Jonathan Zaccaï Movies

A 17-year-old French auteur prepares to graduate high school while contending with overprotective parents, fighting vicious rumors from the press, and striving to outshine a hot young director who's threatening to eclipse his popularity in this irreverent mockumentary tailor made for cinephiles. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A man finds his heart and soul torn between loyalty to his family and a need to be redeemed from his violent lifestyle in this powerful drama from France. Tom (Romain Duris) is a man in his early thirties who finds himself caught between two very different worlds. Tom loves music, and longs to have a career as a concert pianist; he also has talent, and is taking advanced music lessons from Miao-Lin (Linh Dan Pham). But Tom supports himself working as a collection agent for his father, Robert (Niels Arestrup), a mid-level gangster and loan shark, as well as helping Sami (Gilles Cohen) and Fabrice (Jonathan Zaccai), two of Robert's cronies who put together crooked real-estate deals. Tom's hair-trigger temper makes it easy for him to adapt to the violent life of a gangster's muscle man, but he wants to give his creative side a chance to grow, and struggles to get his skills in order for an audition with a concert promoter interested in his music. Tom is also walking on a wire with his employers by having an affair with Aline (Aure Atika), Fabrice's wife, and is forced to mediate a bitter feud between his father and a Russian gangster, Minskov (Anton Yakovlev). A remake of James Toback's acclaimed directorial debut, Fingers, The Beat That My Heart Skipped (aka De Battre Mon Coeur S'Est Arrêté) was nominated for the Golden Bear award at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The recently dead return to life in They Came Back, but they are surprisingly uninterested in feasting on the living. Many of them are, naturally enough, elderly, and they seem content merely to go back to their former lives, but their return causes a myriad of complications. Robin Campillo, making his feature directorial debut, co-wrote the script to Laurent Cantet's Time Out, and his "zombie" movie quietly examines the individual and societal impact the dead have on the small French city -- just one of many similarly afflicted throughout the world -- to which they return. Isham (Djemel Barek) and Véronique (Marie Matheron) have their trepidations, but they're generally happy, at first, to see their little boy Sylvain (Saady Delas), and the town's elderly mayor (Victor Garrivier) welcomes home his wife, Martha (Catherine Samie). But Rachel (Géraldine Pailhas of 5x2), a government health official, cannot bring herself to visit her newly returned husband, Mathieu (Jonathan Zaccaï of Seaside), at the ad-hoc shelter where the government houses the "zombies" like refugees. Eventually, she relents, and Mathieu returns home, but the living find that their loved ones are not exactly as they remember them. Studies soon reveal that the dead suffer from a form of aphasia. They cannot create new memories, and they cannot be trusted to perform any but the most menial tasks. Perhaps sensing the discomfort they cause the living, the dead gather together at night, and seem to be formulating some kind of secret plan. They Came Back was selected by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center for inclusion in the 2005 edition of New Directors/New Films. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

The third film collaboration from co-directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, The True Story of My Life in Rouen tells the tale of a young French teen's struggle to come to terms with his emotional and physical development during puberty. When young Etienne (Jimmy Tavares) turned 16, his grandmother (Helene Surgere) gave him a video recorder. The new toy turns into an obsession for Etienne as he sets out to film nearly every aspect of his life, as well as some of his friends' and family's lives -- much to the ire of his mother, Caroline (Ariane Ascaride). In the process, however, Etienne begins to emotionally distance himself from everyone around him. As his loved ones begin to find Etienne's filming intrusive, Etienne also discovers that the camera is not merely a passive observer, but holds a great amount of influence on the actions of those being taped. As Etienne continues to film his friends and family, Etienne's coming-of-age becomes the true subject of his films, which also have begun to inversely influence his developing maturity. The True Story of My Life in Rouen was an official selection at the 2002 Locarno International Film Festival. ~ Ryan Shriver, Rovi

Julie Lopes-Curval's debut feature, Seaside, closely observes the lives of about a dozen citizens in a small French village. Paul (Jonathan Zaccai) works as a lifeguard. His sister is employed at the local casino, a building frequented by their mother, Rose (Bulle Ogier). Rose is retired from a factory that currently employs Paul's significant other, Marie (Helene Fillieres), and is lorded over by Albert (Patrick Lizana), the fourth generation of his family to run the business. Over the course of one year, the lives and fortunes of these people intertwine and change in major and minor ways. Seaside was screened at the Director's Fortnight during the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi