Time RegainedMovies like Time Regained
- Key Features:
- Memory, Existentialism, Mortality, Reminiscence, Autobiographical, Period piece, Early 20th century, France, Introspection, Melancholy, Philosophical, Character study, Death and dying, Literary adaptation, Artistic, Cerebral
- Tone:
- poetic, serious, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Literary enthusiasts, Art house aficionados, Introspective viewers, Intellectuals
- Emotional Arc:
- Nostalgia → Reflection
Time Regained

In early 1920s France, an author, lying on his deathbed, looks at various photographs and is flooded with memories of the people and events that have shaped his life.
Time Regained
Recovering from an attempted suicide, a man is selected to participate in a time travel experiment that has only been tested on mice. A malfunction in the experiment causes the man to experience moments from his past in a random order.

In the seaside town of Boulogne, no one seems to be able to cope with their past, least of all Hélène, an antique furniture saleswoman, her stepson Bernard, and her former lover Alphonse.

Victor, a disillusioned 60-something whose marriage is on the rocks, opts to relive the week of his life when, 40 years earlier, he met his true love through a company that allows customers to return to the time period of their choosing.

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.

The lives of the residents of a small French town are changed when thousands of the recently dead inexplicably come back to life and try to integrate themselves into society that has changed for them.

The mind of Pierre Bérard, a successful middle-aged architect, is torn between his unstable present with Hélène, his younger lover, and his happy memories of the past with Catherine, his ex-wife; but his true destiny awaits him at a crossroads on his way to Rennes…

A Russian poet, Andrei and his interpreter, Eugenia travel to Italy to research the life of an 18th-century composer.

Leo Bernardi is a successful and acclaimed Italian director. He’s approaching the end of his career but he cannot accept his slow decline. He has just finished shooting his last movie and he’s deeply sad. The movie is inspired by the novel about Casanova written by Arthur Schnitzler, a character so similar to the director, even more than he could imagine. Schnitzler’s Casanova is aged, glory days are over: he lost his charm and his attraction to women, he’s broke and no more eager to travel through Europe. After a long exile, he just wants to go back to Venice, his homeland. While traveling home Casanova meets a girl, Marcolina. She reawakens his desire, lost for years. So, he tries to seduce her but that leads him to a tragic understanding: he’s an old man now. It’s not by chance that Leo Bernardi decided to tell this story right now, in a pivotal moment of his life and career. The destiny of both Casanova and his director leads them to a final confrontation.

Lucien de Rubempré, a young, lower-class poet, leaves his family's printing house for Paris. Soon, he learns the dark side of the arts business as he tries to stay true to his dreams.

Free adaptation of Machado de Assis' classic. The narrator is a rich dead man, who tells us about his life and times, making fun of both.

Paul reflects on the summer he met Angèle and Frédéric as he watches his friend being laid to rest.

Famous writer Alexander contracts a terminal illness. He receives a letter from his wife describing a summer day 30 years ago, and leaves his seaside home to remember his past. This journey will allow him to wander between the past and the present, and encounter unexpected people, allowing him to collect unforgettable memories in the final moments of his life.

After the death of a septuagenarian woman, her three children deliberate over what to do with her estate.

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

An 18th century poet travels through time in search of divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he has a series of enigmatic encounters with symbolic phantoms with whom he muses about the nature of art and his own career. Ultimately, the poet strives to achieve his rebirth as a celestial being.

Panic attacks and memory loss signal the plight of a writer whose body is inexplicably being taken over by another woman.

20-year-old Margaux makes the acquaintance of 45-year-old Margaux: they have a lot in common – so much so that it turns out they are one and the same person, at two different ages and stages of their life…

In the last days of the Nazi-occupied France, writer Marguerite Duras awaits the return of her husband, Robert Antelme, arrested for being a Resistance fighter and then deported, while she maintains a tense relationship with her ambiguous lover and a dangerous game with a French collaborationist. Even when the Liberation arrives, she must still endure the unbearable pain of waiting.

Born under unusual circumstances, Benjamin Button springs into being as an elderly man in a New Orleans nursing home and ages in reverse. Twelve years after his birth, he meets Daisy, a child who flits in and out of his life as she grows up to be a dancer. Though he has all sorts of unusual adventures over the course of his life, it is his relationship with Daisy, and the hope that they will come together at the right time, that drives Benjamin forward.

In a strange and isolated chateau, a man becomes acquainted with a woman and insists that they have met before.

When Colonel Chabert returns from the war, he discovers that he has lost everything.

Following the death of his wife, a renowned musician ostracises himself from the outer world and dedicates his life to music. However, his life changes when a young man approaches him to learn music.

