The best Josse De Pauw’s movies

Barents Sea, August 12th, 2000. During a Russian naval exercise, and after suffering a serious accident, the K-141 Kursk submarine sinks with 118 crew members on board. While the few sailors who are still alive barely manage to survive, their families push for accurate information and a British officer struggles to obtain from the Russian government a permit to attempt a rescue before it is late. But general incompetence are against all their efforts.

Colin, an ambitious young American businessman, has a deal with a potential client, a rich Arab sheikh who is a passionate pigeon fancier. The sheikh has tried several times to buy a champion pigeon, but the owner continues to stubbornly refuse his offer. In an attempt to gain the trust of the Sheikh, Colin offers him a deal: if he manages to convince the owner to sell the champion pigeon, the sheikh will agree to do business with Colin's company. But when Colin meets Jos, the grumpy owner of the pigeon, and Isabella, his granddaughter, he realizes that this mission will not be as easy as he had hoped.

Georges has Down syndrome, living at a mental-institution, Harry is a busy businessman, giving lectures for young aspiring salesmen. He is successful in his business life, but his social life is a disaster since his wife left him and took their two children with her. This weekend his children came by train to meet him, but Harry, working as always, forgot to pick them up. Neither his wife or his children want to see him again and he is driving around on the country roads, anguished and angry. He almost runs over Georges, on the run from the institution since everybody else went home with their parents except him, whose mother is dead. Harry tries to get rid of Georges but he won't leave his new friend. Eventually a special friendship forms between the two of them, a friendship which makes Harry a different person.

Desire torments a former cultist taking refuge at the home of a scantily clad woman whose husband is away.

Six months after losing her only child in the Southeast Asia tsunami, Jeanne is convinced she sees him in a film about orphans living in the jungles.

Patrick is the handyman on his father's naturist campsite. The remaining time he dedicates to his hobby, designing and creating wooden furniture. When Patrick loses his campsite hammer, his quest to retrieve it takes him to the farthest corners of the camping grounds.

Jean is a family man and factory worker who dreams of becoming a songwriter. Pinning his hopes on his teenage daughter, Marva, he takes her to singing contests in which the awkward and overweight girl struggles to belt out a tune. When Jean is suddenly fired because of cut backs, he is ashamed and even more desperate to have his daughter succeed. In a chance meeting Jean kidnaps the most famous pop star in the country and holds her hostage demanding to be heard by the music industry. Catching the attention of the media and the eyes of the nation, Jean and Marva realize that the show must go on until everyone is famous.

Four romantic and lighthearted stories set in the countryside from four Italian directors.

Amidst the impersonal hubbub of Paris' Orly Airport, strangers meet, secrets are revealed, and sudden intimacies develop in this beautifully observed mosaic of lives in transit.

Burned-out comedian Ralph Hartman suffers from severe anxiety and fears he's being passed over by younger comedians. But his biggest problem comes in the form of his imaginary alter ego: a bearded, high-pitched sadist who follows him everywhere he goes.

'Cargo' brings the raw story of three brothers who own a family business in the fishery and are trying to save it from destruction. The passion for their profession but also for their loved ones, however, drives them to desperate actions.

An isolated farmhouse is chosen as a hide-out by Jim and Charlie after an armed robbery. The Deleye family are forced to accept the situation under Jim's brutal domination. Badly wounded Charlie, a gentle character, takes Lisa's room but keeps her baby as hostage. As the local Police close in the family's unhappiness is uncovered and the tension in the house grows as the surrounding forest becomes a battleground for army exercises. Lisa and Charlie are soon making love, Hugo is killed by Jim and the stage is set for a final and bloody shootout.

A woman gets off a train by mistake and finds herself stranded alone with a peculiar man who doesn't even speak her language.

A group of friends in their early twenties re-consider their boring lives in a sleepy fishing village in the Netherlands.