Dreams and displaced reality - sometimes brightly coloured, sometimes eerily dark - as a connection between the Far East and France is not often found in cinema. All the more reason for viewers to take the opportunity in May to indulge in two exceptionally beautiful examples of this mixture. On the one hand, there is the French animated film "Little Amélie or the Character of Rain", which tells the story of a Belgian toddler in Japan and reflects on it at the same time. On the other hand, Chinese author and director Bi Gan offers his audience an immersive dream world with "Resurrection", which was honoured at the Cannes Film Festival. And the Franco-German broadcaster arte brings viewers back down to earth with the six-part drama series "Etty".
© Piece of Magic Entertainment BV
"At the age of 3, you see everything but understand nothing." Only in retrospect do connections, perhaps even explanations, emerge. The animated film "Little Amélie or the Character of Rain" tells the story of the evolution of its unusual heroine from her own personal perspective. This is all the more exciting as she lives with her Belgian family in Japan in the late 1960s.
What looks like a genuine Ghibli production was skilfully drawn in France and brought to life so lovingly that it was nominated for an Oscar this year.
© 2025 Maybe Movies, Ikki Films, 2 Minutes, France 3 Cinéma, Puffin Pictures, 22D Music
Amélie Nothomb
The whimsical story of little Amélie is based on the life of Belgian author Amélie Nothomb, which she captured in the novel "Metaphysics of Tubes", published in 2000. Nothomb, born Fabienne-Claire in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1966 or, by her own account, Amélie in Kobe, Japan, in 1967, has written a novel (almost) every year since 1992. She often uses her own biography in them, for example in "The Japanese Fiancé" (2007) or "The Art of Drinking Champagne" (2014). In "The Belgian Consul", she recounts the exciting diplomatic life of her father Patrick in diary form.
Film genre: Drama, Animation
Length: 78 minutes
Director: Mailys Vallade, Liane-Cho Han
With: -
Age rating: o.A.
Distributed by: Piece of Magic Entertainment
Start: 11.6.2016
© Plaion Pictures
Everything begins and ends in the cinema. In between, the life and dream of a woman unwinds on the big screen. "Resurrection" is a Chinese-French film epic without logic, but with plenty of symbolism, sensuality and immense visual value. Visually reminiscent of the silent films of Louis Lumière ("The Watered Gardener", 1895) and F.W. Murnau ("Nosferatu", 1922), but also inspired by the surrealism of David Lynch ("Wild at Heart", 1990), "Resurrection" follows a stream of consciousness à la James Joyes' novel "Ulysses".
© 2025 Dangmai - CG Cinema - Arte France Cinema
Bi Gan
Bi Gan credits Andrei Tarkovsky's classic drama "Stalker" (1979) as the initial spark for his film career. Born in 1989 in the Chinese province of Guizhou, he studied literature and film, but it was only through Tarkovsky that he understood how to combine the two. His feature film debut "Kaili Blues" won national awards and international attention in 2016. His second film, the thriller "Long Day's Journey Into the Night", premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018. His dream thriller epic "Resurrection" screened in competition in 2025 and was honoured with the Jury Prize.
Film genre: Drama, Thriller
Length: 160 minutes
Director: Bi Gan
With: Jackson Yee, Shu Qi, Mark Chao, Li Gengxi, Jue Huang, Yan Nan
Age rating: 16+
Distributed by: Plaion Pictures
Release date: 25.6.2026
reiner Bajo
Less well known than the diaries of Anne Frank are those of Esther "Etty" Hillesum, written at the same time in the same city. She completed her law degree shortly before the German occupation and began writing diaries on the advice of her psychotherapist. In it, she describes in detail the increasingly anti-Semitic atmosphere in the city and her personal confrontation with the Jewish religion. Israeli director Hagai Levi - author of the series "In Treatment" and "The Affair", among others - has adapted these notes into a six-part film set in the present day - which works terrifyingly well.
Genre: Biography Drama
Length: 6 episodes of 50 minutes each
Developer/Director: Hagai Levi
With: Julia Windischbauer, Sebastian Koch, Claire Bender, Gijs Naber, Leopold Witte
Age rating: o.A.
Streaming: arte.tv and ARTE
From: 13.5. and 21.5.
© Painbucket Games
Tanks and firearms are usually used in action games to put a stop to Nazis. Not so in "The Darkest Files", which recently won the German Computer Game Award. The game is about real cases that prosecutor Esther Katz investigates in the 1950s. With the help of files and witnesses, the aim is to track down Nazi criminals and bring them to trial before a German court against official resistance. Esther Katz is modelled on the legendary Attorney General Fritz Bauer.
Type: Detective game
Developer: Paintbucket Games
For: Windows, Xbox X/S, PS5
Address: paintbucket.com/projects/the-darkest-files