Pierre, a professional dancer, suffers from a serious heart disease. While he is waiting for a transplant which may (or may not) save his life, he has nothing better to do than look at the people around him, from the balcony of his Paris apartment.

Young writer Richard Collier is met on the opening night of his first play by an old lady who begs him to "Come back to me". Mystified, he tries to find out about her, and learns that she is a famous stage actress from the early twentieth century. Becoming more and more obsessed with her, by self-hypnosis he manages to travel back in time—where he meets her.

After a global neurological epidemic, those who remain search for meaning and connection in a world without memory. Five interwoven stories each explore a different facet of life without memory in a future that has no past.

A man confronts his past during an experiment that attempts to find a solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world caused by a world war.

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

Five long-term pals confront ageing and mortality as they enjoy their last weeks together before taking different paths.

A female lawyer travels back in time and crosses paths with other women in history who fought for women's rights.

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

It took Anna 10 years to recover from the death of her husband, Sean, but now she's on the verge of marrying her boyfriend, Joseph, and finally moving on. However, on the night of her engagement party, a young boy named Sean turns up, saying he is her dead husband reincarnated. At first she ignores the child, but his knowledge of her former husband's life is uncanny, leading her to believe that he might be telling the truth.

Louis, a terminally ill writer, returns home after a long absence to tell his family that he is dying.

While on a trip to Paris with his fiancée's family, a nostalgic screenwriter finds himself mysteriously going back to the 1920s every day at midnight.

An exiled filmmaker finally returns to his home country where former mysteries and afflictions of his early life come back to haunt him once more.

Aging painter Louis and his wife Michelle struggle to cope with Louis' advancing dementia.

On the eve of his 78th birthday, the ailing, alcoholic writer Clive Langham spends a painful and sleepless night mentally composing and recomposing scenes for a novel in which characters based on his own family are shaped by his fantasies and memories, alongside his caustic commentary on their behaviour.

When the fun loving Marie sets her eyes on brooding comic book artist Paul, it sets off the kind of romantic sparks that quickly culminate in the bedroom. But the next morning brings its share of surprises as Marie crawls out of bed to discover her life flash-forwarded fifteen years down the road: Not only has she been married to Paul all this time, but she’s now the mother of a little boy the head of a powerful multinational investment firm and the proprietor of a fabulous apartment overlooking the Eiffel Tower. Quickly Marie discovers that all her achievements have not brought happiness.

With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a hand-written letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person responsible for the death of his family.

Romain, 31, a fashion photographer with terminal cancer, elects to die alone, preparing others to live past him rather than prolong the inevitable with chemotherapy or be smothered in sympathy by those who know him.

True story of the lifelong romance between novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, from their student days through her battle with Alzheimer's disease.

80-year-old Thomas recounts his childhood and middle age through a series of flashbacks and dream sequences. Thomas believes he’s been taken away from a better life at birth; following a hospital fire, he vividly recalls being swapped with another new-born, and subsequently grows up in a poorer neighbouring household.

They knew each other long ago: a man and a woman whose dazzling and unexpected romance captured in the now-iconic film revolutionized our understanding of love. Today, the former race car driver seems lost in the pathways of his memory. In order to help him, his son seeks out the woman his father wasn’t able to cherish but whom he constantly revisits in his thoughts and dreams. Anne reunites with Jean-Louis and their story picks up where they left it…

Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made.

A veteran actress comes face-to-face with an uncomfortable reflection of herself when she agrees to take part in a revival of the play that launched her career 20 years earlier.

Since his wife's death, Andrew Blake is depressed. In an ultimate impetus, he leaves London to go back to France, in the house he met her. This journey through happy days memories won't go as planned.

Three months after surviving a terrorist attack in a bistro, Mia is still traumatized and unable to recall the events of that night. In an effort to move forward, she investigates her memories and retraces her steps.

Twenty-three years old Romain would like to be a writer, but, for the moment, he's night watchman in a hotel. His sixty-two years old father is retired and seems to not give a damn about anything. He shares an apartment with a twenty-four-year-old guy whose sole purpose in life is to seduce a woman, no matter who, and no matter the cost. His eighty-five years old grandmother is living in an old people's home, and she wonders what on earth she is doing with stuck with all these old people. One day, Romain's father turns up in a fluster. His grandmother has disappeared. In fact, she kind of escaped. Romain sets out to find her, somewhere in his memories.

Just as the disheveled and alcoholic filmmaker Ismaël embarks on a difficult new film project, his life is sent into a tailspin. His wife Carlotta, presumed dead for 20 years, come crashing back into his life creating chaos in his work and his current romantic relationship with the starry-eyed astronomer Sylvia.

As Constance (Natasha Richardson) and Nina (Toni Collette) gather at the deathbed of their mother, Ann (Vanessa Redgrave), they learn for the first time that their mother lived an entire other lifetime during one evening 50 years ago. In vivid flashbacks, the young Ann (Claire Daines) spends one night with a man named Harris (Patrick Wilson), who was the love of her life.

Newly divorced lawyer Nathan Del Amico is shaken up after he meets a doctor who claims that he can sense when select people are about to die. Though he doesn't believe the doctor, events in Nathan's life slowly make him think he's not long for this world.

After losing her mother in a car accident that leaves her with a broken arm, 4-year-old Ponette struggles with anguish and fear. Left by her father with a caring aunt and her children, Ponette grieves, secretly hoping her mother will somehow come back. Confused by the religious explanations provided by adults, and challenged by the cruel taunts of a few children at school, little Ponette must make her way through her emotional turmoil.

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?

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

Lui, a struggling author with a heart condition, and his wife Elle, a retired psychiatrist, find their idyllic life shattered when Elle begins to succumb to the effects of dementia.

An aging woman and her nurse develop a friendship that inspires her to unearth unacknowledged longing and thus help her make peace with her past.

August 1715. After going for a walk, Louis XIV feels a pain in his leg. The next days, the king keeps fulfilling his duties and obligations, but his sleep is troubled and he has a serious fever. He barely eats and weakens increasingly. This is the start of the slow agony of the greatest king of France, surrounded by his relatives and doctors.

A successful writer of children's books, Stephen Lewis is confronted with the unthinkable—he loses his only child, four-year-old Kate, in a supermarket. In one horrifying moment that replays itself over the years that follow, Stephen realises his daughter is gone. Kate's absence sets Stephen and his wife on diverging paths as both struggle with an all-consuming grief.

Born out of wedlock early in the last century, Violette Leduc meets Simone de Beauvoir in postwar Saint-Germain-des-Près. An intense lifelong relationship develops between the two women authors, based on Violette's quest for freedom through writing and on Simone's conviction that she holds in her hands the destiny of an extraordinary writer.

Paris 2052. Julia, 80 years old, had a fulfilled life. On her birthday, she reflects on the decisions and circumstances that could have led her on different paths. From the age of 17 to this day, her life was full of small but critical moments. Each was a turning point with dramatic consequences. What would have happened if she had forgotten her passport, chosen a different line at the store, driven the scooter this one time...? Is her life a succession of coincidences and accidents or a ready-made path?

As Dominique Marceau is being tried for the murder of Gilbert Tellier, accounts by different witnesses paint a picture of the kind of relationship the two used to share.

A group of friends gathers for a birthday by the sea, only to face the looming possibility of the world ending within hours, transforming one fleeting, endless night into a life-altering experience.

After reading an article about hypnotic regression, a woman whose maternal grandfather died when she was only three years old contacts the hypnotic subject named in the article believing that he is the reincarnation of her grandfather, and hoping that she can learn the truth about how he died.

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.

The story of a long-lost book that mysteriously reappears and connects an old man searching for his son with a girl seeking a cure for her mother's loneliness.

A man, Milan steps off a train, into a small French village. As he waits for the day when he will rob the town bank, he runs into an old retired poetry teacher named M. Manesquier. The two men strike up a strange friendship and explore the road not taken, each wanting to live the other's life.

A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.

A scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they slow his aging process.

In the carefree days before World War I, introverted Austrian author Jules strikes up a friendship with the exuberant Frenchman Jim and both men fall for the impulsive and beautiful Catherine.

In a small town in post-WWII France, 16-year-old Janine tries to improve her conditions by any means necessary. Three people—Michel, a married lover; Raoul, a fellow thief; Mauricette, a photographer she meets in prison—will help her learn from her mistakes.

Mathieu lives in Paris, Alice in a small seaside resort in Western France. He is a famous actor, about to turn fifty. She is a piano teacher in her forties. They were in love fifteen years ago, then separated. Time has passed. They each went their ways and slowly healed. When Mathieu goes try to overcome his melancholia in a thermal spa, he stumbles upon Alice.

A writer leaves his upper-class life and journeys with a woman claiming to be his sister, and her two friends.

Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French fashion bible Elle magazine, has a devastating stroke at age 43. The damage to his brain stem results in locked-in syndrome, with which he is almost completely paralyzed and only able to communicate by blinking an eye. Bauby painstakingly dictates his memoir via the only means of expression left to him.

In 1920, Major Dellaplane, a man of honor and ethics, searches for missing French soldiers. He meets Madame Irène de Courtil, a politically connected Parisian, and their paths cross.

February 1927. The funeral of Marcel Péricourt, the most powerful banker in Paris. His daughter Madeleine must take the helm of the financial empire of which she is the heiress. But she has a son, Paul, who with an unexpected and tragic gesture will place her on the path to ruin.

Nelly leaves her lazy, unemployed husband to work for retired judge Mr Arnaud, forty years her senior, after he offers to clear her bills for her. While she types his memoirs the two develop a close friendship, but Arnaud becomes jealous when Nelly begins dating his good-looking young publisher.

Camille was only sixteen and still in high school when she fell in love with Eric, another student. They later married and a child and were happy for a while. But now twenty-five years have passed and Eric leaves her for a younger woman. Bitter and desperate Camille drinks so much liquor at a New Year Eve's party that she falls into an ethylic coma and she finds herself... propelled into her own past! Camille is sixteen again when she wakes up this morning, her parents are not dead anymore and she must go to school, where she will meet her schoolmates and, of course, Eric. Is she going to fall for him again and... be miserable twenty-five years later? Or will she avoid him with the result never having her beloved daughter? Who ever said that time traveling was fun?

A story of two famous actors who used to be a couple. They reunite after the son's death and receive a letter asking them to visit five places at Death Valley, which will make the son reappear.

A young woman's life spirals into chaos after she is involved in a hit-and-run accident. Then she encounters a mysterious man named Evian who offers her an opportunity for redemption. Narrated by a fish.

An autobiographical film based on Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's memories of his youth growing up in Taiwan after emigrating from mainland China.

Women enter and exit a science fiction author's life over the course of a few years after the author loses the woman he considers his one true love.

A restless photographer leaves her family to "find herself" and takes up deep-sea diving.

Michel Mortez travels around France hosting a radio game show he created 25 years ago. He is famous among the average Frenchmen. Rivetot, his assistant and technician, always goes with him. He is the only one who knows what really lies under Mortez's appearance of a playful don Juan. When the program is canceled, Rivetot delays telling Mortez as long as possible... Both malicious and tender, this bitter comedy also shows nostalgia.

When her elderly father has a stroke, Emmanuelle rushes to his bedside. Sick and half-paralysed in his hospital bed, he asks Emmanuelle to help him end his life.

Simon is an experienced doctor who rubs shoulders with death on a daily basis as part of his job in an intensive care unit. Like any good professional, he has learnt to shield himself from it. But when his mother is hospitalised in a nearby unit, and is in a critical condition, his private life and professional life clash spectacularly. Simon’s whole world, and all his certainties and beliefs, are shaken to the core – even to the extent of re-evaluating his career...

After his impetuous musician girlfriend, Samantha, dies in an accident shortly after they had a fight (and nearly broke up), Ian Wyndham, a grief-stricken British businessman living in London gets a chance to relive the day all over again, in the hope of changing the events that led up to her getting killed.

A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly, they reveal themselves to each other, finding that they have something deeply in common.

Nine years later, Jesse travels across Europe giving readings from a book he wrote about the night he spent in Vienna with Celine. After his reading in Paris, Celine finds him, and they spend part of the day together before Jesse has to again leave for a flight. They are both in relationships now, and Jesse has a son, but as their strong feelings for each other start to return, both confess a longing for more.

The day she turns 40, Marguerite Flora, a successful rep for a nuclear power company, begins receiving letters she'd sent to herself at age seven. The letters tell her what to do if her life hasn't turned out the way she thought it should, when she was living in poverty with her mother and brother in a small village in southern France. She decides to go back to her birthplace to get the lawyer to stop the letters, but also to visit her childhood sweetheart and her long-forgotten brother, in order to find peace within herself.

A service which creates holographic projections of late family members allows an elderly woman to spend time with a younger version of her deceased husband.

A man becomes haunted by his past and is presented with a mysterious legacy that causes him to re-think his current situation in life.

An old Parisian bistro with eternal charm. Eight gentlemen at the table, eight great figures. They were the “kings of Paris”… National treasures, masterpieces in peril. A well-honed ritual ... A sense of humor and self-deprecation intact. Tenderness and cruelty. Eight old friends who hate and love each other. And suddenly an intruder ...

A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.

A devoted father working in film shares a magical bond with his daughter, but as she enters adolescence and falls into addiction, he takes her to Paris in a final effort to save her and their fading connection.

Poor Benjamin gets stuck in a time-loop while on detention with his high-school crush.

After 29-year-old Adaline recovers from a nearly lethal accident, she inexplicably stops growing older. As the years stretch on and on, Adaline keeps her secret to herself until she meets a man who changes her life.

The chilling story of a young American boy living in France in 1918 whose father is working for the US government on the creation of the Treaty of Versailles. What he witnesses helps to mold his beliefs – and we witness the birth of a terrifying ego.

A seven-hour epic adaptation of the novel by Leo Tolstoy. The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.


