like the strange ketchup that drips onto a picnic hamburger from a clifftop where the latest victim has been claimed. But also more secretive pointers to social circumstance and the ‘exchange of guilt’ as Audran’s starchy schoolmistress finds herself irresistibly drawn to the ex-army butcher she suspects of being the killer: the fact, for instance, that alongside the killer as he keeps vigil outside the schoolhouse, a war memorial stands sentinel with its reminder of society’s dead and maimed. With this film Chabrol came full circle back to his first, echoing not only the minutely detailed provincial landscape of ‘Le Beau Serge’ but its theme of redemption. TM

43.  Un Chien Andalou (1929)

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s surreal short is ground zero for experimental cinema and the explorations of dream logic that David Lynch would later bring to primetime. But don’t overlook its impact on the horror genre, either. Fifty some years before anyone said the words ‘torture porn,’ the 20th century’s original art terrorists sat a woman in a chair, pried her eyelids open and, in an unflinching closeup, slid a razor blade across her pupil. (In actuality, it was the eyeball of a dead horse getting slit open. Movie magic!) And that’s how the film starts . For all the  Freudian underpinnings of its subsequent imagery – rotting donkeys on top of a piano, a swarm of ants crawling from a hole in human hand – the visceral shock of that opening scene is its greatest gift to moviemaking. Filmmakers from David Cronenberg to Eli Roth have been chasing the sensation ever since. MS

44.  Les Tontons Flingueurs (1963)

Director: Georges Lautner

Homicides provide the punch lines in this classic gangster comedy. The trouble starts when dying mob boss ‘The Mexican’ (Jacques Dumesnil) summons ex-gangster Fernand (Lino Ventura) to take care of some of his business, and as can only be expected, Fernand finds himself overwhelmed as the death count gets higher and higher. Adapted from the novel ‘Grisby or Not Grisby’ by writer Albert Simonin himself, this film’s reputation has grown since its mediocre reception in the ’60s and is now a staple of French-speaking television. BR

45.  To Our Loves (1983)

Fifteen-year-old Suzanne (Bonnaire) seems unable to progress beyond a rather doleful promiscuity in her relations with boys. Her father (played by Pialat himself) understands her, but when he leaves home for another woman, family life erupts into a round of appalling, casual violence, until Suzanne escapes into a fast marriage, and finally to America. Pialat’s methods of close, intimate filming may place him close in many ways to our own Ken Loach, but his interests are rooted in a very cinematic approach to personal inner life, rather than any schematic political theory. The message may be that happiness is as rare as a sunny day, and sorrow is for ever, but a counterbalancing warmth is provided by Pialat’s enormous care for his creations. The rapport between father and daughter is especially moving. CPEA

46.  Les Diaboliques (1955)

Devilishly suspenseful, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s thriller about two women who conspire to knock off a sadistic boarding-school headmaster (Paul Meurisse) – one of the women is his wife, the other his mistress – has all the dark humour and clever tension of a Hitchcock. Simone Signoret as the peroxide-blonde mistress is the harder of the two would-be killers, while Véra Clouzot is shivering and simpering as the wife. It’s a great yarn, with a delicious twist (don’t be ‘diabolique’ and ruin the end for your friends, warn the end credits), as Signoret and Clouzot dispose of their victim but must then deal with creepy signs that their plan might be coming unstuck. Charles Vanel steals the show late on as a shambling, pre-Columbo detective, but the real star is Clouzot as director who maintains a sense of dread and mystery until the end by taking his shaggy-dog story deadly seriously. DC  

47.  Mouchette (1967)

Adapted from a Georges Bernanos story, ‘Mouchette’ describes the life and tribulations of a poor, barely mature peasant girl (played with sullen but affecting grace by non-professional Nadine Nortier), and remains a magnificent and deeply rewarding example of Bresson’s stripped-down methods of cutting and framing, sound and dialogue, performance and movement. Mouchette’s suffering has been read as religious parable, whereby her ostracism at school, the cruel neglect by her father, the insinuating glances of the villagers and her gruelling domestic duties stand for the Stations of the Cross. But whatever Bresson’s spiritual intentions the film provides boundless examples of cinema at its most sublime. In his angry yet compassionate denunciation of a rural society corrupting and undoing an unorthodox angel by self-interest, immorality, alcoholism and spiritual bankruptcy, the director conducts you to the heart of life’s paradox. WH

48.  Silken Skin (1964)

Those whose knowledge of French Nouvelle Vague  linchpin François Truffaut begins with ‘The 400 Blows’ and ends with ‘Jules and Jim’ should seek out this steely 1964 study in the cruel mechanics of illicit love. Like one of Eric Rohmer’s ‘Moral Tales’ recast as a smouldering thriller, the film is marked by an intense, unromantic rigour absent in the director’s early work. It traces paunchy, middle-aged publisher and lecturer Pierre Lachenay (Jean Desailly) as he heedlessly ditches his loving wife and child so he can romp around the countryside with a coquettish air hostess (Françoise Dorléac). It’s conservative, as Truffaut views Pierre’s actions as immoral. But it’s more concerned with the logistics of love, asking whether the time and energy one must exhaust for a little something on the side is worth it. DJ

49.  My Night with Maud (1969)

Director: Eric Rohmer

Eric Rohmer’s 1969 work made his name outside of France and preceded enduring works like ‘Pauline at the Beach’ and ‘The Green Ray’. The film gives us Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a dapper 34-year-old engineer with a good line in wry, toothy smiles who works for Michelin in Clermont-Ferrand. He’s lived in Canada and Chile, enjoyed a few girlfriends, but now he’s single, serious and more committed to his religion and future. He spies a young blonde, Françoise (Marie-Christine Barrault), at church, who he determines to marry. He follows her in his car, but she soon disappears and he bumps into Vidal (Antoine Vitez), an old friend and teacher at the local university. Vidal is an atheist and Marxist who has less rigid ideas about love and marriage, and their chat allows Rohmer to explore various ideas relating to life, relationships and our place in the world before (or perhaps in the absence of) God. DC

50.  Maine Océan (1986)

Director: Jacques Rozier

In Jacques Rozier’s iconic 1986 film, ‘Maine Océan’ is the name of the coral-hued train that runs along the coast from Paris to Saint-Nazaire, with Bernard Menez and Luis Rego at the controls. When a beautiful Brazilian dancer (Rosa-Maria Gomes) boards the train, speaking not a word of French, a discombobulated lawyer (also beautiful, played by Lydia Feld) offers her services as translator. One thing leads to another and the four find themselves on holiday together on the Île d’Yeu, an island off the Vendée coast, where desire gets mixed up with criminal doings and a few litres of alcohol. Reminiscent of Rozier’s earlier, career-making film ‘Du Côté d’Orouët’, ‘Maine Océan’ occupies an equal, if not larger, place in Rozier’s oeuvre. It is the film in which his signature digressiveness proves the funniest, freest and most touching. CC

51.  The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)

Remaking James Toback’s 1978 ‘Fingers’, director Jacques Audiard (‘Read My Lips’) has turned the story of Tom (Duris), a petty Parisian crook specialising in real-estate swindles and classical piano, into a melancholy study of alienation and reinvention. The suspense derives not so much from whether Tom will pass an audition and become a concert pianist, but from whether he’ ll succeed in leaving behind the legacy of smalltime wheeling and dealing he inherited from his father (Arestrup). Duris is a handsome performer who achieved success in popular comedies; here, he pulls off his part’s perilous balancing act beautifully. EV

52.  Plein Soleil (1960)

Director: René Clément

The word ‘smouldering’ was invented to describe Alain Delon in this stylish adaptation of author Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley . Honestly, few men have ever looked better on screen. But don’t let his beauty fool you. As Tom Ripley –  an American sent to Europe to retrieve a globetrotting playboy (Maurice Ronet) at the behest of the latter’s father – his tan-and-chiselled exterior hides a sociopathic heart, which Delon conveys with a transfixing iciness that hardly melts beneath the Mediterranean sun. What unfolds is a devilishly debonair stolen-identity thriller that still manages to leave you feeling vaguely creeped out, thanks in large part to Delon’s performance. Anthony Minghella would try his hand at another adaptation 40 years later, with Matt Damon assuming the role of Ripley, and while it was hardly a failure, Clément’s take is still superior. MS

53.  La Vie En Rose (2007)

Director: Olivier Dahan

It’s almost as if we don’t need a biopic of Edith Piaf; her life was a movie already. Born into poverty, she was discovered on the streets of ’30s Paris, singing for her supper, precipitating a remarkable rise to fame and fortune. All that was missing in her life was love, yet her romance with French boxing champion Marcel Cerdan was to be tragically short-lived. It was the making and the undoing of her: the pain somehow lent her singing an even greater emotional intensity, at the price of a punishing intake of drink and pills. She died in 1963 a mere husk of a woman, old beyond her 47 years. String that lot together and you’ve got a showbiz story to rank with ‘A Star Is Born’ for sheer all-out melodrama. In ‘La Vie en Rose’, much creative energy seems to have been expended on figuring out how to tell the story in as flash a manner as possible, without quite marking out Piaf’s troubled essent ial self . TJ

54.  Naked Childhood (1968)

Pialat’s first feature is a wonderfully delicate study of a 10-year-old boy and his decline into delinquency when boarded out with foster parents after being abandoned by his mother. With Truffaut as co-producer, comparisons with ‘The 400 Blows’ are inevitable, but there’s very little resemblance between the two films except in theme and refusal to sentimentalise. Instead of focusing on the child, Pialat concentrates on the adults: the foster parents puzzled by the boy’s delinquency since he so clearly responds to their affection; the ancient grandmother with whom he breaks through to a special relationship (very warm and funny); the welfare and adoption officers, carrying out their jobs with weary patience, but tending to treat the children as pets rather than as human beings. It’s a film in which nuance is everything; amazingly, given Pialat was working exclusively with non-professionals, the performances are stunning. TM

55.  The Class (2008)

Director: Laurent Cantet

There are high-school movies and then there are movies about high school. Laurent Cantet’s Palme d’Or-winning realist drama falls firmly into the latter category. It’s a depiction of a French language teacher, François Marin, in a secondary school in Paris’s hard-scrabble 20th arrondissement that’s told with sympathy and compassion for adults and students alike. Cantet (who parents were both teachers) has the actual teacher on whose book ‘The Class’ is adapted from, François Bégaudeau, playing Marin. It’s a casting coup that pays off as the drama moves towards its quietly heartbreaking final moments. PDS

56.  Série Noire (1979)

Director: Alain Corneau

Although the setting is changed from Big City USA to the dismal, wintry Paris suburbs, this neo-noir retains the outline of Jim Thompson’s source novel (‘A Hell of a Woman’), following the trajectory of its door-to-door salesman until, with an almost audible ‘Voilà!’, he’s deposited in an abyss of hopelessness – thief, triple murderer and not a sou to show for it. But the characterisations are turned on their heads. ‘A hell of a woman’ is here an enigmatically passive 17-year-old (Trintignant), while the weary hero is rendered hyperactive in Dewaere’s tornado-strength performance, hysterical rages, comic monologues and all. BBA

57.  Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1998)

• Documentaries

Godard’s ambitious, sweeping eight-part video project exploring, as per the pun in the film’s title, the ‘history’, ‘histories’, ‘story’ and ‘stories’ of cinema, is often considered the most important work of his late career. Examining the history of the concept of cinema and its relationship to time over the course of a 266-minute run time, this film took the French master more than a decade to make and isn’t recommended for the casual viewer. BR

58.  The Red Circle (1970)

Melville’s special achievement was to relocate the American gangster film to France, and to incorporate his own steely poetic and philosophical obsessions. He described this, his penultimate film, as a digest of the 19 definitive underworld set-ups that could be found in John Huston’s picture of doomed gangsters, ‘The Asphalt Jungle’. Darker, more abstract and desolate than his earlier work, this shows, set piece by set piece, the breakdown of the criminal codes under which Melville’s characters had previously operated. Even in the butchered version distributed in Britain (dubbed and cut to 102 minutes) it’s worth seeing: the mood remains, as does the film’s central sequence, a superbly executed silent jewel robbery in the Place Vendôme. CPE

59.  Pickpocket (1959)

Released the same year as Godard’s ‘Breathless’ (1959) and filmed on the same sun-dappled Parisian streets, Bresson’s mid-career tale of the mysterious operation of grace and redemption on the fate of a young thief is considered by many to be his masterpiece. Newcomers to Bresson’s films may be surprised to hear that this is perhaps his most optimistic, open, sensuous and sexually charged film, given its dark Dostoyevskian subject- matter. Bresson’s actors – ‘models’ – are non-professional and strictly coached; but there is no mistaking the orgasmic pleasure that sweeps the face of indolent, penurious student Michel (Martin LaSalle) as he succeeds on his first ‘dip’ at Longchamps racecourse; nor his despair as his world begins to fall apart. Bresson’s goals were deep – to sweep away the dross of expectation and viewing conventions by means of a purified cinema. CA

60.  The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

In the garage where he works, Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) plans a trip to the opera. His colleague is unimpressed: ‘All that singing’s a pain – I prefer movies.’ ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’, it’s safe to say, would not be for him: every line of dialogue (including his own complaint) is sung to Michel Legrand’s melodious songbird score. That’s not to say Jacques Demy’s 1964 favourite is an exercise in whimsy: it might start in the key of blissful romance – between gorgeous Guy and Catherine Deneuve’s luminous Geneviève, daughter of the widowed proprietress of the titular shop – but it stealthily proceeds to such mundanities as teenage pregnancy, conscription and lives divergent. Like ‘Billy Liar’ – made around the same time – ‘Umbrellas’ makes escapist play with the stuff of kitchen-sink social realism. BW

61.  La Grande Vadrouille (1966)

Director: Gérard Oury

Gerard Oury is the uncontested king of French popular comedy and, with 17 million tickets sold its opening weekend (a record that was only broken by ‘Titanic’ in 1998), ‘La Grande Vadrouille’ is, without doubt, his greatest and most enduring work. Chock-full of now-classic scenes (Bourvil and Louis de Funès whistling in a Turkish bathhouse or disguised as Nazis, moseying about the French countryside), the film is now such a fixture in France’s cultural imagination that it’s hard to remember the audacity of the original project: to make a comedy set during (and in) the Second World War, in 1966, when the war itself was still something of an open wound in the national consciousness. Most astonishingly, Oury’s expansive, multi-genre comedy (by turns witty, situational, absurdist and burlesque) refuses to take the more obvious, patriotic line, lampooning Nazis and the French Resistance alike.

62.  My Sex Life… Or How I Got Into An Argument (1996)

Director: Arnaud Desplechin

Arnaud Desplechin’s comedy about a doctoral student (Mathieu Amalric) approaching 30, plagued with self-doubt, is a hallmark of ’90s French cinema. Paul Dédalus is slowly realising that, as Gainsbourg wrote, ‘physical love is a dead end’. But beyond the film’s titular concerns (My Sex Life), its strength is in its surprising progression. Paul’s self-absorbed narrative branches out into a network of polyphonic plot lines, introducing a cast of neurotic and touching characters – all seeking, finding or avoiding each other in ’90s Paris.    

63.  Delicatessen (1991)

Director: Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The near future: taking a job and a bedsit at a shabby rooming-house above a butcher's shop, ex-clown Louison (Pinon) falls for the butcher's daughter. But her father, unhappy about the blossoming romance, deals in human flesh: will Louison fall victim, or will the Troglodistes, an underground group of vegetarian fanatics, come to his rescue? On to this slim story, writer-directors Jeunet and Caro pile a wealth of delicious comic detail. Each grotesquely larger-than-life inhabitant of the scrofulous tenement has his own little story; visually, the film evokes Gilliam, Lynch, the Coens and Carné, but the allusions never get in the way of the nightmarish humour. The sets, special effects, photography, pace and performances all contribute to the brash comic-strip vivacity, and even the fairytale romance avoids sentimentality. Increasingly inventive as it progresses, Jeunet and Caro’s fast, funny feature debut entertains from sinister start to frantic finish. GA

64.  The King and the Mockingbird (1980)

Director: Paul Grimault

The result of a long collaboration (and tortured production history) between animator Grimault and the respected screenwriter Jacques Prévert, this animated cartoon tells of the downfall of the king and kingdom of Tachycardia. Drawing upon ideas and images as different as Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ and the writings of Hans Christian Andersen, the film is distinguished by stylish graphics and an elegant visual and verbal humour that is guaranteed to appeal to all tastes and ages. The characterisations are a delight, and if the pace is occasionally as stately as the Tachycardian royal title (King Charles V-and-III-makes-VIII-and-VIII-makes-XVI), it merely allows more time to gape at the architecture of Tachycardia, a cool collage of Venetian canals, Bavarian castles and New York tower blocks that is vast, monolithic and truly vertiginous. FD

65.  La Beauté du Diable (1950)

Director: René Clair

In spite/because of what must have seemed impeccable credentials – Clair, the two leads, a screenplay by dramatist Armand Salacrou, and nostalgic, Méliès-inspired sets by Barsacq – this version of the Faust legend is a turgidly literary cocktail of escapist fantasy and Sartrean engagement which could not even plead the excuse of Carné’s comparable ‘Les Visiteurs du Soir’ of having been filmed during the Occupation. (A colour and detail-enhanced Imax version restores a previously omitted 11-minute song-and-dance number.)  GAD

66.  Une Chambre en Ville (1982)

Although one of Jacques Demy’s final films, ‘Une Chambre en Ville’ had been in the works for several decades before it was finally produced in 1982. The action unfolds in Nantes (where Demy spent much of his childhood and adolescence), against the backdrop of the historic 1953 workers’ strike; and yet, the film is essentially a love story between a steelworker (Richard Berry) and an aristocrat (Dominique Sanda). Demy’s second musical film after ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’, ‘Une Chambre en Ville’ once again demonstrates the director’s ability to whip even the most banal and formulaic story into a sublime frenzy of kitschy songs and dialogue, luscious costumes and scenery. This improbable film – set during one of France’s greatest workers’ uprisings – is pure excess, an explosion of colour, sound and feeling. CC

67.  Je t’aime, je t’aime (1969)

After a failed suicide, Claude Ridder (Rich) is visited by two men who invite him to take part in an experiment (already tried with a mouse) to project him into the past to see if he can recapture a moment of his life (since he has no wish to live, and therefore has no future, he is the perfect subject). Indifferently, he agrees, is whisked through a suburban no man’s land to a laboratory, and – accompanied by the mouse as an experienced travelling companion – sets off on his weird, fairytale trip through time, only to become hopelessly lost. As the scientists frantically try to trace their missing guinea pig, fragments of his past surface momentarily, recurringly. Beautiful, tranquil, but increasingly menacing clues to a love affair with a girl he may or may not have killed. One of Resnais’s most underrated explorations of the tone of time and memory. TM

68.  Le Goût des Autres (2000)

Director: Agnès Jaoui

Castella (Bacri) is an industrialist, married, who in his own world, is king. A dutiful trip to the theatre is a revelation. It’s not the play that moves him, but the lead actress, Clara (Alvaro). Neither young nor especially glamorous – she’s stuck in subsidised theatre – Clara touches him so deeply, she opens up horizons he’s never dreamed of: a world of art, literature, philosophy and beauty. A critical and popular hit in France, ‘Le Goût des autres’  (literally, ‘Other People’s Taste’) is a culture-clash comedy with the emphasis on ‘culture’. Agnès Jaoui aims for the droll slow burn, subtle ironies and wry observation. The film works as a one-sided love story, yet finds time to flesh out half a dozen peripheral characters, each in his or her own way as lovelorn and alone as the industrialist. TCH

69.  La Chienne (1931)

Mr Legrand (Simon), a mild-mannered, middle-aged cashier, paints as a means of expression, of escape from his shrewdish wife and the tedium of his job. After an accidental encounter with femme fatale Lulu (Marèze), he falls madly in love, setting her up in a flat which he fills with his paintings. Lulu, who loves only her pimp Dédé (Flamant), uses Legrand as a milch-cow, and when his money runs short, starts selling his paintings as her own (with the Sunday painter ironically unaware that his work is now much sought after). Freeing himself finally from his wife, Legrand arrives at the flat, only to realise that Lulu is still bedding Dédé... This is a glorious experiment in, and exploration of, the nature of cinema. Wonderfully moving, with great performances. WH

70.  Loulou (1980)

‘Loulou’ is a challenging, absorbing example of the awkward beauty of the late Maurice Pialat. It’s a keenly observed, naturalist, semi-improvised ‘slice of life’, set in the post-Women’s Lib Paris of the late ’70s, depicting class- and culture-clashing passion. A young accountant (a still-flushed-cheeked Isabelle Huppert, in one of her most sensual and mysteriously protean performances) leaves her incredulous, angered bourgeois husband for an earthy, unemployed petty ex-con (a superbly equine and cocksure Gérard Depardieu). It seems dated, but on a deeper level, it’s part of the influential Pialat’s audacious, experimental attempt to intersect the too-often parallel lines of inquiry of realist and ‘spiritual’ cinema – imagine an unholy marriage of, say, Cassavetes and Bresson. ‘Loulou’s non-judgmental insights into such universal concerns as happiness or love for others may seem initially too voyeuristic – but, beware, they have a tricky habit of haunting you long after it’s ended. WH

71.  Du Côté d’Orouët (1973)

In September, as their classmates prepare for the school rentrée , three teenage girls set off for a sea village on the Vendée coast, determined to make the most of their remaining weeks of freedom. There they meet a local man, Gilbert (Bernard Menez in his first role), who they tease and tantalise mercilessly. With its trio of teenage sirens – who spend most of the film sauntering about the coastal town in their underwear, listening to psychedelic pop or engaged in trivial banter – the film evokes Rohmer’s moral tales, although it is appreciably less austere. Produced by channel FR3 and filmed in 1969 as a TV movie, ‘Du Côté d’Orouët’ is a small masterpiece of levity and improvisation, a sweet, sensual gem of a film.

72.  A Christmas Tale (2008)

It may be Christmas for the troubled Vuillard clan in the north-west French town of Roubaix but it’s not shared seasonal goodwill that’s bringing this extended brood back together in the family home. The instigator is mother and grandmother Junon (Catherine Deneuve), who’s treating family ties as a business arrangement and calling in a genetic favour: this distant matriarch has the same disease that years ago killed her first son by her older, softer husband Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon) and now she wants one of her three adult kids, Elizabeth (Anne Consigny), Henri (Mathieu Amalric) or Ivan (Melvil Poupaud) to donate blood marrow to increase her chances of survival. For Desplechin, Junon’s crisis is an excuse to explore endless family rifts, hidden desires, past traumas and emotional diversions. The effect flits between the wearying and engrossing, as some storylines and characters work far more than others. DC

73.  Fill ’er Up With Super (1976)

Director: Alain Cavalier

Made in 1976, Alain Cavalier’s ‘Fill ’er Up With Super’ is a well-kept secret among French cinephiles. A road movie set in the South of France, it chronicles – through a series of comic and touching vignettes – the burgeoning friendship among four men forced to share a station wagon. Even in its more surreal or cinematic moments, ‘Fill ’er Up With Super’ feels incredibly fresh, authentic and uncensored; made like a shoestring documentary (with the director, camera and sound guys squeezed into the car’s backseat), it’s a heady, poignant artefact of ’70s filmmaking. CC

74.  Sauve Qui Peut (la Vie) (1979)

Godard’s return to celluloid after a decade of video is in one sense forced: his finances were drying up, and he himself admits that the film was made as a passport back into the business. But in another, this is his most personal work in years, less important for its return to narrative (the story of two women and a man joined in almost arbitrary ways) than for its chilled sense of autobiography – Dutronc plays an egotistical, washed-out video film-maker called ‘Godard’. This is a confessional fantasy about a generation of men now in middle age, alienated from their sexuality, dissatisfied with their ‘commerce’, and unwilling to cope with a new sexual/political order. It would be hard to imagine a more courageous project; harder still to find one executed with the kind of wit and haunting elegance that have made Godard so revered. CA

75.  L’Âge d’Or (1930)

‘Our sexual desire has to be seen as the product of centuries of repressive and emasculating Catholicism... it is always coloured by the sweet secret sense of sin,’ mused Buñuel in his autobiography ‘My Last Breath’. One might describe ‘L’Âge d’Or’ as 63 minutes of coitus interruptus, a scabrous essay on Eros and civilisation, wherein a couple is constantly prised apart from furious love-making by the police, high society and, above all, the Church. Financed by the Vicomte de Noailles, a dream patron who loyally pronounced the film exquisite and delicious, even as Right-wing extremists were pelting it with ink and stink bombs, this is a jagged memento of that Golden Age before directors forgot the art of filming erotica (the celebrated toe-sucking is sexier by far than almost anything since), the revolutionary avant-garde lost its sense of humour, and surrealism itself fell prey to advertising-agency chic. SJO

76.  Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Director: Justine Triet

Justine Triet’s Oscar-nominated courtroom drama evokes the adjectives expected of a great legal thriller: tense, taut, riveting, detailed. The plot is straightforward: a man dies after plummeting from the third-floor window of his chalet in the French Alps, and the only other person home at the time is his wife; naturally, she ends up on trial for his murder. Cue the extended interrogation scenes and meticulous crime-scene investigations. And yet, it’s far from standard, because the more dirt that gets turned up on cross-examination, the more the central whodunnit dissolves into a pointed examination of marriage, professional resentment and parental trauma. Sandra Hüller ( Toni Erdmann ) is magnificent as the defendant, an emotionally sewn-up author whose stoicism can either be read as calmness or coldness. In the end, Triet offers a verdict but no definitive answers, which is fine – you’ll be left pondering bigger questions than guilt or innocence anyway.

77.  Le Doulos (1962)

Darker than ‘Bob le Flambeur’, Melville’s second foray into the Parisian underworld borrows its epigraph from Céline: ‘One must choose: die... or lie?’ Appropriately, in a film devoted to the principle of duplicity, Melville teases the spectator by reproducing the police station from Mamoulian’s ‘City Streets’, while his Paris features American lampposts, call-boxes and subway entrances. At the heart of this ambiguous world is Silien (Belmondo), by repute a professional informer, who juggles twin friendships with a police inspector (Crohem) and a burglar (Reggiani). Just out of jail, afraid he can’t cut it in the underworld anymore, involved in an act of revenge that leaves him with a nasty taste in his mouth, Reggiani finds Crohem lurking in ambush when he takes on his next job. Terrific performances, and equally terrific camerawork from Nicolas Hayer – more gris than noir – conjure a rivetingly treacherous, twilit world. TM

78.  Clean Slate (1981)

Director: Bertrand Tavernier

Purists may object to Tavernier’s treatment of Jim Thompson’s excellent if sordid and sadistic thriller, ‘Pop. 1280’, but this eccentric, darkly comic look at a series of bizarre murders is stylishly crafted and thoroughly entertaining. Transferring the action from the American Deep South to French West Africa in the late ’30s, Tavernier elicits a characteristically colourful performance from Noiret as the manic but outwardly easy-going slob of a cop who initiates a private vendetta against the town’s more obnoxious citizens by resorting to murder. Strange insights into the effects of racism and the complicity of its victims, embellished with black wit and an elegant visual sense. GA

79.  La Piscine (1968)

Director: Jacques Deray

Four characters. A Mediterranean villa. Sun, sex and… suspicion. The ingredients are fairly simple in this star-powered psychological thriller which has remained underexposed outside of France. This is a deliciously languid, slinkily unsettling affair. Romy Schneider is all feline elegance and sphinx-like intelligence as the girlfriend of brooding wastrel Alain Delon. Their erotically charged St. Tropez sojourn is interrupted by the arrival of flamboyantly smug Maurice Ronet with teenage jail-bait daughter Jane Birkin in tow. Little is said, but past indiscretions hang in the air. The ’60s trappings and jazz-meets-psychedelia score are treasure enough in themselves, but it’s Deray’s beady concentration on the pointed silences and angled looks which really turn the screw. Bourgeois-scum Claude Chabrol territory, essentially, but done with a more commercial eye for showing off Schneider and Delon’s bronzed curves. TJ

80.  The Artist (2011)

Director: Michel Hazanavicius

Sometimes, an Oscar is the worst thing that can happen to a film. Before it won Best Picture,, The Artist was an enchanting style exercise – a ’20s period piece about a fading silent film star, done in the style of actual ’20s silent picture. After its triumph,  its reputation became that of a cutesy trifle that hoodwinked voters into yet another Great Oscar Mistake . A decade on, though, it’s easier to why it was nominated in the first place. Jean Dujardin is wonderful as a matinee idol staring down the talkie era and stubbornly refusing to budge. And while director Michel Hazanavicius is faithful to the silent form – there are title cards and luminous black-and-white cinematography – he’s not afraid to subvert the rules of the genre: twice, the film breaks the no-sound barrier, to striking effect. Ultimately, The Artist works because its message is in the medium: it reinvents the past to remind us that no artist should be afraid to confront the future. MS

81.  The City of Lost Children (1995)

A child smiles in his toy-filled room as Santa emerges from the chimney piece, but joy turns to terror as the bearded visitor is followed by more of the same; cut to a man screaming in a laboratory where, unable to dream himself, he has stolen the nightmare of a kidnapped orphan. The opening of another of Jeunet and Caro’s forays into the fantastique is the perfect introduction to what’s essentially a hugely inventive blend of dream, fairytale and myth, and to a strange, sinister sea-girt world that functions according to its own crazy logic. After his infant brother is abducted by a gang of semi-robotic Cyclops, strong-man One (Perlman) journeys to unite with feisty nine-year-old orphan Miette (Vittet) and go to the sea-rig laboratory inhabited by the evil Krank (Emilfork), his six cloned brothers (Pinon), their diminutive ‘mother’, and Uncle Irvin, a sardonic brain floating in a fish tank. Extraordinary. GA

82.  Le Grand Détournement / La Classe Américaine (1993)

Directors: Michel Hazanavicius and Dominique Mézerette

In 1993, Warner Bros. authorised Canal+ to use clips from WB’s back catalogue, resulting in Canal+'s ‘Le Grand Détournement’, one of the weirdest, most hallucinatory films of all time. An absurd montage, combining hundreds of clips from a dozen American movies (including ‘Jeremiah Johnson’, ‘All the President’s Men’ and ‘Rio Bravo’), this surreal film is surprisingly entertaining, mostly because writer-directors Michel Hazanavicius and Dominique Mézerette really push the idea to extremes: all dialogue has been absurdly rewritten and dubbed back into French. The nonsensical plot follows three reporters (Newman, Hoffman and Redford), all investigating the death of George Abitbol (John Wayne), described as ‘the classiest man in the world’. Silly and meandering, the film is a loose parody of ‘Citizen Kane’ and although for legal reasons it has never been sold on VHS or DVD, ‘Le Grand Détournement’ has slowly gathered a following, achieving cult-comedy status in France. CC

83.  La Collectionneuse (1967)

The third of Rohmer’s six moral tales, and the first of his films to achieve wide recognition. The collector of the title is a delectable nymphet, footloose in St. Tropez, who makes a principle of sleeping with a different man every night until two friends, declining to become specimens, decide to take her moral well-being in hand. In the 18th century game which Rohmer transposes to a contemporary setting, this pair can be seen as intellect trying to dominate instinct, but only succeeding in rousing unwanted passions. Wryly and delightfully witty. TM

84.  India Song (1975)

Director: Marguerite Duras

Duras’s main protagonist is Anne-Marie Stretter (Seyrig), a bored consular wife in ’30s India, and the film details the languorous desperation that drives her to suicide. But the formal approach to this subject is like nothing before in film history: the ‘ drama’ is entirely aural (a play of off-screen voices blending with Carlos d’Alessio’s utterly compulsive score), and the elegant visuals counterpoint it by creating an atmosphere of sumptuous enervation. Many will find it fascinating, not least because its sense of stifled anguish emerges without the least hint of aggression in the style. TR

85.  The Unfaithful Wife (1968)

One of Chabrol’s mid-period masterpieces, a brilliantly ambivalent scrutiny of bourgeois marriage and murder that juggles compassion and cynicism in a way that makes Hitchcock look obvious. The obligatory cross-references are still there (blood in the sink; the exactly appropriate final use of simultaneous backtrack and forward zoom adapted from Vertigo), but they’re no longer there to legitimise a vision now mature. Audran and Bouquet, as the first of Chabrol’s recurring Charles/Hélène couples, are superb in discovering ‘secret’ parts of each other denied as much by complacency as convention . PT

86.  Games of Love and Chance (2004)

At first, Kechiche’s follow-up to the admirable ‘La Faute à Voltaire’ looks set to be a fairly routine account of life in the Maghrebi ’hood, with 15-year-old Krimo mooning over Lydia while his ex insists to any kid who’ll listen that they haven’t in fact split up. But what makes it all so interesting is that Lydia’s practising a Marivaux play, so Krimo – against all expectations, including his own – takes up acting opposite her and gradually the whole movie begins to resemble a transplanted Marivaux play, which throws a fascinating light on the kids’ somewhat primitive sexual politics. Strong but subtle stuff. GA

87.  Les Vampires (1915)

Director: Louis Feuillade

1915: Slaughter at Gallipoli; first use of gas on the Western Front; Lusitania sunk. This serial saga (in 10 episodes) follows a band of robbers whose principals include Satanas, who keeps a howitzer behind the fireplace and a bomb under his top hat, and Irma Vep, the notorious anagram, to whom Olivier Assayas rendered homage 80 years later. There’s a hero (a resolute reporter), but all the interest goes to Irma and Co – their heists, their feuds with a rival gang and with the agents of law and order, all conducted by means of slaughter, gassing and sinking. There’s a comic-strip aspect, a roundelay of disguises, kidnappings, secret codes and acrobatic getaways. It’s possible to overstate the extent to which all this is a bunch of fun: if shown, as it often is, in one great unnatural marathon, it can be sheer torture. Best viewed on tape. BBA

88.  Les Baisers de Secours (1989)

Director: Philippe Garrel

In Philippe Garrel’s delightfully meta film, a successful director (played by Garrel) offers the lead role in his next project – an autobiographical film – to the celebrated actress Minouchette (Anémone), but his wife Jeanne, also an actress (played by Brigitte Sy, Garrel’s actual partner), feels the role should have been hers. She exacts revenge by bedding a stranger and the couple separate. The director seeks advice from his father (played by Garrel’s actual father) and eventually reconciles with Jeanne for the sake of their child (seven-year-old Louis Garrel). In a work of cinematic autofiction, Garrel provides a voluminous inventory of human feelings, while managing to avoid navel-gazing or excessive pathos. With dialogues by writer Marc Cholodenko and a jazzy saxophone score by Barney Wilen, the ‘Les Baisers de Secours’ has all the spontaneity and cool sensibility of a Cassavetes flick.

89.  Le Plaisir (1952)

Director: Max Ophüls

Ophüls’s second French film following his return from the USA was adapted from three stories by Maupassant. ‘Le Masque’ describes how an old man wears a mask of youth at a dance hall to extend his youthful memories. ‘La Maison Tellier’, the longest episode, deals with a day’s outing for the ladies from a brothel, and a brief romance. In ‘Le Modéle’, the model in question jumps from a window for love of an artist, who then marries her. Although Ophüls had to drop a fourth story intended to contrast pleasure and death, these three on old age, purity and marriage are shot with a supreme elegance and sympathy, and the central tale in particular luxuriates in the Normandy countryside. The whole is summed up by the concluding line ‘happiness is no lark’. DT

90.  La Vie de Jésus (1997)

Director: Bruno Dumont

Making use of locals instead of professional actors lends authenticity to this impressive look at a group of otherwise innocuous teenage lads in a boring northern French town (Bailleul in Flanders), driven to violence by a mixture of boredom, jealousy, macho pride and ingrained racism. Essentially it’s a work of low-key ‘realism’ in the Bressonian tradition (albeit less obviously ‘spiritual’), though it includes odd touches, such as the local marching band’s unexpectedly dissonant music, and a couple of brief sequences (involving body doubles) so sexually frank they look like out-takes from ‘Ai No Corrida’. Perhaps strangest of all is that the protagonist’s girlfriend seems for most of the film to be the only young female in town, but that’s a very minor criticism when compared to writer/director Dumont’s tough, confident handling of mood, milieu, pace, performance and theme. GA

91.  Petite Maman (2021)

Director : Céline Sciamma A small but perfectly sized treasure, 2021’s  Petite Maman had  Céline Sciamma changing gears after her biggest hit, Portrait of a Lady on Fire  –  though not in the way anyone expected. There’s a reason she’s one of our pick of the  50 coolest filmmakers in the world : she does her own thing in her own inimitable naturalist style. In this case it involves marshalling two extraordinary performances from child actors in a haunting story of mothers and their offspring that touchingly explores the rituals of play and discovery. No one else could make something so small feel so major.

92.  The Night is Young (1986)

Director: Leos Carax

In his second feature (following ‘Boy Meets Girl’), Carax combines his personal concerns – young love, solitude – with the stylised conventions of the vaguely futuristic romantic thriller. Loner street-punk Alex (Lavant) joins a gang of elderly Parisian hoods whose plan to steal a serum that will cure an Aids-like disease is complicated by the deadly rival strategies of a wealthy American woman, and by Alex falling for the young mistress of a fellow gang-member (Piccoli). Again Carax’s virtues are visual and atmospheric rather than narrative; while the script may occasionally smack of indulgent pretension, there is no denying the exhilarating assurance of individual sequences, and the consistency of Carax’s moodily romantic vision. The film is, finally, affecting, thanks to a seemingly intuitive understanding of colour, movement and composition, and to an ability to draw from earlier films without ever seeming plagiaristic. GA

93.  Sans Soleil (1983)

Director: Chris Marker

Imagine getting letters from a friend in Japan, full of images, sounds and ideas. He has a wry and very engaging sense of humour, is a movie fan, used to be an activist (though was never much into ‘ideology’), and is thoughtful and very well read. He wants to tell you stories, but he can’t find a story big enough to deal with his sense of contrasts, his wish to grasp fleeting moments, his recurring memories. Above all he hopes to excite you, to share his secrets with you, to consolidate your friendship. Now stop imagining things and go to see ‘Sans Soleil’, in which Marker, cinema’s greatest essayist, sums up a lifetime’s travels, speculations and passions. Among many other things, his film is the most intimate portrait of Tokyo yet made: from neighbourhood festivals to robots, under the sign of the Owl and the Pussycat. TR

94.  Le Feu Follet (1963)

Arguably the finest of Malle’s early films, this is a calmly objective but profoundly compassionate account of the last 24 hours in the life of a suicide. Ronet gives a remarkable, quietly assured performance as the alcoholic who, upon leaving a clinic, visits old friends in the hope that they will provide him with a reason to live. They don’t, and Malle’s achievement lies not only in his subtle but clear delineation of his protagonist’s emotions but in his grasp of life’s compromises; his portrait of Parisian society is astringent, never facile. A small gem, polished to perfection by an unassuming professional. GA

95.  Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953)

Tati’s most consistently enjoyable comedy, a gentle portrait of the clumsy, well-meaning Hulot on holiday in a provincial seaside resort. The quiet, delicately observed slapstick here works with far more hits than misses, although in comparison with, say, Keaton, Tati’s cold detachment from his characters seems to result in a decided lack of insight into human behaviour. But at least in contrast to later works like ‘Playtime’ and ‘Traffic’, there’s enough dramatic structure to make it more than simply a series of one-off gags. GA

96.  That Man From Rio (1964)

Director: Philippe de Broca

A delightfully preposterous thriller (the McGuffin is some stolen Amazonian treasure), wittier than any of the Bond spoofs that subsequently flooded the market and a good deal racier than ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’. Handsomely shot on location in Brazil, with Belmondo as the cheerfully indestructible hero who cliffhangs, climbs buildings, imitates Tarzan, parachutes almost into the jaws of a crocodile, and does his best to cope with the enchantingly unpredictable Dorléac (late lamented sister of Catherine Deneuve). The dubbing in the transatlantic version isn’t too disastrous. TM  

97.  Vincent, François, Paul et les Autres (1974)

Director: Claude Sautet

An actor’s director, Claude Sautet crafts films with an extraordinary attention to human detail, privileging dialogue and character development over plot turns or technical experimentation. Although unostentatious, Sautet’s camera work is subtly masterful, producing some very memorable images (a dour-faced Yves Montand on the telephone, filmed through a pane that reflects his laughing friends). An ensemble film, as its title suggests, ‘Vincent, François, Paul et les Autres’ follows a group of friends (played by Michel Piccoli, Gérard Depardieu, Yves Montand and Serge Reggiani) who meet regularly to commiserate over their personal troubles. A portrait of group friendship that transcends its many story lines, ‘Vincent…’ is typical of the French auteur cinema that, although universally admired by critics, is not always appreciated by its viewing public (for whom ‘cinematic realism’ is often code for ‘boring as hell’). Rest assured, ‘real life’, strained through Sautet’s lens, is deeply watchable and amusing. CC

98.  Le Trou (1960)

Director: Jean Becker

A secular response to Bresson’s ‘A Man Escaped’. No question of grace here, simply of grind and grime as four prisoners – joined and eventually betrayed by a fifth – laboriously tunnel their way to a derisory glimpse of freedom. Telling a true story, Becker maintains a low-key approach, courting reality, avoiding music in favour of natural sound, constantly stressing the sheer physicality (warders’ hands laconically slicing foodstuffs in search of hidden files, prisoners’ hands feverishly hacking at the unrelenting stone). Yet there’s more than a touch of Bresson (even more, however, of Becker’s mentor Renoir) to the close-ups that punctuate the evolving relationship between the escapees and their final discovery of a sort of forgiveness for their betrayer. Classical in its intense simplicity, this is certainly Becker’s most perfectly crafted film. TM  

99.  Remorques (1939)

Director: Jean Grémillon

A number of cross-references apply: Reed’s ‘The Key’, likewise a melancholy tale of doomed love set against a background of rough seas and salvage vessels; ‘Le Quai des Brumes’, the two stars' initial pairing, Gabin here reprising his blend of the tender and the explosive, and Morgan again entering the movie trailing clouds of sadness behind her; and Fassbinder’s ‘Querelle’ – though this one’s set in the real Brest, grey and wind-lashed, but still, cinematically, one of the capital cities of desolation. ‘Remorques’ was begun in summer ’39, shut down when war was declared and finished during the Occupation. Sometimes, as when Morgan contemplates the dead starfish which Gabin has given her, it feels precisely like the last European movie of the ’30s. BBA

100.  Enter the Void (2009)

Director: Gaspar Noé

French-Argentinian filmmaker Noé doesn’t do subtlety. He’s experimental in some ways; in others, he has the refinement of Michael Bay. ‘Enter the Void’ is his third feature and it’s a kinetic attempt, with added special effects, to capture the spirit of a city, Tokyo, and a dead young American, Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), whose ghost floats about in a vaguely Buddhist manner after being shot dead by cops soon after smoking the drug DMT. Death – and maybe the DMT – cause Oscar to revisit the events leading to his death. The seedy is the everyday. Much about ‘Enter the Void’ is rotten. The acting stinks. Noé drops facts like lead balloons, but you have to admire Noé’s ballsy vision and loopy execution, and the way he sucks you into this world with such a bold fusion of sound and image. DC

Want to feel like you’re in Paris, even when you’re not?

The 20 best songs about Paris

From nostalgic and subversive locals who capture the real essence of life in this miraculous city to wide-eyed foreign visitors riffing about what it is that makes it such a magnet for outsiders, these are the absolute best songs about Paris according to us.

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The 27 Best French Films of All Time

From New Wave classics like Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt to modern favorites like Amélie , here are the most essential French movies to watch now.

Every item on this page was chosen by a Town & Country editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

Lately, French TV has been having a moment (see: the brilliantly meta Call My Agent! and the slick caper Lupin ) , reaching a wider American audience thanks in part to Netflix's commitment to produce more content in the country. The best movies, on the other hand, have long been accessible, if only for a small rental fee on Amazon. So whether you are a diehard Francophile, need to brush up on your French, or just want an excuse daydream about—and plot—your next trip to Paris, we've curated a list of 27 French masterpieces to consider for your next movie night.

France's troubled history of racism and its continued, fraught relationship with immigrant populations are given a blistering critique in this film about three friends who struggle and clash with police while living in Paris's low-income  banlieues .

