Zinedine Soualem Movies

The crumbling relationships within a suburban Geneva family are detailed from three distinctly unique perspectives in Swiss director Jacob Berger's insightful family drama. As the rain falls heavy outside his family's modest Meyrin apartment, radio newsman Serge (Bruno Todeschini) rises from bed and prepares for another day at work. After waking his wife Pietra (Natacha Regnier) and his son Vlad (Louis Dussol), Serge gets behind the wheel and makes a quick stop by the apartment of his ravishing mistress Mathilde (Noemie Kocher). Distracted by the downpour on his way to work, the womanizing father runs into something with his car yet keeps driving. Later at work, Serge finds his mind continually drifting back to the incident and goes back to find out if anyone was injured. When nothing appears amiss, Serge and Mathilda go back to the married man's apartment for an invigorating bout of afternoon sex. Eventually, the action shifts to Pietra's perspective as she takes the bus to the museum where she works. Despite the fact that a rabid dog is loose in the building, Pietra boldly enters in a desperate bid to locate her missing cell phone. When Pietra returns home unexpectedly in the middle of the afternoon, the discovery she makes send her into a state of minor shock. Meanwhile, as young Vlad stakes out the nearby apartment building where a pretty classmate lives, he is surprised to see his father turn up on the scene. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Based on the original '60s French comic books by René Goscinny, Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre is the big-budget sequel to the 1999 box-office hit Astérix and Obélix vs. Caesar. Empress Cleopatra (Monica Bellucci) makes a wager with Julius Caesar (played by writer/director Alain Chabat) that her people can build a beautiful palace in three months. She chooses architect Numerobis (Jamel Debbouze) for the project, which must be completed in time or he will be fed to the crocodiles. Numerobis travels to Gaul to get help from the superpowered Panoramix (Claude Rich) and the warriors Astérix (Christian Clavier) and Obélix (Gérard Depardieu), along with their faithful pet Dogmatix. They use their magic potion to make the Egyptian slave-labor population into superheroes, thereby building the palace in no time. Meanwhile, the angry architect Amonbofis (Gérard Darmon) and Julius Caesar don't want to see them succeed. At the time of its release, Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre was the most expensive French film ever made, with a budget of $50 million. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

A man born and raised on France's Southern coast is exiled to the Northern territories in this comedy from actor, director and screenwriter Dany Boon. Philippe Abrams (Kad Merad) helps run the post office in a picturesque small town in the South of France. Philippe's wife Julie (Zoe Felix) has been down in the dumps, and he thinks one way to lift her spirits would be to relocate to the more glamorous surroundings of the Cote d'Azur. However, Philippe's attempts to finagle a transfer fail, and he ends up demoted -- he's sent to Bergues, a village in Northern France stuck between Belgium and England. Philippe is appalled at the news, and matters only get worse when he has to learn the local dialect, a strange bouillabaisse of French, Flemish and Latin dialects. Julie opts to stay behind, and as Philippe drowns his sorrows in beer on his first night in town, he nearly runs over a man while driving home drunk -- who turns out to be one of his new colleagues at the post office, Antoine Bailleul (Dany Boon). But Philippe finds to his surprise that he enjoys life in Bergues, and he becomes infatuated with Annabelle (Anne Marivin), a beautiful letter carrier. Philippe is pondering just what he should do about his feelings for Annabelle when he gets word from Julie that she's decided to join him in the unfashionable North. Bienvenue Chez Les Ch'tis was a major box office success in France, grossing over $80 million in little more than a month in theaters. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A simple cottage in the country becomes an increasingly difficult matter for cash-strapped husband in this French comedy. Charles Boulin (Dany Boon) works for a mortgage company, where he has the unenviable job of overseeing the repossession of homes when owners default on their loans and supervising the renegotiation of financing agreements. Charles's work has taught him to be frugal, and while he shares a comfortable and spacious apartment with his wife Anne (Michele Laroque) and their teenage daughter, their lives are short on luxury. Anne has become increasingly and vocally weary of Charles's reluctance to part with a franc, and he decides to surprise her for their anniversary with an unexpected extravagance -- a vacation home in the country. Charles is able to find a bargain with the help of realtor Jean-Pierre Draquart (Daniel Prevost), but he soon learns Jean-Pierre was far less than honest about the condition of the house, which stretches the boundaries of the phrase "fixer-upper." Charles hires a pair of handymen to get the place in order, but Mouloud Mami (Zinedine Soualem) and Donatello Pirelli (Laurent Gamelon) prove to massively incompetent, and Charles's "bargain" is becoming perilously expensive. Matters go from bad to worse when Charles loses his job and he has to find a way to pay the growing stack of bills on the house, all without spoiling the surprise for Anne. La Maison du Bonheur was the first directorial effort for actor Dany Boon. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this political drama, Hannah Kaufman, a Jewish-American attorney, must defend Selim Bakri, a young Palestinian suing Israel for the right to live on his Left Bank ancestral land. The government's lawyer, a cocky Israeli attorney, is Hannah's lover and the father of her unborn child. Conflict ensues when Hannah and Selim also become lovers. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Jean-Claude Van Damme plays himself in this meta-crime comedy that finds him garnering mores headlines than he's had in years after stumbling into an in-progress bank heist. Down and out, with only straight-to-DVD titles under his belt and a recent job lost out to fellow has-been Steven Seagal, the aging action star returns to Belgium a broken man fresh from losing a custody case for his daughter in Hollywood. Upon his arrival, the bad news continues with a disastrous ATM encounter that leads him into the bank and straight into a robbery situation, for which he's about to be blamed. Soon, crowds grow outside on the street, with the cops quick to point the finger at him and his fans cheering for his release. The film garnered a cult following during its festival run and awarded Van Damme his first theatrical release in the States in almost a decade. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

An aviation magnate takes desperate measures to regain custody of his kids after he is granted minimal visitation rights by a harsh female judge. It's true that Manu Barnes is free-spirited and for much of his twelve year marriage to Mathilde that he has been too centered on his career, but he does love his kids and believes he should see them more often than one weekend a month. The judge called him irresponsible and he decides to disprove her words by kidnapping Chloe, the judge's strong-willed adolescent daughter. He takes the girl to a remote, snow-bound mountain cabin. Unfortunately, she thinks Manu is sexually attracted to her. A disaster nearly occurs there, but Chloe manages to get back to Paris. Though he knows a private detective is trailing him, the determined Manu decides to abduct his kids and take them out of the country. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Following up on his directorial debut Clandestins -- about desperate refugees stowing away on a ship -- Denis Chouinard created this taut thriller about immigrants after they have arrived on Canada's shores. Ahmed Kasmi and his family fled Algeria and he is now only a week away from getting his Canadian citizenship. Ahmed's teenaged son Hafid, secretly a part of a group of militants, breaks into the immigration office and deletes databanks worth of information. Captured by security cameras, the act is broadcast throughout the country on the nightly news, just as Ahmed is practicing "O Canada" in his living room. Crushed by the stupid actions of his wayward son, he heads into the streets of Montreal in search of Hafid, where he discovers an entire underworld of radical activism and militancy that he never knew existed. He eventually hooks up with Huguette -- Hafid's girlfriend -- and the two search for him together. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

This film is the directorial debut of 29-year-old Graham Guit, who co-scripted with Eric Neve. Young Frenchman Lenny (Melvil Poupaud) takes some cocaine from London to Paris where he makes a risky connection with dapper drug dealer Joel (Jean-Phillippe Ecoffey) and his violent henchman Sammy (Issac Sharry), splitting the scene to get a plane ticket before they discover he's cut the coke. Joel's girlfriend Juliette (Romane Bohringer) seduces Lenny and makes off with the cash. But then Juliette falls for Lenny, decides to double-cross Joel, and departs with a suitcase of cash -- so she thinks. Instead of money, the suitcase contains many valuable vials of the drug Special K. While Lenny and Juliette search for a buyer so they can unload the Special K, Joel and Sammy are in hot pursuit. Shown at the 1997 London Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Two losers find an especially bad way to beat the high cost of living in this off-beat comedy from France. Antoine (Francois Cluzet) aspires to write plays, but in the meantime he scrapes together a living writing articles for a martial arts magazine and creating crossword puzzles; he spends his spare time talking with his friend Sylvie (Judith Henry) about the sad state of his love life. His buddy Fred (Guillaume Depardieu), on the other hand, doesn't do much of anything; on those rare occasions when he rises from the couch, it's to plot new schemes to pick up women, which are usually doomed to failure. However, this routine is shattered when Antoine and Fred discover that their apartment is being sold and they need to come up with some money to get a new flat. With little cash on hand and few prospects, Antoine gets an idea: rob the offices of the magazine for which he's been writing. Co-star Guillaume Depardieu is the son of French superstar Gérard Depardieu. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Christopher Loizillon's Ma Camera et Moi (My Camera and Me) is the story of Max (Zinedine Soualem), a young man obsessed with videotaping life. Adopted and later ignored by parents who eventually conceived a biological child of their own, Max becomes preoccupied with videotaping everything after being given his first camera by an uncle. A hose fire only strengthens this need. Now in his mid-twenties, Max has fallen in love with Lucie (Julie Gayet), a blind woman who needs to feel life as much as Max needs to look at it. As Max negotiates this new relationship, he attempts to keep up his business of producing videotapes for other people. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

This French family fantasy follows in the footsteps of the fine and funny Big (1988). Solemn French schoolteacher Albert Crastaing (Jean-Louis Richard) punishes a trio of 12-year-olds by having them write a Kafkaesque essay with a body-switching premise, cueing the film's storyline of kids transformed into their parents. Nouredine is a French-born Arab whose father (Zinedine Soualem) is an artist forced to drive a cab. Catholic Igor's father (François Morel) died from AIDS after a blood transfusion. Joseph is a Jew whose father (Pierre Arditi) is a cranky and irritable tailor. The trio encounters a prostitute, Yolande (Catherine Jacob). Elsewhere, the parents inhabit bodies of their children and experience problems kids face daily. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

A not-so-worldly twentysomething gets caught up with some shady Parisians in director Cedric Klapisch's 2003 crime comedy-drama Not for or Against. Wallflower camerawoman Caty (Marie Gillain) is three years into her career and residency in the French capital with little to show for it in the friend category, never mind the fact she is hopelessly single. While on the job filming an interview with a prostitute, Caty gets a tip from the hooker for a quick and profitable money-making possibility. Following up on the lead, Caty meets the handsome Jean (Vincent Elbaz) who offers to pay her to film him while he robs a store. After some perfunctory soul-searching, Caty impetuously decides to take the offer. This start in crime leads her into Jean's gang of criminals, which she rather quickly becomes a member of. As the thieves tend to spend their loot about as quickly as they accumulate it, they begin planning an enormous caper that will enable them to live more comfortably -- if they manage to survive its undertaking. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide