Happy BirthdayMovies like Happy Birthday
- Key Features:
- Family drama, Birthday celebration, Dysfunctional family, Family secrets, Sibling rivalry, French countryside, Interpersonal conflict
- Tone:
- serious, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Drama enthusiasts, Viewers interested in family dynamics, Those who enjoy character-driven stories
- Emotional Arc:
- Anticipation → Disruption → Confrontation
Happy Birthday

A mother of two gathers her loved ones to celebrate her birthday in her big house near the Loire Valley. The festivities are disrupted by the arrival of her daughter, who is known for her unpredictable outbursts.
Happy Birthday
An upper middle-class French family celebrates a birthday in a restaurant. In one evening and during one meal, family history, tensions, collective and separate grudges, delights, and memories both clash and coalesce.

To celebrate Yves’ 50th birthday, his friends plan to take him to the sunny paradise of Paros in Greece. But due to a cancelled flight, the holiday will take place in a far less glamorous and much rainier destination: Yves’ family home in Brittany. During the vacation, their bonds are challenged by Antoine’s constant complaining, Yves’ pride, Baptiste’s superstition and Laurent’s jealousy of Jean-Mich’s perfect life and family. On top of that, Antoine’s supposedly harmless joke – offering Yves a DNA ancestry test – has unforeseen consequences…

An attention-craving mother nearing 50, unemployed and living with her pregnant daughter and son-in-law, suddenly finds herself with child, too...

Claude and Marie Verneuil will soon be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. For the occasion, their four daughters - Isabelle, Odile, Ségolène and Laure - decide to organize a big surprise party in their family home in Chinon. They also decide to invite, each, the parents of their respective husbands - Rachid Benassem, David Benichou, Chao Ling and Charles Koffi.

When their regal matriarch falls ill, the troubled Vuillard family come together for a hesitant Christmastime reunion. Among them is rebellious ne'er-do-well Henri and the uptight Elizabeth. Together under the same roof for the first time in many years, their intricate, long denied resentments and yearnings emerge again.

In Manhattan, a mother of two preparing for her daughter's sixth birthday party has no idea of the challenges she's about to face in order to pull off the event.

Tomorrow is Christmas at Vincent and Beatrice Barand's house. Vincent is happy, it's his favorite day. Unfortunately, the whole family cancels at the last minute. Result: no children, no grandchildren... While Beatrice is looking forward to this intimate evening, he is overwhelmed and can't imagine a Christmas together. So he decides to go to a retirement home to invite a lonely resident to join them and share the Christmas spirit. Monique, 85 years old and obsessed with death, arrives... soon followed by Jeanne, a former prison guard with no filter. For all four of them, this December 24th promises to be as explosive as it is unexpected!

A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.

A thirteen-year-old French girl deals with moving to a new city and school in Paris, while at the same time her parents are getting a divorce.

Françoise has just been dumped by her husband for a much younger woman. In order to cheer her up, and to celebrate her 60th birthday, sisters Rose and Alice decide to take their mother to a resort on the tropical island of Reunion so they can relax, work on their tans, and have too many margaritas. But when Rose pays a one-night stand, Thierry, to show her mother a good time, their holiday plans start to unravel.

Eight women gather to celebrate Christmas in a snowbound cottage, only to find the family patriarch dead with a knife in his back. Trapped in the house, every woman becomes a suspect, each having her own motive and secret.

The family of a wealthy businessman gather to celebrate his 60th birthday. During the course of the party, his eldest son presents a speech that reveals a devastating secret that turns the night into a battle of truth and denial.

Famille : Groupe de personnes réunies par des liens de parenté et un fort sentiment de solidarité morale et matérielle. Quand Alain a épousé Nathalie, il ne savait pas qu'il épouserait aussi sa famille. Ce samedi, comme toutes les semaines, ils sont invités à dîner chez son beau-frère, Jean-Pierre à Créteil. C'est vrai, Alain en a marre de ces dîners familiaux, mais il ne sait pas encore ce qui l'attend véritablement ce soir-là... Ni les jours qui suivent

Two couples are enjoying their summer at the beach, but when the grown son of one couple arrives, it surprisingly stirs something in the husband of the other couple, will the forbidden feelings end badly?

Stéphane defers his frustration at not having had a son on his sons-in-law. So when her younger daughter decides to leave a rugby player than the idolatrous father for a doctor he can not stand, he will do everything to get his son-in-law back. His daughter will not let it go.

At 40, Stephanie loses her job and is forced to move back in with her mother. She is welcomed with open arms to the joys of overheated apartment, Francis Cabrel playing on loop, Scrabble games and precious motherly advice on how to behave at the table and live her life.

In the beautiful family home, at the end of the summer, Monique celebrates her 70th birthday, surrounded by her 4 children, all of whom have come for the occasion. There is Jean-Pierre, the elder, who took on the role of head of the family after the death of his father; Juliette, pregnant with her first child at 40 and who still dreams of becoming a writer; Margaux, the family’s radical artist, and Mathieu, 30, anxious to seduce pretty Sarah. Later, one day, one of them will make a life-changing decision ...

The wedding of Vincent and Berenger does not begin well. For starters, the fabulous cake for the reception falls apart as the butler of the château, and one of the caterers is taking down a flight of stairs falls. The cream puffs are carefully picked up from the floor an arranged as though nothing happened. The bride comes from a bourgeois family, presided by Maddie, an old lady with a secret in her heart. The wedding, to be performed at the local church, by father Victor, proves to be not the classic marriage that has been planned...

A dysfunctional family travels to Cuernavaca, to celebrate their grandmother's birthday. One pretends to have a boyfriend she just met. Another has a girlfriend who is in love with one of his brothers. Another can not stand the way the grandmother treats him but he has been afraid of her for so long...until now.

On this beautiful, bright first day of summer, Claire Darling has decided to get rid of all her estate. She’s laid down all her favourite objects on her front lawn for one splendid garage sale. As a horde of curious bystanders and neighbors fights over the ridiculously underpriced antiques, each object resurrects flashes of Claire Darling’s tragic and flamboyant life. Alerted by her childhood friends, Marie Darling, Claire’s estranged daughter, is forced to come back to the family mansion to stop this sale and unveil the reasons behind her mother’s eccentric decision.

A high-profile burglar reconciles with his two daughters (half-siblings) to help him retaliate against his ex-partner who betrayed him.

Catherine and Yann, happily married for many years, should have spent the year travelling abroad. But since he sold his business, Yann has been too busy with his bonsai trees and keeps postponing the big trip. Things go from bad to worse when their 27-year-old broke daughter and her boyfriend lose their apartment and come knocking on the door to stay. With Yann’s mid-life crisis spinning out of control, their couch surfing daughter and partner getting increasingly invasive and their stay becoming indefinite, Catherine will try everything to kick them out of the parental home and get her life back on track!

A group of friends and family reunite at the fancy new holiday home of a woman who is about to turn 40.

Lea and her husband Marc have known Francis and his wife Karine for a very long time. Over the years, each one of them has been assigned a specific role. The balance and dynamic of the group is blown up when Lea decides to write a novel, which turns into an immediate bestseller…

Simona is a single mother in her early ‘40s who is wholly devoted to her son, Filippo. To get over her insecurities as a parent and make her son happy on his eighth birthday, she decides to throw him a birthday party in their small flat and invite over his school friends and their parents. For Simona, this birthday is about to pose quite the surprising dilemma between allowing her son to embrace his true self and a mother’s fierce desire to protect her child from their potentially cruel surroundings. This is the last conundrum she was expecting to have to face on a day that is already rife with anxiety.

Elisa is only forty when an incurable disease takes her from her husband and their daughter. Before her heart stops, Elisa finds a way to stay close to her: a gift for every birthday up to her adult age, 18 gifts to try to accompany her child's growth year after year.

Aurora's life suddenly gets complicated after her seven grandkids arrive to her house for vacation.

One summer, a French teenager who has been living with his mother in the city moves in with his estranged father’s family in the countryside, where he clashes with his stepmother.

She drove me into a corner, then forced me to go beyond my limits. She made me confront the absolute: love, sacrifice, tenderness, abandonment. She dislocated me, transformed me. Why didn't anyone warn me? Why doesn't anyone ever talk about this?" Un heureux événement, or an intimate view of motherhood, sincere and with no taboos.

A shy student suddenly becomes the center of attention when she wins a huge birthday party that she never asked for.

A young husband and father, perfectly content with his life, falls in love with another woman.

When their daughter decides to get a divorce, Coline and Andre can’t come to terms with it as they are very fond of their son-in-law. The only way to keep seeing him is in secret. But for how long can they lead a double life?

After a terrible trauma on her birthday, Emma chooses not to celebrate it again. But when she turns 21, a friend of her breaks the ritual with a surprise party, unaware of awakening horrors, which for years have been waiting in the darkness.

It is 1979 and Albertine, 10, and all her family members have gathered in Brittany to celebrate the birthday of her grandmother. Everyone thinks that the Skylab space station from NASA will fall on their heads this summer. The meeting turns into a crazy weekend full of revelations, love and song.

A middle-class house in the middle of nowhere. A council estate in Sète. A mother and daughter. Two childhood friends. A vanishing. Blackmail. A clash between two worlds.

Mika, heiress to a Swiss chocolate company, is married to celebrated pianist André and stepmother to his son, Guillaume, whose mother died in a car wreck on his tenth birthday. Their lives are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Jeanne, a young woman who has learned she was almost switched with Guillaume at birth.

A mother and daughter move to a small French town where they open a chocolate shop. The town, religious and morally strict, is against them, as they represent free-thinking and indulgence. When a group of gypsies arrive by riverboat, the Mayor's prejudices lead to a crisis.

The Bouvier-Sauvages, a large aristocratic family, meet the much more modest Martin family when their children's wedding is announced. For the occasion, the future bride and groom offer their parents DNA tests, which will reveal their true origins. The results are totally unexpected and will make the effect of a bomb.

Gabriell is a single mother, her 17-year-old daughter Claire is pregnant, however the child's father Simon has no desire to be involved with his future baby. When Gabrielle takes matters into her own hands and asks Simon's father Ange for help, an unexpected relationship begins.

Virginia is proud that she belongs to a clique. The best students at a private school. But before her 18th birthday, a gruesome set of murders take place and her friends are the ones who are falling prey. Could it be her? She suffers from blackouts due to a freak accident one year earlier. We soon learn the truth behind her accident and what is going on.

A brief but intense hug will have the effect of throwing a meticulously planned wedding into chaos. Is chance about to give fate a helping hand?

Delphine and Solange are two sisters living in Rochefort. Delphine is a dancing teacher and Solange composes and teaches the piano. Maxence is a poet and a painter. He is doing his military service. Simon owns a music shop, he left Paris one month ago to come back where he fell in love 10 years ago. They are looking for love, looking for each other, without being aware that their ideal partner is very close...

Like many happy people, Bruno Hamel is leading an uneventful life until one afternoon, when his daughter is raped and murdered. When the murderer is arrested, a terrible project germinates in Bruno's darkened mind. He plans to capture the "monster" and make him pay for his crime.

John is a mild-mannered banker who has never been lucky in love. Fed up with waiting for the right girl to come along, John takes a chance on a Russian mail-order bride arranged via the Internet, where he is introduced to Nadia. John's fondness for Nadia grows... until the sudden arrival of Nadia's gregarious cousins makes John realize that he's in over his head.

While her apartment is being renovated, Jacqueline is thrilled to be forced into spending "a few days" with her eldest daughter Carole and her son-in-law, who are both in couples therapy. These "few days" turn into "a few months". Jacqueline quickly feels at home. She prepares dinners, monopolizes the television, reorganizes the kitchen... She is here, and no one knows for how long!

Husband does not understand his wife? Conflict with children? Do you want to be heard and stood in your place? Be afraid of your desires. In this family, everything changed places, including grandmother.

Okay, Marie is a little tired of the insouciance of her husband Sam, framework sup unemployed for 2 years. Agree, it is very tempted to be seduced by this beautiful stranger who made him the Court. Okay, there is also the daughter piano competition... If this balance light and crazy about standing, an unexpected event throws the family on an even crazier way.

Jérôme Varenne, a French financier, lives and works in Shanghai with Chen-Li, his life and business partner. One day, during a short stay in Paris, while paying a call to his mother, he is very displeased to learn from her and his hated brother, that the family house in Ambray is going to be sold. Jerome decides to go to the town where he grew up to see what is going on. Little does he know how eventful his escapade will be. Little does he know that it will change his life from soup to nuts...

Mirea is about to be 18 years old, and her family is prepearing a big party for her. Teresa, Mirea's mother, wants to gain notoriety, so begins to spend recklessy for the celebration. When the day finally comes, an unexpected death puts it at risk.

Sacha is a real seducer, a man with no ties or emotional or professional. Charlotte is a modern and independent woman, but barely has time to care for their three children. While Sacha and Charlotte are, at first glance, two incompatible beings, when they meet soon discover that they are quite complementary and need each other.

On the 10th anniversary of his father's death, Giovanni reluctantly accepts the task of bringing a cake to the home of his uncle, a mob boss, for a celebration. Just two hours into the night, Gio's life is forever changed.

Sophie is far from being the model little girl one would like her to be, unlike her friends Camille and Madeleine. She always insists on having her own way, often getting into trouble, to the despair of one and all. But her mother is unbending and otherwise inclined. She will not let her get away with anything, and poor Sophie will often have to live with the consequences of her bad behaviour and learn her lesson.

Judith leads a double life between Switzerland and France. On the one hand Abdel, with whom she is raising a little girl, on the other Melvil with whom she has two older boys. Little by little, this fragile balance, made up of lies, secrets and back and forth, cracks dangerously. Trapped, Judith chooses to head forward, at the risk of losing everything.

A band of students comes to celebrate the New Year in an old manor house isolated from everything. But soon after their arrival, strange events disrupt the atmosphere, before the party turns squarely to the nightmare ...

A divorced teacher suddenly becomes jealous of everyone, including her daughter, friends and neighbors.

After having resigned from his post as President of the Republic, Jeff and his family are happy to be back in their village of Bouzolles. As the end of the year holidays approach, Cathy asks for a unique gift: to reconnect with her sister Maguy, and her husband Jean-Yves, with whom Jeff has been angry for 10 years. The reconciliation could have gone smoothly, except that during a lunch, Jeff and Jean-Yves, will once again find a subject of contention: Christmas. This family feud, which should never have left Bouzolles, will turn into a standoff between Jeff and a giant of Internet distribution.

Marilou and Philippe prepare for their future retirement in Portugal. But their daughter separates and a whole procession of solicitations falls on them.

A young man meets his soon-to-be in-laws but discovers behind their proud and wealthy appearances some deep issues and lies.

Five women are about to give birth. They do not know each other, are not alike, but will find themselves in the same maternity to live the best day of their lives. The first contractions at birth, the film traces their journey, between laughter and tears.

The adventures of an upper-class suburban family abruptly confronted with the younger brother's discovery of his homosexuality, the elder sister's suicide attempt and sadomasochist tendencies, and the intrusion of a very free-spirited maid and her husband. And it all started with the arrival in the family of an innocent looking rat.

A wedding at her parents' Annapolis estate hurls high-strung Lynn into the center of touchy family dynamics.

Elderly woman Berthe leaves her house to live with her daughter Emilie. Emilie and her brother Antoine had a falling out three years ago and have not seen each other since, but Emilie invites him for Christmas. Memories will resurface and impact both Berthe's destiny and the strange relationship between Emilie and Antoine.

Pierre, a successful 33-year-old florist, has his life turned upside down by the sudden arrival of his mother Judith, whom he hasn’t seen for two years. Mercurial and extravagant, she suffers from bipolar disorder and has recently escaped from a clinic. Pierre has only one idea in mind: bring her back as quickly as possible so his life can get back on track. But nothing happens as he hoped for. Their unexpected reunion, as funny and explosive as it is heart-wrenching, will transform Pierre and Judith forever.

Springtime in the French vineyards of Champagne. Patrick has gathered his oldest friends for his bachelor party. The trouble is, everyone hates his future wife. This could thus become one hellish weekend in gourmet paradise.

Burgundy, France. Solange's 60th birthday celebrations are violently interrupted by her estranged brother, Bernard. His outburst will reawaken painful memories and reveal untold stories of the Algerian War.

In the wake of their parent's separation, three siblings spend the summer in the south of France with their estranged Grandfather. In less than 24 hours, a clash of generations has occurred between the teenagers and the old man. During this turbulent summer, both generations will be transformed by one another.

Léonard Monestier owns a large fortune, alas his wife Cynthia made a bad investment in a worthless oil concession. Far from letting this get him down, Léonard decides to find a sucker to buy this concession from him. Right on cue appears Antoine Brévin, a befuddled billionaire who is very interested in Léonard's beautiful daughter Patricia and would do anything to win her hand...

A woman has a close bond with her beloved Algeriann grandfather, who protected her from a toxic home life as a child; his death triggers a deep identity crisis as tensions between her extended family members escalate, revealing new depths of resentment and bitterness.

Doug and Abi and their three children travel to the Scottish Highlands for Doug's father Gordie's birthday party. It's soon clear that when it comes to keeping a secret under wraps from the rest of the family, their children are their biggest liability...

Annie lives in harmony with her husband Laurent and her children: the sensitive elders Maximilien and César; the younger Antoine whom Poupi, never-complaining teen, helps raising him. But a positive pregnancy test will disturb the harmony.

The prodigal son of a family in turmoil returns home to his French rural home to reconnect with his family and make sense of their dysfunctions.

Thirteen-year-old Bastien is the center of a reconstructed family: six half-brothers and sisters, eight "parents," and as many houses. His tasks within the family are far more complex than what he has to do at school. But enough's enough: the children decide to wage a revolution and turn the rules upside down. All together, they squat a large apartment and now it'll be up to the parents to come to them!

Veronique, living with her divorced mother, is going on holiday to Mauritius with her father. To impress a local boy, Benjamin, she manages to complicate the situation by making up stories about her father. She presents him as her lover, a mercenary and even a secret agent which gets her into trouble and then her father has to start playing along...

Claire is a midwife and has devoted her life to others. At a moment when she is preoccupied by the imminent closure of the maternity clinic where she works, her life is further turned upside down when Béatrice, her father's former mistress, turns up on the scene. Béatrice is a capricious and selfish woman, Claire's exact opposite.

Along with her husband and three children, Marthe lives in an eden of her own creation, nearly isolated from the rest of the world. The arrival of a construction vehicle, however, pierces their tranquil, hermetic existence—before long a disused highway has been re-opened, and the family finds their home situated in the midst of rush-hour traffic. While the privileges of clean air, quietude and privacy are thus denied them, Marthe remains determined to stay no matter the cost.

During their vacation in the French countryside, a wealthy German family becomes entangled with a young hotel worker harboring sinister intentions.

A son in denial of a serious illness. A mother facing the unbearable. And between them a doctor fighting to do his job and bring them to acceptance. The three of them have one year and four seasons to come together and understand what it means to die while living.

Two babies are switched at birth. When the mistake is discovered 12 years later, it leads to complications in the lives of both families. One family is affluent, with dutiful and (apparently) contented children. The other family is poor, with rambunctious (even delinquent) children, often hungry, but with lots of laughter in the house.

Max is 6 years old. She lives with her dad Toni, a small time crook with a golden heart. For Xmas, Max offers him Rose, a call-girl found on the street whom she’s very fond of. Despite the complicated situation, Toni’s gonna have a hard time refusing her daughter’s «gift» and must coexist with Rose.

A blocked screenwriter, Ezio, is trying to finish a story about two off-kilter families thrown together when their teenage children announce they’re getting married. So Ezio writes himself into the story with a romantic part—a development his characters welcome, as they’ve got some ideas of their own for bigger and better roles.

A young French teenage girl after moving to a new city falls in love with a boy and is thinking of having sex with him because her girlfriends have already done it.

Fabienne is a star; a star of French cinema. She reigns amongst men who love and admire her. When she publishes her memoirs, her daughter Lumir returns from New York to Paris with her husband and young child. The reunion between mother and daughter will quickly turn to confrontation: truths will be told, accounts settled, loves and resentments confessed.

From Paris in the 1960s to London in the first decade of the third millennium, Madeleine and her daughter Véra flit from one amorous adventure to the next, living for the moment and taking all the opportunities that life offers. But not every love affair is without its consequences, its upsets and its disappointments. As time goes by and gnaws away at one’s deepest feelings, love becomes a harder game to play.

A woman at the age of 50 moves back in with her parents after her husband leave her for a younger woman.

Thomas, a father in his fifties, returns by chance to the town where he grew up. He collapses and wakes up forty years earlier in the body of his teenage self. Thrown back into his past, Thomas will not only have to re-live his first love, but also try to understand the reasons for his father’s mysterious departure. Can you change the past by living it again?

In a patriarchal society, an ordinary Georgian family lives with three generations under one roof. All are shocked when 52-year-old Manana decides to move out from her parents’ home and live alone. Without her family and her husband, a journey into the unknown begins.

Tanguy is 28 years old and still living with his parents. They think it's time he moves out. He doesn't, so they hatch a plan.

A peculiar neighbor offers hope to a recent widow who is struggling to raise a teenager who is unpredictable and, sometimes, violent.

On the edge of a crumbling city, 11-year-old Alexander lives in a sequestered commune alongside other children, their mothers, and charismatic leader, Gregori. Gregori teaches the children how to raise livestock, grow vegetables, work as a community - and how to kill. With the birth of a new baby brother weighing on his mind, Alexander begins to question Gregori’s overpowering influence on the children and their training to become assassins. Threatened by his increasing unwillingness to fall in line, Gregori’s behavior turns erratic and adversarial toward the child he once considered a son. With the two set dangerously at odds and the commune’s way of life disintegrating, the residents fear a violent resolution is at hand.

After a bad breakup, a college-aged Parisian moves into her father's flat only to discover that he is living with his new girlfriend - a young woman her age.

After getting dumped on Christmas Eve, Angela must rebuild her life surrounded by her rebellious teenager, her tyrannical mother, her hysterical best friend, and a weird psychologist.

Sequel to 2002's "Summer Things" (Embrassez qui vous voudrez). This French comedy follows various people in two families. Bertrand and his wife, Elizabeth, are a wealthy couple who plan to vacation near the same coastal town as their friends, Jerome and Veronique, who are secretly struggling with financial problems. Meanwhile, Bertrand and his daughter, Emilie, have each been hiding a secret, and these deceptions are bound to have repercussions.

A middle-aged woman leaves her partner and drifts back to her ex-husband, while the lives of her middle class friends intersect with her own.

Colin has rented a stately country home for his extended family’s New Year celebrations. He’s the centre of attention until his estranged brother David unexpectedly arrives, throwing the family dynamic far off orbit.

An unexpected road trip brings a dysfunctional family together for one last journey with their elder, sparking moments of connection, joy, and reconciliation.

Lola has two brothers: Benoit, who is getting married for the third time, and Pierre, who shows up late for the wedding. Excuses, reproaches, arguments, misunderstandings... beneath it all, they're just doing their best to live their own lives. Benoit is about to become a father, but he's not ready yet. Lola meets Zoher while she's still going through her divorce. Pierre's professional problems take a turn for the worse. Though everything in their lives seems to be pulling them apart, the three of them stick together - an inseparable trio.

United by the unexpected inheritance of a house in Normandy, four estranged cousins discover their family history by retracing their ancestor's steps.