Jules and Jim

This 1962 romantic drama by François Truffaut, one of the founders of the New Wave, is set during World War I and tells the tragic story of two friends, Jules and Jim, and the unpredictable woman, Catherine, who comes between them.

In this whimsical tale, Audrey Tautou plays a shy waitress who combats her own loneliness by resolving to better the lives of those around her. Not only is  Amélie  endlessly charming and sweet, it's also a veritable love letter to Paris, and especially Montmartre.

La Grande Illusion

Considered one of the greatest films ever made—Orson Welles once said if he could save just two films for posterity, this would be one—Jean Renoir's 1937 magnum opus is about a group of soldiers plotting their escape from a German prison camp during the Great War.

Paris, Je T'aime

What could have been a clichéd premise is actually an endearing anthology of 18 stories of love and loss (directed by the likes of Alfonso Cuarón, Olivier Assayas, and the Coen brothers, and featuring an ensemble cast including Natalie Portman, Juliette Binoche, and Willem Dafoe), set in Paris's various arrondissements.

The Intouchables

Before he captured our hearts in  Lupin this year, Omar Sy became a household name thanks to this 2011 hit, which is based on a true story about a wealthy quadriplegic (François Cluzet), his live-in caretaker (Sy), and the unlikely bond that forms between them.

Le Samourai

In this 1967 neo-noir thriller, which influenced later works like The Driver  (1978) , heartthrob Alain Delon is an icy contract killer on a mission to come up with an alibi for a recent job before the police—or worse, his dangerous employers—catch up.

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

Painter Julian Schnabel's most successful (and Oscar-nominated) cinematic work was adapted from the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, about his life following a massive stroke that left him paralyzed and unable to speak—Bauby wrote the book by dictating each letter through blinking his eyes.

The 400 Blows

François Truffaut's acclaimed directorial debut about a rebellious boy in 1950s Paris is a defining film of the New Wave, a work that embodies the movement's signature traits, from the long tracking shots to its existential theme. 

If Truffaut was the father of the New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard was its most prolific  auteur —his feature debut  Breathless  is the first of his many contributions to the movement. Its immense success also catapulted actor Jean-Paul Belmondo to international stardom. 

Masculin Féminin

Jean-Luc Godard creates a portrait of youth culture, love, revolution, and politics in 1960s Paris through  Masculin Féminin 's quartet of twenty-somethings: also referred to as "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola."

La Vie en Rose

Marion Cotillard won the Best Actress Oscar (plus a BAFTA, Golden Globe, and César) for her portrayal of the legendary singer Edith Piaf in this biographical musical, becoming the first and only actor to win the award for a French-language performance. 

Hiroshima Mon Amour

This New Wave classic directed by Alain Resnais, with a screenplay by the novelist Marguerite Duras, is about a couple, a French actress and a Japanese architect, and the conversations they share about life, love, and war in the aftermath of the devastating Hiroshima bombing.

Isabelle Huppert was nominated for an Academy Award for her turn as a successful video game company CEO on the hunt for the man who raped her in her own home. The 2016 thriller was directed by Paul Verhoeven, aka the man behind the cult Sharon Stone classic  Basic Instinct . 

Blue is the Warmest Color

In this coming-of-age tale by Abdellatif Kechiche, a teenage girl (Adèle Exarchopoulos) discovers her sexuality and experiences her first love—and first heartbreak—after meeting a mysterious artist (Léa Seydoux). 

This beautiful tribute to the silent film era of 1920s Hollywood swept the awards circuit in 2011, winning 3 Golden Globes, 7 BAFTAs, 6 Césars, and 5 Academy Awards, including for Best Actor for Jean Dujardin, making him the first French actor ever to win in this category.

This 1958 Jacques Tati classic is an ingenious satire of postwar society's obsession with ultra-modern architecture (the absurdly geometric Villa Arpel is an icon), consumerism, upward mobility, and achieving status through shiny new things.

Pierrot Le Fou

Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Paul Belmondo's final collaboration is about a disenchanted man who abandons his family and cushy lifestyle  to cavort around the Mediterranean with his ex-lover. Complications arise when he learns that she is on the run from Algerian gangsters. 

This drama, depicting the professional and personal lives of the members of a police squad who deal with crimes against children, is thrilling, heartbreaking, and, as  The Hollywood Reporter   put it, "like a whole season of  The Wire  packed into a single two-hour-plus film ."

Belle de Jour

In Catherine Deneuve's most iconic role, she plays a young housewife whose more carnal and masochistic desires can't be fulfilled by her husband. So she turns to a brothel instead to work, by day, as a high-class prostitute. 

Leena Kim is an editor at Town & Country , where she covers travel, jewelry, education, weddings, and culture.

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France Travel Blog

Best French Movies on Netflix

If you are a cinephile like me, chances are that you are always thrilled to discuss or explore the best French movies on the streaming service Netflix. If you are still wondering what foreign movies to hop on that guarantees the frills and thrills of great cinematic work, you should seriously consider French movies. France arguably has the most successful film industry in Europe, both critically and commercially, and there has been an increase in the number of great French movies been released in recent years.

Given the illustrious cultural history, the cuisines, the participation in world politics, the impact of wars, and the fashion mecca that it is known as, France and French movies have won hearts all across the globe. Consequently, the nation has become one of the largest purveyors of international movies.

This is not just about filmmakers; the French film and cinema industry has offered some of the finest actresses and actors that have graced our screens. Brigitte Bardot, Léa Seydoux, Marion Cotillard, Vincent Cassel, Alain Delon, Isabelle Huppert, and Audrey Tatou are some of the internationally acclaimed actors and actresses from France or are fluent in French.

There are Many French Movies to Watch on Netflix, But Here Are My Picks:

We are Family (2016) | C’est quoi Cette Famille?!

This is one of the funniest French comedies on Netflix.  C’est quoi Cette Famille  is about a kid called Bastien and his six other half-siblings. It happened that Bastien’s parents have married but separated only to be remarried on several occasions. This ultimately meant he had several half-brothers and half-sisters whom he lived with.

After ‘enduring’ the brevity of living arrangements together with parents changing constantly, Bastien’s siblings decide not to move places any longer. Rather, they want their parents to stay with them for long. Comprising of rib-cracking moments,  C’est quoi Cette Famille  is an authentic description of the typical urbane kids’ culture.

I Am Not an Easy Man (2018) | Je ne suis pas un homme facile

This is another French comedy with the ‘Me Too’ theme that ingeniously subverts 21st-century misogynistic clichés. Shameless bigot Damien hits his head and wakes up in an alternate universe where women now have all of the power customarily possessed by men. In this unfamiliar matriarchal setting, he must live through a smorgasbord of problems like workplace and street sexual harassment, regular family and social pressure to have children, and fashions that require him to shave his whole body and don uncomfortable clothes.

I am Not an Easy Man  does a great job of dissecting how the societal ills that women face related to classic gender roles. In spite of the seriousness of the themes, this movie is a light-hearted film with a lot of happy moments and a little crude hilarity that will doubtless make you smile and, at the same time, leave you with much stuff to ponder on.

Nothing to Hide (2018) [Le Jeu]

Nothing to Hide  is the aggregation of fears, shocks, and horrors. It starts with three couples- Vincent and Marie (both doctors), Marco and Charlotte, Lea and Thomas, and Ben a lonely dude. During dinner, the seven decide to make their phone conversations, pictures, and messages public. This was something that started as a game, but it didn’t end as exactly expected.

Imagine the scene where men and women receiving sexts, voicemails from mistresses, kinky pictures, etc.; this game ended up being something no one saw coming. Without a doubt, the seven all had ghosts in their cupboards.

The Climb (2017) [L’Ascension]

The Climb  is a refreshing tale with its own uplifting and warm moments. It features Sam, an unemployed guy who is in love with Nadia but to prove his unmistakable affection for her, he promises to ascend Mt. Everest despite his zilch mountaineering experience. He goes off to Nepal with a Nutella jar and a book and is stunned by the audacity of his experience, much before reaching the mountains. Sam makes many friends en route.

The African Doctor (2016)

Seyolo Zantoko just became a doctor, and now he starts a new challenge. He moves with his family to a small French village in the rural side, where he tries to become one of the most revered doctors.  The African Doctor  is mostly about the tale of the struggles of a Congolese descent in France to integrate into society. The movie delivers a poignant narration with a tinge of comedy. Simultaneously, it also tells a timeless tale of immigrants’ challenges along with family problems.  The African Doctor  can be considered a wonderful satire of culture and race.

Divines (2016)

Divines  were nominated for a Golden Globe, and it tells the story of a teen from a broken home in Paris that crosses path with a young dancer who rocked her world. Even though the plot appears uncomplicated, it is not so simple. Every scene, character, setting, relationship, and element strikes with magnificent strength. From a daughter-mother talk to a classroom argument, almost every scene is poignant.  Divines  is a movie about survival in a crazy universe where the characters feel so real. Actresses Déborah Lukumuena and Oulaya Amamra put in incredible shifts in this movie.

I Lost My Body (2019)

In 2019,  I Lost My Body  became the first animated movie to clinch the Critic’s Week Grand Prize at Cannes. At the Academy Awards, it was also nominated for the Best Animated Feature losing to  Toy Story 4.  This rare adult animated movie deploys strange storytelling as it narrates how a severed hand that escapes from a Parisian lab to reunite with the body. It is the story, often told in flashbacks, of Noufel and his hand.  I Lost My Body  is critically acclaimed and regarded as having one of the most authentic and creative storylines.

Earth and Blood (2020)

Earth and Blood  is a thoroughly armed action thriller that was originally titled  ‘La Terre et le Sang’.  Julien Leclercq   directed the movie, which is extremely based on paramilitary and artillery display. In this flick, Said (played by Sami Bouajila) involuntarily offers a job to Yanis (played by Samy Seghir), who is a troubled guy on parole for a misdemeanor. Yanis conceals cocaine in Said’s sawmill, which his half-brother had stolen from a dangerous gang of drug dealers.

Unknowingly, Said fights to protect his daughter Sarah (played by Sofia Lessafre) as they come under attack by the gang. What happens is an exhilarating and nervous chase for safety against Adama (Eriq Ebouaney), the drug lord.

Blockbuster (2018)

This is a romantic comedy and the first Netflix-produced film that is French. Directed by Julie Hygreck, the story is about Jeremy (Syrus Shahidi), a young man who films activities from his daily life as a miniseries to stay linked with his bed-ridden dad. Lola (Charlotte Gabris), his girlfriend, works at a comic bookstore and is a superhero buff. She is also the only girl who consents to go on a date with Jeremy. But as soon as she discovers some of her boyfriend’s lost footage, she gets incredibly angry and calls it to quit.  Blockbuster  revolves around how Jeremy attempts to win Lola’s heart back.

Lost Bullet (2020) | Balle Perdue

Written and directed by Guillaume Pierret,  Lost Bullet  is about Lino (Alban Lenoir), an automobile mechanic with a criminal past who incurs police attention as Officer Charas (Ramzy Bedia), his police friend, and mentor is killed by a group of cops. To prove his innocence, Lino must find the lost bullet. If you are a fan of realistic action flicks, this movie will give you a treat of impact scenes like cars colliding, toppling, etc. It is super adrenaline-pumping.

Final Thoughts

You might have a little trouble finding some of the best movies on Netflix, but these are brilliant picks you should find easily. They range from romance to action with strong characterization, great directing, and outstanding plots that will keep you on the edge of your seat for their entire duration. And I suggest that you watch with English subtitles to understand the language and culture better. Even if you’re merely interested in improving your language skills, watching some of these French movies will let you in on how French filmmakers are shaping the industry one shot at a time

Peter is the editor of France Travel Blog. He has traveled to France many times and is ready to share the knowledge in this travel guide for France.

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French movies about time travel

In the top there are new films of 2020, a plot description and trailers for films that have already been released.

Stuck in the corridors of time, Godefroy de Montmirail and his faithful servant Jacquouille are projected to a time of profound political and social upheavals: the French Revolution... specifically, The Terror, time of great dangers, during which the descendants of Godefroy and Jacquouille had their castle and all their property confiscated by arrogant aristocrats, fleeing and lifes hanging by a thread.

Éric and Patrice have been friends since high school. Over the years, they have both taken very different paths: Éric has become a hedonist, has a string of girlfriends and is always on the look out for a new one; Patrice has become a monogamous father with a very ordered life. After a drunken evening, the two childhood friends find themselves cast back into 1986, when they were 17 years old. This return to the past is a dream opportunity to try to change the path their lives will take. What will they do with this second chance?

A French tradesman travels in time and liberates an oppressed tribe in another world.

A knight and his valet are plagued by a witch, and to repair the damage they make use of the services of a wizard. However, something goes wrong and they are transported from the 12th century to the year 2000. There the knight meets some of his family and slowly learns what this new century is like. However, he still needs to get back to the 12th century to deal with the witch, so he starts looking for a wizard.

A runaway couple go on an unforgettable journey from Boston to Key West, recapturing their passion for life and their love for each other on a road trip that provides revelation and surprise right up to the very end.

She’s the most beautiful, most short-sighted, most sentimental, most perplexing, most obstinate, most untrustworthy and most troubling of heroines. The lady in the car has never seen the sea. On the run from the police, she keeps telling herself that she’s not crazy… Only...

Rokas and Inga, a couple of young Lithuanians, volunteer to drive a cargo van of humanitarian aid to Ukraine. They cross the vast snowy lands of the Donbass region, drifting into the lives of those affected by the war.

Emile is fifteen. He lives in Montargis, between a sweet-crazy father and a mother who has always dyed his hair blond, because, it seems, he is more beautiful like that. When the girl who pleases him more than anything invites him to Venice for the holidays, he is overjoyed. Only problem, his parents decide to accompany him - This is the story of a teenager born into an unclassifiable family, the story of a first love, miraculous and fragile. This is the story of an initiatory and incredible journey where life often takes unawares, but where Venice, it will be at the rendezvous.

A teenager is stuck in a time loop that is not quite the same each time. She must uncover the truth but her actions have consequences for herself and others.

When Shaun decides to take the day off and have some fun, he gets a little more action than he bargained for. A mix up with the Farmer, a caravan and a very steep hill lead them all to the Big City and it's up to Shaun and the flock to return everyone safely to the green grass of home.

A man tries that his wife fall in love with him again, after to wake up in an alternate reality where she never knew him.

Muzafar and Feruz are two easy going shepherds from Taboulistan, a tiny country in Asia that is unknown to the rest of the world. To alert the world to his country’s existence, the son of Taboulistan’s president decides to instigate a program of publicity terrorism. To that end, he recruits our two naive shepherds, their mission: to destroy the Eiffel Tower! But the France that Muzafar and Feruz discovers is far from what they had expected...

The hunt, capture and trial of Guy Georges, one of France's most notorious serial killer.

Loulou is a wolf. Tom is a rabbit. As curious as it may seem, Loulou and Tom have been inseparable since they were little. Now in their teens, they live the easy life in the Land of the Rabbits. But Loulou, who thought he was an orphan, learns that his bohemian mother is alive. The two friends set out to find her in the principality of Wolfenberg, the Land of the Wolves. They arrive in the middle of the Meat-eaters' Festival, a yearly get together for the world's great carnivores. Will Loulou and Tom's friendship survive in the land where herbivores always end up as the main course? What incredible secret lies behind Loulou's birth?

Decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens wakes up in the body of an unknown man, discovering he's involved in a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. He learns he's part of a top-secret experimental program that enables him to experience the final 8 minutes of another person's life. Colter re-lives the train incident over and over again, gathering more clues each time. But can he discover who is responsible for the attack before the next one happens?

Every year, Bruno makes a tour of all the wine stands, without setting foot outside the Show’s premises and without ever finishing his wine trail. This year, his father suggests they finish it together, but a real wine trail, across the French countryside. Accompanied by Mike, a young, quirky taxi driver, they set off in the direction of France’s major wine regions. Together, they are going to discover not only the wine trails, but also the road that leads back to Love.

Inspector Richard Kemp never got around to putting the handcuffs around the Eardrum Slasher, a dangerous serial killer whose rampage began 20 years before. When Hélène, a psychologist, witnesses the Slasher’s latest crime and offers to testify, Kemp falls in love with her at first sight. In a mysterious turn of event, Kemp is suddenly transported back in time to the site of the Eardrum Slasher’s first murder, he realizes that this could provide a second chance to catch the killer...

Ruben, Durex and Nora are three students in their last year of college. Ruben has already failed his exams once due to his lack of self-confidence. He's been as useless with Nora, to whom he dares not confess his feelings. And his childhood friend Durex, the most embarrassing guy in the world, is no help at all. When Ruben discovers that Nora is a dealer and that she's going to Amsterdam to bring back a new kind of drug, Ruben bucks up the courage to accompany her. This trip to Amsterdam is an ideal situation in which to at last seduce Nora. But his bad luck: Durex comes along for the ride. While the trio discover Europe's craziest capital, their lives really get complicated when they realize that the drug they've just picked up belongs to one of Amsterdam's most dangerous gangsters. Very quickly, Ruben, Durex and Nora will understand that to get their old lives back, they must stop being nerds in order to become true heroes.

Camille was only sixteen and still in high school when she fell in love with Eric, another student. They later married and a child and were happy for a while. But now twenty-five years have passed and Eric leaves her for a younger woman. Bitter and desperate Camille drinks so much liquor at a New Year Eve's party that she falls into an ethylic coma and she finds herself... propelled into her own past! Camille is sixteen again when she wakes up this morning, her parents are not dead anymore and she must go to school, where she will meet her schoolmates and, of course, Eric. Is she going to fall for him again and... be miserable twenty-five years later? Or will she avoid him with the result never having her beloved daughter? Who ever said that time traveling was fun?

Set in France during the mid-1970s, Vanessa, a former dancer, and her husband Roland, an American writer, travel the country together. They seem to be growing apart, but when they linger in one quiet, seaside town they begin to draw close to some of its more vibrant inhabitants, such as a local bar/café-keeper and a hotel owner.

