Philippe Faucon Movies

The tensions between a young Arab nurse and her elderly Jewish charge come to a head when the family of the frustrated medical attendant is forced to take in the ailing patient they believe to be their mortal enemy in this down-to-earth take on a long-running feud from director Philippe Faucon. Sélima (Sabrina Ben Abdallah) is a young Arab nurse working at a hospital in France. Fed up with the racist remarks she hears while making her daily rounds, the compassionate caregiver applies for a full-time position tending to the needs of an elderly Jewish woman named Ester (Ariane Jacquot). While Sélima does get the job, currently Israeli military actions have distressed her anti-Semetic mother Halima (Zohra Mouffok) to the point where the conflict is all she can think about anymore. But it turns out that Ester isn't Jewish after all, but French-Algerian. Having previously lived in Africa, Ester and her family had suffered under the nation's anti-Jewish laws - a component of the woman's existence that has made her especially sensitive towards Arab society and culture. Before long, a deeply conservative family friend who wears a hijab arrives to stay with Sélima and her Halima, her stern view of the situation only serving to stir tempers as Halima helps her daughter care for Ester. Later, when Ester's condition worsens and Sélima makes the decision to bring her patient home, the ongoing Arab/Israeli conflict becomes the focal point of a heated household debate. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Samia (Lynda Benahouda), an Algerian teenager, has immigrated with her large family to the Southern French town of Marseilles, where she must cope on a daily basis with both racism and her family's own restrictions on her personal freedom. She gets a particularly hard time from her older brother ,Yacine (Mohamed Chaouch), who has decided to make himself the unwelcome -- and violent -- protector of Samia's moral and physical virtue. Yacine grows even more unreasonable after Samia's father is hospitalized and it becomes apparent that Samia's sister Amel (Madia El Koutei) is in a relationship with a French boy. Under so much pressure from her family, Samia becomes increasingly rebellious. She refuses to be passively servile -- hanging out with a freewheeling girlfriend, flirting with a boy who wants to date her -- and when her suspicious family forces her to go to a gynecologist to establish her virginity, Samia takes action, rebelling in such a way that nothing will ever be the same again. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

Different aspects of homosexual romance are explored in this compendium of short vignettes. The film is designed as sort of a gay version of 1994's 3,000 Scenarios to Combat a Virus, an anthology that was comprised of 30 short films -- made by some of France's best directors -- out of story ideas submitted by school children on ways to deal with the AIDS virus. In this film however, the selection committee had no age limit and received about a thousand potential stories. The ten selected vignettes (three of which do not deal with AIDS at all ) encompass a broad look at the subject and range for the tale of a lesbian teen trying to come out to her parents, to a gay man who shocks his lover by claiming to be pregnant, to another man's reminiscence of a brief affair with an HIV-positive man. The vignettes were originally shown individually on French television. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this lively French drama, 17-year-old Muriel drops a bomb on her mother when she tells her that she is a lesbian. Muriel made this discovery while studying in Paris. There she found herself sexually drawn to her free-spirited and seductive pal Nora. Her friend can tell that Muriel wants her and so flirts shamelessly, even allowing Muriel to kiss and touch her. However, she insists that it is all in fun and Muriel keeps her deeper feelings unspoken. The poor girl suffers terribly when Nora gets involved with the sexy, black man Fred. To get even, Muriel tries sleeping with a boy. Eventually, after watching others like her, she screws up her courage and allows herself to express herself with another woman. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The romantic and sexual yearnings of a group of suburban French teens are the subject of this mild drama. In particular, it tells the story of Sandrine, a girl who knows what she wants and with whom she wants to do it. She was having a little fling with a lad by the name of Didier, but sets her sights on a fellow named Joel. When her father catches the two of them in bed together, the ensuing row almost results in Sandrine having to miss her friend Martine's wedding. None of the teens in this film is (so far) a professional actor, and reviewers found their naturalness very refreshing. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi