The Tree, the Mayor and the MediathequeMovies like The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque
- Key Features:
- Politics, Social commentary, Art, Small town, Bureaucracy, Communism
- Tone:
- humorous, satirical
- Target Audience:
- Fans of French cinema, Political satire enthusiasts, Those interested in social commentary
- Emotional Arc:
- Amusement → Reflection
The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque

The socialist mayor of a small village in France dreams of building an arts center but he runs up against some opposition.
The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque
On the eve of a vote to greenlight the construction of a leisure centre where a primal forest currently stands, an unashamedly right-wing mayor sets out to trap his ecologist opponent. But both will end up being outwitted by a group of feminist activists who will confront the two men with their own contradictions, once and for all.

The mayor of Lyon, Paul Théraneau, is in a delicate position. After 30 years in politics, he is running out of ideas and is faced with a feeling of existential emptiness. To overcome this, Paul hires a young and brilliant philosopher, Alice Heimann. Then follows a dialogue between two diametrically opposed personalities who will turn their certainties upside down.

At the Mêle sur Sarthe, a small Norman village, farmers are affected by a crisis. Georges Balbuzard, the mayor of the city, is not one to let them down and decides to try everything to save his village...

Revolves around Castro, who was once a very famous TV host, but as he grows old, his popularity is dwindling.

A local activist and a budding young mayor clash over the best path forward for their impoverished suburb.

A prestigious Stockholm museum's chief art curator finds himself in times of both professional and personal crisis as he attempts to set up a controversial new exhibit.

Genial, bumbling Monsieur Hulot loves his top-floor apartment in a grimy corner of the city, and cannot fathom why his sister's family has moved to the suburbs. Their house is an ultra-modern nightmare, which Hulot only visits for the sake of stealing away his rambunctious young nephew. Hulot's sister, however, wants to win him over to her new way of life, and conspires to set him up with a wife and job.

Teacher in the most prestigious highschool in the country, François enjoys the life he’s always known, in the intellectual and bourgeois society of Paris. Trapped in a situation where he’s forced to accept a job in a school of a tough underprivileged suburb, he finds himself confronted to his own limits and to the upheaval of his values and certainties.

Between her roles as mayor and teacher in the small village of Kerguen, Alice's days are very full. When an unexpected new student, 60-year-old Emile, finally decides to learn to read and write, her daily life threatens to become unmanageable. Especially since Alice will also have to save her village and her school...

In a village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country. And when the mayor wants his "People's House"; the priest wants his "Garden City" for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart.

Alexandre Taillard de Vorms is a force to be reckoned with. With his silver mane and tanned, athletic body, he stalks the world stage as Minister of Foreign Affairs for France, waging his own war backed up by the holy trinity of diplomatic concepts: legitimacy, lucidity, and efficacy. Enter Arthur Vlaminck. Hired to write the minister's speeches, Arthur must contend with the sensibilities of his boss and the dirty dealings within the Quai d'Orsay, the ministry's home.

Energetic priest Don Camillo returns to the town of Brescello for more political and personal duels with Communist mayor Peppone.

After having lost his job for having saved a child accused of shop lifting, Frédéric Barbier decides to become a school teacher with some funny results.The great comedy actor Coluche is excellent as a simple school teacher.

Two neurotics, working for a suicide hotline on the night of Christmas Eve, get caught up in a catastrophe when a pregnant woman, her abusive boyfriend, and a transvestite visit their office.

When Francois, a journalist, tours a big store for an article, he is chosen by the son of the newspaper's owner, Rambal-Cochet, as his new toy. Needing money and unwilling to quit his job, Francois agrees to this ridiculous assignment. Gradually befriending the spoiled boy, he induces him to play at making a newspaper, unveiling publicly the tyrannical way of life of the father. The powerful emotional climax we experience with the child astonishes both men.

Clumsy Monsieur Hulot finds himself perplexed by the intimidating complexity of a gadget-filled Paris. He attempts to meet with a business contact but soon becomes lost. His roundabout journey parallels that of an American tourist, and as they weave through the inventive urban environment, they intermittently meet, developing an interest in one another. They eventually get together at a chaotic restaurant, along with several other quirky characters.

Jean has been the conservative mayor of a small town for several years. He intends to run for another term. Edith, his wife, is the paragon of the traditional devoted housewife and mother. So it comes as quite a shock when she tells her husband of forty years that deep down, she has always been... A MAN! Totally blindsided, Jean didn't see this coming. For a politician campaigning on family values, this is too much! But Edith, still the loving wife, make a deal with him: she will postpone her transition and stay a woman until after the elections. But as we know, campaigns are all about digging up dirt to keep the rumor mill turning

After a groundbreaking presidential election, Jeff Tuche becomes the new President of France and moves in the Elysee with his family to govern the country.

Flanked by their two children, Simon and Adélaïde decide, like many Parisians today, to leave their two-room apartment for a quieter and more comfortable life in the country. They are seduced by a house in the middle of nature: space, a vegetable garden, a wood adjoining their garden and above all villagers who welcome them with open arms. A dream come true! But the young couple was soon to be disillusioned: the wood was actually a hunting ground for big game! Although the hunters are friendly, they are not willing to give up their territory, making Simon and Adélaïde's dream of the countryside a living hell. But true to their reputation, our Parisians are not going to let them do it.

Clémence, the fearless mayor of a town near Paris, is completing the final term of her political career. With her faithful right-hand man Yazid, she has long fought for this town plagued by inequality, unemployment and slumlords. However, when Clémence is approached to become Minister, her ambition arises, questioning her devotion and commitment to her citizens. Will her political integrity and election promises survive her newly found ambition?

On a northern Italian farm, Batistì and his wife decide to send their son Minec to school, sacrificing his help in the fields but hoping to break the cycle of poverty in the family. But when Minec’s shoe breaks while walking for miles, Batisti puts the family’s future at risk to replace the clog.

In Paris, Clara, psycho motor therapist, and Ismaël, music teacher, have been lovers for four years. Happy, the couple are expecting their first child and decide to move in together. But the news is not well received by their respective families because Clara is Jewish and Ishmael a Muslim. Although not practicing, this difference will gradually sow trouble in their love life.

A man spreads the rumor of his fake homosexuality with the aid of his neighbor, to prevent his imminent firing at his work.

To save his crumbling and rapidly-depopulating rural town, its mayor fakes a gruesome murder to attract media attention. His plan initially succeeds, but soon the situation will spiral out of control.

Agathe Villanova is a self-centered, workaholic feminist politician who, upon reluctantly returning to her home in the south of France to sort out her mother's affairs, runs for a local election. Upon her arrival, Agathe grudgingly agrees to take part in a documentary being made by the blundering duo of Karim, an aspiring filmmaker, and self-professed "reporter" Michel, on the subject of "successful women." As Agathe's life hilariously unravels, the camera is there to capture it all.

Pauline, a devoted and generous home help nurse, raises her two children alone, while also looking after her father, a former steelworker. Taking advantage of her popularity, the directors of an extremist political party suggest she become their candidate at the mayoral elections.

In one of the poorest areas of Paris, a school counselor devotes herself to working with disadvantaged students, while facing challenges of her own.

Guillaume has made it: A machine that can clean dirty air by simply sucking all dirt into air balloons and then shipping them far far away so his explanation. Some Japanese business guys, after dinner with a lot of alcohol, order 5,000 pieces. His only problem: His production capacity is way to small so he gets to produce the machines in his private house. His wife Bernadette is far from being happy about it. Her private life goes down the line so she decides to leave Guillaume and to finally have revenge she candidates for major against her husband...

What does Cyrano de Bergerac do at a chicken farmer? This is the problem of Raymond, who has always kept his passion for the theater hidden. But when he is threatened with bankruptcy, he decides to try everything for the whole.

A comedy/drama set in a village and centered on a battle of the sexes, where women threaten to withhold sexual favours as long as the men refuse to install a water pipe.

Compulsive spenders Albert and Bruno are in debt up to their necks. While seeking help from community workers to get their lives back on track, they run into a group of young green activists. Lured by the free beer and snacks rather than by the ideals of eco-activists, Albert and Bruno find themselves joining the movement without much conviction.

While shooting a film, the director becomes interested in the unfolding struggle of a young factory worker that has been laid off by a boss who did not like her union activities.

Three characters living in an unfinished painting venture out into the real world in search of their creator to convince him to finish his work.

Paulette lives alone in a housing project in the Paris suburbs. With her meager pension, she can no longer make ends meet.

In a cold French city where suicide is a common urge, there is a colorful shop, managed for many years by the Tuvache family, where it is very easy to obtain the necessary tools to satisfy the sinister desires of so many depressed citizens.

Clement, a young philosophy teacher, is sent to Arras for a year. He meets Jennifer, a pretty hair stylist, and the two freely share their hearts and bodies as they try to overcome the cultural and social divide between them.

Four guys from a Paris housing project fabricate a documentary about drug dealers working in the City of Lights. When a television network falls hook, line, and sinker for the prank video, the foursome are given a free three-week vacation in the upscale resort community of Biarritz. As they interact with both locals and fellow tourists, they learn about love, friendship, racism, and the differences between the rich and the poor.

Jeannette is a single mother living in a working-class community in Marseilles; she tries to support herself and her two kids on her salary as a check-out girl at a supermarket and lives in an apartment complex where everyone is thrown into close proximity with everyone else. Marius is working as a security guard at a cement factory that has gone out of business; he's also squatting in the building, since the plant is soon to be demolished and he'll be needing his money later on. One day, Jeannette happens by the factory, and spotting several cans of paint, tries to take two of them home with her. Marius spots her and tries to chase her away, while she rails at him with curses against the capitalist system. The next day, an apologetic Marius appears at her doorstep, cans of paint in hand; the two soon become friendly, and a romance begins to bloom, though it quickly becomes obvious that Jeannette's romance novel fantasies are a bit off the mark from what Marius has in mind.

A movie crew invades a small town whose residents are all too ready to give up their values for showbiz glitz.

Magistrate Jeanne Charmant-Killman doggedly investigates CEO Michel Humeau, who is accused of participating in massive corporate malfeasance. As her investigation leads her into the upper echelons of government, Jeanne becomes intoxicated by the power she is amassing.

Xate is an ordinary woman from Midyat with eight children in tow. The only thing that sets her apart is her husband's job as Mayor of Midyat. Until, that is, an extraordinary day changes her life - and the lives of everyone else in Midyat. For the illiterate, uneducated Xate becomes Mayor of Midyat! While she takes on her mayoral duties much as she does those in her house, the infantile rivalry between her children in municipal matters leads to adventures that have the Midyat folk howling with laughter.

A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise, numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday... Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.

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...

The municipality of a small Breton village has decided to welcome a family of Ukrainian refugees. To their surprise, they receive Fayad family – coming from Syria. They thwart all the clichés that the French expected: they are friendly, refined, educated… So much so that, in this small, humming village, it is no longer clear which side the barbarians are on…

Sabri Lahlali, the assistant principal of a local high school, is ready to do anything to ensure that his son, who is about to take his high school diploma, has the ideal academic record. But he doesn't know how far his enterprise will take him.

A celebrity journalist, juggling her busy career and personal life, has her life over-turned by a freak car accident.

In a small French village, everything would be quiet if the local wildlife cop was not being ridiculed by a smart poacher.

Arnaud, a 25-year-old man, enters the campaign team of a candidate for the French presidential election as assistant to the Director of communication. While discovering the techniques, intricacies and rivalries of the electoral campaign, he will feel fascination for this world, as well as for its attractive director, Agnès.

The countryside isn't always as calm and peaceful as it's made out to be, and the animals on this farm are particularly agitated: a fox who mothers a family of chicks, a rabbit who plays the stork, and a duck who wants to be Santa Claus.

Although living a comfortable life in Salon-de-Provence, a charming town in the South of France, Julie has been feeling depressed for a while. To please her, Philippe Abrams, a post office administrator, her husband, tries to obtain a transfer to a seaside town, on the French Riviera, at any cost. The trouble is that he is caught red-handed while trying to scam an inspector. Philippe is immediately banished to the distant unheard of town of Bergues, in the Far North of France...

Marc Châtaigne, an intern at the Ministry of Standards, is sent to French Guiana to implement European construction standards at Guyaneige: the first Amazonian ski slope, intended to boost tourism in French Guiana. There, he meets Tarzan, an attractive intern at the National Forestry Office, with whom he’ll get lost on a journey through the jungle that will take him far, far away…

A former french President, Nicolas, decides to persuade another one, François, to campaign together in order to return to the front stage of politics.

In order to pay for the donkey that brings them water, a countryside village registers it as a teacher at its local school. But when the charity group that funds the school visits for an inspection, the village has to find ways to hide their secret.

The story of one shepherd's single-handed quest to re-forest a desolate valley in the foothills of the French Alps throughout the first half of the 20th century.

After a love affair ends badly, a young Parisian named Paul sinks into the same kind of deep depression that led his sister to kill herself. He moves back home with his father and aimless brother Jonathan but refuses to get out of bed.

French comedian Michel Colucci, better known as Coluche, announces - for laughs - his candidacy for the 1981 French presidential elections.

A young shepherdess and a chimneysweep plan to get married and escape the clutches of a tyrannical king in love with her, assisted by the guile of a cheeky mockingbird, the king's archenemy.

The heroic story of a dictator who risks his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.

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.

Sabine vows to give up married lovers, and is determined to find a good husband. Her best friend Clarisse introduces her to her cousin Edmond, a busy lawyer from Paris. Sabine pursues Edmond, with the encouragement of Clarisse, but Edmond does not seem very interested.

Cartman locks horns with his mom in a battle of wills while an epic conflict unfolds that threatens South Park’s very existence.

In the middle of a performance of the play "Le Cocu", a bad boulevard comedy at a Parisian theatre, Yannick gets up and interrupts the show to take the evening back in hand.

Two gay men living in St. Tropez have their lives turned upside down when the son of one of the men announces he is getting married. They try to conceal their lifestyle and their ownership of the drag club downstairs when the fiancée and her parents come for dinner.

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

Bahia Benmahmoud, a free-spirited young woman, has a particular way of seeing political engagement, as she doesn't hesitate to sleep with those who don't agree with her to convert them to her cause - which is a lot of people, as all right-leaning people are concerned. Generally, it works pretty well. Until the day she meets Arthur Martin, a discreet forty-something who doesn't like taking risks. She imagines that with a name like that, he's got to be slightly fascist. But names are deceitful and appearances deceiving.

At 73, a former President of the French Council reflects on his political career while writing his memoirs, delving into his relationships with key figures, including the one set to become the next President.

A failed 40 year old comedian wants to organize the first Black protests in France but meeting with other French celebrities of the Black community will make it a whole new adventure.

A drought has brought the town of South Park to the brink of disaster.

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.

Jean-Pierre Savelli is a forty-something employee of an insurance company in Clermont-Ferrand who finds himself facing a mid-life crisis. When his fiancée Valérie decides to put their relationship on hold, he changes his holiday plans and heads for the Flots Bleus camping site near Arcachon. Jean-Pierre had been hoping for peace and calm. Instead he meets Patrick Chirac and his entourage of inveterate holidaymakers...

Four separate stories deal with stereotypical ideas about Jews: their alleged influence on politics, the stereotype of Jewish business-mindedness, the Mossad, the Jewish world conspiracy and the memory of the Holocaust.

Filip buys an 8mm movie camera when his first child is born. Because it's the first camera in town, he's named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas.

The day after his funeral, the corpse of Varlam Aravidze, the mayor of a small Georgian town, turns up in his son's garden. Although it is secretly reburied, the corpse keeps returning until the police capture the local woman who is responsible. This woman says that Varlam should never be laid to rest since his Stalin-like reign of terror led to the disappearance of her family and friends.

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.

Antonio Barracano is a respected figure among the Neapolitan underworld, keeping order and administering justice according to his own criteria, beyond the law. One day he's faced with a dilemma after a youth asks him permission to kill his father.

Two unlikely companions must smuggle four suitcases filled with contraband pork across Nazi-occupied Paris.

Carole tries to save the life of her son who has been wrongfully sentenced to death in a rigged trial.

As she does every morning, Lucie takes advantage of her journey to work to lose herself for a while in the pages of a good book. And as she does every morning, she joins her colleagues at the office with a smile. It's a working day just like any other. Then suddenly all activity in the office stops. All attention is turned towards the window of the opposite building opposite and abanner reading: Man Alone. Is it a hoax? A cry for help? Everyone has his own interpretation, and will try, by any means possible, to discover what lies behind this mysterious message.

After ten years of doing nothing, Orel and Gringe are in their mid 30s and they struggle to finish their first rap album. Their texts are mostly sex jokes and booze stories and reflect the everyday life they have in a small town from France. The problem is that they never really finished a song and when their producers want to meet, they have to face a new challenge : finish their first song in the next 24h. Their old issues, the fear of failure, their alcoholic friends and annoying girlfriends won't help them to do so, or will they ?

Bruno is a former paper mill worker who has been unemployed for three years. Concluding that there is too much competition in his line of work, he decides to eliminate his competition permanently.

Dreams and reality collide as a young woman navigates a tumultuous relationship amid rising social tensions, protests and tragedies in Paris.

Isabelle, Parisian artist, divorced mother, is looking for love, true love, at last.

Ducobu is elected president of the school, much to Léonie and Latouche's despair!

In this radical and endearing black comedy, a group of retrenched female factory workers decide to pool their compensation money… and hire a hit man to liquidate their boss.

When Baldvin and Inga's next door neighbours complain that a tree in their backyard casts a shadow over their sundeck, what starts off as a typical spat between neighbours in the suburbs unexpectedly and violently spirals out of control.

Suburban soccer moms find themselves constantly competing against each other in their personal lives as their kids settle their differences on the field.

Samy moves from the underdeveloped crime-ridden French suburb to the riches of Neuilly.

Fred Bartel is the charismatic boss of a trendy Parisian communication agency, Happy Few. After a heated tax audit, he was forced by the administration to relocate overnight his company in La Courneuve. Fred and his team meet Samy, a young suburb who will quickly propose to teach them the rules and practices to adopt in this new environment.

François, a miserable football player, becomes a town hero after bringing victory in an extremely important game. He uses his fame for revenge on the team star for the previous mockeries.

Hong Kong action diva Maggie Cheung comes to France when a past-his-prime director casts her in a remake of the silent classic Les Vampires. Clad in a rubber catsuit and unable to speak a word of French, Cheung finds herself adrift in the insanity of the film industry…

When she arrived at the Elysée Palace, Bernadette Chirac expected to finally get the place she deserved, she who had always worked in the shadow of her husband to make him president. Put aside because she was considered too old-fashioned, Bernadette decided to take her revenge by becoming a major media figure.

France, present day. A professional conman passes himself off as the boss of a construction site building a highway extension. He cons the whole region, hires dozens of workers and cynically enjoys the profits of his scam until he meets the lady mayor of a small village that the road will go through. She intrigues and unsettles him, before revealing to him a world he never knew: feelings. How far will he go now to save his victims and save himself from his own lies?

David, a young farmer from Cantal, has just had an idea: to save his farm from bankruptcy, he is going to set up a cabaret on the farm. The show will be on stage and on the plate, with good local products. He is sure, it can only work. His relatives, his mother and especially his grandfather, are more skeptical.

A police chief in northern France tries to solve a case where an old woman was brutally murdered on Christmas Eve. However, in a neighborhood rife with crime, everyone seems to be a suspect.

Bloch, an Israeli secret agent, seeks refuge in the French embassy in Libya to escape being killed. Augier, his French opposite number, has to get him to safety in a diplomatic suitcase.

Set in France at the end of World War II Albert Dehousse finds out his father wasn't a war hero and his mother is a collaborator.

In a region that was once the flagship of the mining industry, two long-term unemployed men come up with the idea of building an "artisanal" amusement park on the site of a disused coal mine. By saving the mine and its memory, they will regain their strength and dignity.


