Short

Robbery on the Champs Elysées. (18 minutes)

Synopsis

The short starts out as a tale of a cliche robbery of a young American tourist on the Champs Elysées, and surprises us as it takes a darker turn into the journey of a pickpocket in the Paris banlieues. There are two fairy tales: the eternal Parisian romance that is embodied by Mathieu and Lily in the old patisserie and the post-new wave anti-romance -- with Nadya and the Roms in the banlieue. One tale is "Amelie-like" with its nostalgia and the other storyline is grittier, more underworld, a very different Paris, le Paris d’aujourd'hui!

Cast 

Mathieu: Malik Zidi. Nadya: Nurgul Yesilcay. Cinematographer: Léo Hinston, Nocturama. Editor: Mako Kamitsuna, Mudbound. Casting: Stéphane Foenkinos. 

Short

A Lover’s Discourse (15 minutes)

Synopsis

“A lover’s discourse is of an extreme solitude: it is forsaken by language, ignored, disparaged, derided. It has no recourse but to become the site of an affirmation.”

So begins this very French story of how the lover thinks about love, but never speaks it to the other. A Lover’s Discourse is French philosopher Roland Barthes’ systemic analysis of l’affair amoureuse—“...from love at first sight...to disaffection, abandonment, suicide ...” —brought passionately to life through a hit-and-run relationship between two lovers.

Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival