Movies: Humbert Balsan

Ali, an aspiring actor, works in a government-aided butchery and takes part in a cheap play. Defying his father's wishes, he moves to Paris to fulfill his dreams and starts living illegally alongside many other Arabs. Ali has a life-changing experien...

A famous, ruthless writer takes a handsome young worker, with aspirations of becoming a tightrope artist, as his lover and protege, but suffers tragic consequences when he later discards him for another youth....

Her mother had advised her to marry to acquire respectability and material comfort, the obedient little girl married a successful Catholic writer a few years later, giving her two beautiful children, a spacious house, a few servants, and glittering s...

Yousry Nasrallah's powerful adaptation of Lebanese writer Elias Khoury's epic novel of fifty years of Palestinian dispossession, exile, and resistance. The film follows the flight of Younes, his wife Nahila, and those around them, from their village ...

Six strong-willed women whose adventurous streak changed the face of film industry in early twentieth century Egypt – a time when the country was, despite the liberal ripples, still steeped in conservative tradition. The film shows how these women, d...

A crime story set in Paris about a Bonnie-and-Clyde couple -- how they got together and how they are pursued for a murder they never committed....

A woman and her seven children live on a farm in Southern France. In spite of the hard work and the mediocre accommodation, their life would be a happy one, but for one person: the owner of the farm, an egotistic and authoritarian individual who is a...

A young 15 year old girl, Lamia, lives in a southern Lebanese village on the border with Israel. She is given in marriage to her cousin on the other side of the border. As Lamia crosses the barbed wire she also passes from childhood into adulthood, a...

An adaptation of the novel of the same name by Julien Gracq. Four soldiers await a possible German attack on a fortified house in the forest of the Ardennes....

A documentary which depicts the life of Bassem Samra and his friends and family. The film discusses issues concerning love and the veil....

A young girl is deprived of her baby: her descent into hell begins. Still in high-school, Agnès leaves her alcoholic father, finds a boyfriend and gets pregnant. Giving birth to a baby boy, deprived of him by her her stepmother, left by her boyfrien...

A young couple: Victor is a musician, Claire is a secretary in a publishing house. Their daily life seems so disappointing, so monotonous, that they begin to spend their time daydreaming, both creating their own imaginary world. At the office, she w...

Lunettes and Myope: two ways of resisting the world. Identical and opposites, face to face or, more often, back to back, in a small room in a timeless space. Twins and adversaries, these two girls make one: Lunettes uses her glasses to help her under...

A quiet French peasant has spent three years as a corporal on the front lines in World War I, and one day he cannot take it anymore and goes AWOL, escaping into the Alps in the southeast of France. He first takes leave of his wife before heading into...

Seekers of Oblivion explores the exciting life and adventures of Isabelle Eberhardt. Born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1877, Isabelle left Europe for North Africa at a young age. While there, she consorted with tramps, prostitutes, soldiers, murderers a...

A documentary that sheds light on Rose al-Yusuf's life as told by a group of those who lived with her and had close ties with her or through the eyes of those who read about her and delved into history in search of the secrets of her biography....

A documentary about the singing movement in Egypt, and on the role of the song in the social and political conflict, as it shows the lives of Umm Kulthum and Munira al-Mahdiyya and their impact on the women's liberation movement and on the field of s...