During the summer of the year 1610 one of the first telescopes made by Galileo ends up in the hands of Jean Kepler in Prague who at the time was the astronomer of Emperor Rudolp II. Kepler observes the night-sky as nobody has seen it before him. His observation platform becomes the meeting place of Prague's imperial court. In this entourage Kepler separates science from superstition, freedom from intolerance.
Tells the story of Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie and her extraordinary scientific discoveries — through the prism of her marriage to husband Pierre — and the seismic and transformative effects their discovery of radium had on the 20th century.
Highlighting the Promethean struggles of Nikola Tesla, as he attempts to transcend entrenched technology–including his own previous work–by pioneering a system of wireless energy that will change the world.
Tank commander Kalashnikov is severely injured in battle in 1941. The accident leaves him incapacitated and unable to return to the front line. While recovering in the hospital he begins creating the initial sketches of what will become one of the world’s most legendary weapons. A self-taught inventor, Mikhail Kalashnikov, is only 29 when he develops the now iconic assault riffle — the AK-47.
A sixth-standard school drop-out faces many ups and downs in life when he decides to design a weaving machine to ease the plight of his mother and many like her in his village, who take up Asu work.
The film, set in the pre-independence era of Bombay of 1895, is based on the life on an Indian scientist Shivkar Bapuji Talpade, who is credited to with the construction of India's first unmanned plane, as well as the hardships that he went through on his journey of discovery.
The story of former Hollywood star Grace Kellys crisis of marriage and identity, during a political dispute between Monacos Prince Rainier III and Frances Charles De Gaulle, and a looming French invasion of Monaco in the early 1960s.
Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands hed only visited in his mind.
The story of Jacques Mesrine, Frances public enemy No. 1 during the 1970s. After nearly two decades of legendary criminal feats -- from multiple bank robberies and to prison breaks -- Mesrine was gunned down by the French police in Paris.
A swirling, impressionistic portrait of an artist who regretted nothing, writer-director Olivier Dahans La Vie en Rose stars Marion Cotillard in a blazing performance as the legendary French icon Edith Piaf. From the mean streets of the Belleville district of Paris to the dazzling limelight of New Yorks most famous concert halls, Piafs life was a constant battle to sing and survive, to live and love. Raised in her grandmothers brothel, Piaf was discovered in 1935 by nightclub owner Louis Leplee (Gerard Depardieu), who persuaded her to sing despite her extreme nervousness. Piaf became one of Frances immortal icons, her voice one of the indelible signatures of the 20th Century.
The early career (1959-’70) of outlaw Jacques Mesrine (Cassel), covering his military service in Algeria, apprenticeship with a Paris gang-lord (Depardieu), crime-spree partnership with soulmate Jeanne (De France) and escape from a tough Canadian prison.
2009 biopic about the early life of Coco Chanel. Several years after leaving the orphanage, to which her father never returned for her, Gabrielle Chanel finds herself working in a provincial bar both. Shes both a seamstress for the performers and a singer, earning the nickname Coco from the song she sings nightly with her sister. A liaison with Baron Balsan gives her an entree into French society and a chance to develop her gift for designing.
The Côte d’Azur. 1915. In his twilight years, Pierre-Auguste Renoir is tormented by the loss of his wife, the pains of arthritic old age and the terrible news that his son Jean has been wounded in action. But when a young girl miraculously enters his world, the old painter is filled with a new, wholly unexpected energy. Blazing with life, radiantly beautiful, Andrée will become his last model, and the wellspring of a remarkable rejuvenation. Back at the family home to convalesce, Jean too falls under the spell of the new, redheaded star in the Renoir firmament. In their Mediterranean Eden - and in the face of his father's fierce opposition - he falls in love with this wild, untameable spirit... and as he does so, within weak-willed, battle-shaken Jean, a filmmaker begins to grow.
A look at the life of French designer Yves Saint Laurent from the beginning of his career in 1958 when he met his lover and business partner, Pierre Berge.
Paul Gauguin feels smothered by the atmosphere prevailing in Paris in the year 1891. Around him, everything is so artificial and conventional: he needs authenticity to renew his art. Failing to convince his wife Mette and his five children to follow him to Paradise Lost, he sets out for Tahiti alone. Once there, he chooses to settle down in Mataiera, a village far away from Papeete, installing himself in a native-made hut. He soon starts working passionately, painting and carving in a style close to the primitive art specific to the island. During his two-year stay the artist will experience poverty, cardiac problems and other displeasures but also happiness in the arms of Tehura, a beautiful young native girl.