Toby, a cynical advertising director finds himself trapped in the outrageous delusions of an old Spanish shoe-maker who believes himself to be Don Quixote. In the course of their comic and increasingly surreal adventures, Toby is forced to confront the tragic repercussions of a film he made in his idealistic youth.

Eastern Cape, South Africa. A lonely factory worker, Xolani, takes time off his job to assist during an annual Xhosa circumcision initiation into manhood. In a remote mountain camp that is off limits to women, young men, painted in white ochre, recuperate as they learn the masculine codes of their culture. In this environment of machismo and aggression, Xolani cares for a defiant initiate from Johannesburg, Kwanda, who quickly learns Xolani's best kept secret, that he is in love with another man.

A combination of first-person stories and exclusive aerial images, HUMAN is a unique documentary. This sensitive experience is an introspection into whom we are today as a community but also and most importantly as an individual. Through wars, inequalities, discriminations, HUMAN confronts us with the realities and the diversity of our human conditions. Beyond this darker side, testimonies show the empathy and the solidarities which we are capable of. All these contradictions are ours and HUMAN leads us to reflect about the future we wish to give to people and the planet today. Filmed in 60 countries during two years, HUMAN by Yann Arthus-Bertrand draws a portrait of nowaday’s Humanity.

Four separate episodes deal with stereotypical ideas about Jews: their alleged influence on politics, the stereotype of Jewish business-mindedness, the Mossad, the Jewish world conspiracy and the memory of the Holocaust.

The adventures of the young Rémi, an orphan, collected by the gentle Madam Barberin. At the age of 10 years, he is snatched from his adoptive mother and entrusted to the signor Vitalis, a mysterious itinerant musician. Has its sides, he will learn the harsh life of acrobat and sing to win his bread. Accompanied by the faithful dog capi and of the small monkey Joli-Coeur, his long trip through France, made for meetings, friendships and mutual assistance, leads him to the secret of its origins.

Africa. In the wild expanses, where bush-bucks, impalas, zebras, gnus and other creatures graze by the thousands, they are on holiday. German and Austrian hunting tourists drive through the bush, lie in wait, stalk their prey. They shoot, sob with excitement and pose before the animals they have bagged. A vacation movie about killing, a movie about human nature.

Antoine is a joyful but disenchanted photographer. His only true friend, Mateo, is 7 years old and the son of his neighbor, who is often absent. One day, he hears a piano sonata coming from the building across the courtyard. Mesmerized by the music, he becomes obsessed by Elena, the beautiful but mysterious pianist, and starts to photograph her at every opportunity. An intense relationship develops between fragile and idealistic Elena and Antoine, who is transformed by this encounter.

The Manzoni family, a notorious mafia clan, is relocated to Normandy, France under the witness protection program, where fitting in soon becomes challenging as their old habits die hard.

Rémi Gaillard is the real character of the World network, troll, provocateur, one of the biggest-selling comic actor in Europe. One and a half milliards of viewing and millions of fans. A day came, and he decided to steady down: got married, settled down on work on a parking place, promised a pregnant wife, that also «goes away to the decree» and gives up the pranks. But how to deafen talent and disorderly conduct of fantasy?. Fans can not assume his care. Gaillard returns.

Vincent, a former air rifle champion lives a quiet life with his wife and his daughter. Despite his happy family life he ends up with economic problems. One day at the shooting range he meets the mysterious Renaud who promises him a solution to his problems by offering him an unusual job. Suddenly Vincent finds himself in a very dangerous spiral which turns out to be even harder to get out of than finding a solution to his economic problems.

The film tells the story of Malony and his education as he grows from a six-year-old into an 18-year-old. A minors’ judge and a caseworker work tirelessly to try to save the young offender.

After a bank job goes badly wrong, three desperate criminals take a young woman and a father and child hostage - it's the beginning of a frantic and violent road trip that not all of them will survive.

Fatima, an Algerian-born woman who now lives in France with her two teenage daughters, with whom she is barely able to communicate.

Plant loving Hilda, has created a museum where she preserves endangered and rare plants from all over the world. Meanwhile Attilem, a new genetically modified cereal, is launched on the market. Growing with little water and fertilizer while generating high crop field Attilem looks like an ideal solution to eradicate starvation and provide an alternative to diminishing oil reserves. But nothing is at it seems...

Between 1978 and 1979, the inhabitants of the Oise are in fear of a maniac who kills several hitchhikers and escape the police. He was then dubbed "the killer of the Oise" is actually a shy young policeman who will investigate his own murder, only to lose control of the situation.

A captured performance by Parisian nude cabaret Crazy Horse, in a surreal show directed by French footwear designer Christian Louboutin. Louboutin calls Crazy Horse “an iconic monument of Paris, a monument to dance, a modern, dream- like idea of the celebration of women for women”.

A musical drawing room farce set in Paris in October, 1925. Gilberte, in middle-age, flirts with men but loves her husband Georges, wishing he were more demonstrative. He's negotiating a deal with an American, Eric Thomson, who turns out to be Gilberte's first husband from an annulled and secret stateside marriage. Along with her sister Arlette, Gilberte begs Eric not to tell Georges about the marriage. Meanwhile, a young artist, Charly, pursues Gilberte while Arlette tries to match him with the young Huguette, who loves him. Will Eric play along or try to re-win Gilberte's affection? Can Gilberte play one off against another? And who will manage to kiss whom on the lips?

Family man François Nouel is the number one fan of the Tour de France – an obsession that costs him his wife and his job. At a loose end, François meets a former sports manager, Rémi who encourages him to take the plunge and do the Tour himself. With nothing to lose, François sets off, always one day ahead of the race, attracting fellow amateurs, media coverage and cheering crowds. As obstacle after obstacle is thrown his way, and his family comes back on the scene, François discovers what is really most important in his life.

In 1976 in Nice, Agnes, the daughter of the owner of the Palais de la Méditerranée, falls in love with an older lawyer.

An enigmatic actress (Emmanuelle Seigner) may have a hidden agenda when she auditions for a part in a misogynistic writer's (Mathieu Amalric) play.

A romantic comedy about Jean-Marc who is a convinced bachelor and also very busy. So busy that he almost missed his own daughters wedding ceremony...

Victor Bukowski is an out-of-work actor with problems. He's got a lousy agent, he has a habit of falling out with directors and he's still in love with his ex-girlfriend. However, Victor is about to embark on an unexpected emotional journey which will make him confront his future and his past mistakes.

Through unlocked genetic memories that allow him to relive the adventures of his ancestor in 15th century Spain, Callum Lynch discovers he's a descendant of the secret 'Assassins' society. After gaining incredible knowledge and skills, he is now poised to take on the oppressive Knights Templar in the present day.

Two unlikely friends — a supply teacher and a lonely young boy suspended between two estranged parents — embark on a weekend motorcycle voyage full of surprises and unforeseen consequences in this surprisingly tough, unsentimental drama.

A haunting erotic fairytale about Lucy, a young University student drawn into a mysterious hidden world of beauty and desire.

Zef’s stormy relationship with his brother Roni is further aggravated when Roni marries his daughter just as he is attending to his wife’s funeral. The two brothers have never got on with each other. One is faithful to his religion, the other lives only for the present. Between London, Paris, Saint-Tropez and New York, a series of confrontations and betrayals threatens to drive the family further apart, but out of this confusion will come a great love story, perhaps even two...

Thirty-year-old Ben is about to marry Juliette. His quiet, ordered life will fall to pieces when he meets up again with the person he secretly wants to see the most: Vanessa, the high school bombshell who never so much as looked in his direction. She's back in Paris, and the only person she now knows is him…

When the little haberdasher Arras discovers she's won 18 million in the lottery and can now afford anything she wants, she has only one fear: losing the small joys of life made simple it cherishes above all. But fate is obstinate, and this is giving too long this good fortune will trigger it, despite herself, a hurricane that will change everything. Everything except her.

Eleanor, thirties, has just lost her father. He bequeathed his house in Brittany in the Cotes d'Armor. She is a photographer, has had some success but business no longer work as before. It is imperative to sell the house. She goes there with Samuel, her former companion which she left some time ago, because she does not feel to go alone and she has not returned since the death of her father. But she is playing with fire - because she knows that their relationship did not exactly appeased, even if it was for some adventures and Samuel lives with Laura. Claire Andrieux, the real estate agent, was busy organizing visits during the two days Samuel and Eleanor will stay in the house. It's a funny weekend that these three are about to spend.A surprising weekend full of surprises, emotions, tensions, memories and shouting matches in melancholy and absurd moments that leave the couple necessarily changed.

Agathe runs an art gallery. Her husband François is a publisher. Together they have one son, and in every way seem to be the picture of normality — but emotions are stewing under the surface. All it takes is the arrival of a complete stranger for things to start unravelling. Patrick is brash, uncouth and totally unselfconscious...

AT#713 - Travel to Brittany France (Repeat)

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• April 20, 2024 (United Kingdom)
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• Runtime 54 minutes

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