filmbriefs
Topic

Paris

The nineteenth century's idea of a city, defended into the twenty-first.

3
in film
13:00
average
39 min
in total
18
across the network
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13:00

Amélie

Jean-Pierre Jeunet · 2001

Audrey Tautou plays Amélie Poulain, a Paris waitress raised in near-isolation who discovers a box of childhood keepsakes hidden in her apartment and, after tracking down its owner, decides to spend her life secretly engineering happiness for the people around her while avoiding her own romantic chance with a man named Nino. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's 2001 film, shot with heavy digital colour grading and built almost entirely from small, invented rituals, became one of the highest-grossing French films ever released internationally.

13:00

Ratatouille

Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava · 2007

Remy, a rat with a chef's palate, teams up with a hapless kitchen boy to cook at a Paris restaurant neither of them is supposed to be running. Brad Bird's 2007 film pairs slapstick with unusually sincere arguments about taste, talent and where either one is allowed to come from.

13:00

The Aristocats

Wolfgang Reitherman · 1970

A wealthy Parisian widow's pampered cats are set to inherit her fortune, which prompts her butler to abandon them in the countryside, where a streetwise tomcat helps guide them home. The project began in 1962 as a proposed live-action television episode, was rejected, revived, and eventually turned into an animated feature at Disney's own suggestion — the last one he personally approved before he died in 1971. Phil Harris, cast as the tomcat O'Malley, was given room to improvise much of his own dialogue, shaping the character the way his earlier work on The Jungle Book had shaped Baloo.

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13:00

20th Century Women

Mike Mills · 2016

Set in 1979 Santa Barbara, Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women follows 15-year-old Jamie as his single mother Dorothea enlists two younger women — photographer Abbie and teenage friend Julie — to help raise him. Anchored by Annette Bening’s restrained performance, the film observes their overlapping lives with warmth and precision, treating feminism, illness, ageing and adolescence as lived conditions rather than themes. Shot by Sean Porter and edited by Leslie Jones, it moves at the pace of real conversation, building meaning through accumulation rather than climax.

13:00

24 Frames

Abbas Kiarostami · 2017

Abbas Kiarostami’s final film, 24 Frames, comprises twenty-four uncut, static shots — each ninety seconds long — observing nature, animals, and thresholds between interior and exterior. Beginning with animated movement superimposed on Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow, it proceeds into real-world stillness, testing how much meaning resides in time, attention, and unmediated presence. Released posthumously at Cannes 2017, it is a rigorous, unsentimental essay on perception and impermanence.

13:00

3:10 to Yuma

Delmer Daves · 1957

Delmer Daves’ 1957 Western 3:10 to Yuma adapts Elmore Leonard’s taut short story into a study of obligation under pressure. Rancher Dan Evans agrees to escort outlaw Ben Wade to the 3:10 train for Yuma, facing ambush, betrayal, and his own wavering resolve. Shot by Charles Lawton Jr. with sun-bleached realism and scored sparingly by George Duning, the film builds suspense through pacing, performance, and moral granularity — not spectacle. It was preserved by the Library of Congress in 2012 for its cultural and aesthetic significance.

13:00

3 Women

Robert Altman · 1977

Robert Altman’s 1977 film 3 Women follows the uncanny merging of identities among a timid young woman, her garrulous roommate and a silent, pregnant artist in a sun-scorched California town. Built from a dream and shot with deliberate, unhurried precision, it uses repetition, reflection and improvisation to explore how selves are borrowed, performed and abandoned.