The best Josiane Balasko’s drama movies

Alexandre lives in Lyon with his wife and children. One day, he discovered by chance that the priest who abused him to scouts always officiates with children. He then starts a fight, quickly joined by François and Emmanuel, also victims of the priest, to "release their word" on what they suffered.

A quiet and inconspicuous man rents an apartment in France where the previous tenant committed suicide, and begins to suspect his landlord and neighbors are trying to subtly change him into the last tenant so that he too will kill himself.

Paloma is a serious and highly articulate but deeply bored 11-year-old who has decided to kill herself on her 12th birthday. Fascinated by art and philosophy, she questions and documents her life and immediate circle, drawing trenchant and often hilarious observations on the world around her. But as her appointment with death approaches, Paloma finally meets some kindred spirits in her building's grumpy janitor and an enigmatic, elegant neighbor, both of whom inspire Paloma to question her rather pessimistic outlook on life.

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.

February 1976. Somalian rebels hijack a school bus carrying 21 French children and their teacher in Djibouti City. When the terrorists drive it to a no-man’s-land on the border between Somalia and French territory, the French Government sends out a newly formed elite squad to rescue the hostages. Within a few hours, the highly trained team arrives to the crisis area, where the Somalian National Army has taken position behind the barbed wire on the border. The French unit is left with very few options to rescue the hostages. As the volatile situation unravels, the French men quickly come up with a daring plan: carry out a simultaneous 5 men sniper attack to get the children and the teacher out safely. A true story.

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

The story revolves around 22-year-old Laure, who is trying to find her feet. After performing brilliantly in her literature studies, she enrols as a communications officer in the Naval Fusiliers. She will quickly have to adapt to and assimilate the rules that apply within the institution. But Laure is a determined woman, and she has a thirst for knowledge – still. A thirst to learn to get to know and be comfortable with herself, and to find her place.

Sami, Tacchini, Yaya and Kader are four small-time crooks from the suburbs of Paris. After a failed robbery, their boss, Carlito, sends them to Canada to spy on his fiancée. There, they are mistaken for a band of professional killers and are hired to assassinate the heiress Léonore de Segonzac...

Helene, a pill-addicted anesthesiologist, is mourning the death of her boyfriend when, through a car accident she causes, she chances to meet the lethargic Gilles, a young man who lives for free at his mother's hotel. Gilles pursues Helene romantically, and she eventually softens up. Gilles, however, is also devoted to Bernard, a petty crook who revels in mugging gay men. All three struggle with relationships that seem to be going nowhere.

A car dealer, well-to-do and with a beautiful wife, finds himself attracted to his rather plain new temporary secretary. Despite her own commitments she feels the same and the two soon embark on an affair. Though it would seem it has happened before his wife finds this particular entanglement of her husband's very difficult to accept.

When Nénette (Josiane Balasko) discovers the identity of her father in a letter, she quickly goes off in search of him. But instead of finding her father, she is met by her half-brother, Paul (Michel Blanc). Paul, a bitter man who gave up his dream to take over his father’s pharmacy business, is less than thrilled at the arrival of his ‘embarrassing’ half-sister. After refusing to take her in, he soon gets a taste of his own medicine. Under the influence of a potent drug, for one day Paul is generous, happy and sensitive. The next morning, however, once the drug has worn off, his nasty side comes back...

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.

A strange investigation doesn’t erase the regrets of a grieving woman cop. Every four years, the past catches up with her. Every four years this woman is very afraid. Her fear is such that she feels it could kill her because in her dreams reality begins.

Three days in the lives of six friends who are nearly 30 years old, live in Grenoble, and have a rock band called the "Why Notes?". They're to play in Paris at Charles's school reunion. In getting to Paris and back, the characters interact with Aimee's ex-husband and her abrasive, cruel ex-mentor, Louise's would-be lover who turns out to have a husband, Mickey's long-time lover and her children, Bertrand's Germanic wife and their children who speak no French, and Frederic's distant mother. The band also meets Clara, a mercurial free spirit who beguiles Bertrand, then Mickey, then takes up with someone else in the band.

Two brothers are fighting for a one girl attention...

French filmmaker Claude Miller's This Sweet Sickness is based on a suspense novel by Patricia Highsmith, of Strangers on a Train fame. In the original, the murder-protagonist was a psychotic, pure and simple (if such words are appropriate here!) In Miller's version, the "hero," David, is a pathetic creature, motivated by humiliation and sexual inadequacy; thus the emphasis is not on his heinous crimes but on his warped personality. The director's noirish decision to stage much of the action in the dark, or the rain, or both, is a function of David's deep depression. As in his other films, Miller uses water as an omen of evil; you've seldom seen a more foreboding swimming pool than the one in This Sweet Sickness. The film was originally released as Dites-lui que je l'aime.

For the "story of the month," Coline, a contributor to a women's magazine, is sent deep into the Pyrenees to interview Simon, a rather wild artist who claims his mother appeared to him at the precise moment she died. Coline is particularly intrigued since her beautiful neighbor Azar insists the same thing happened with her father! On the night they meet, Simon attempts to seduce Coline, who resists but falls in love...