Movies by Simon Abkarian

Casino Royale

Casino Royale

Le Chiffre, a banker to the world's terrorists, is scheduled to participate in a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro, where he intends to use his winnings to establish his financial grip on the terrorist market. M sends Bond—on his maiden mission as a 00 Agent—to attend this game and prevent Le Chiffre from winning. With the help of Vesper Lynd and Felix Leiter, Bond enters the most important poker game in his already dangerous career.

Restless

Restless

After going to extremes to cover up an accident, a corrupt cop's life spirals out of control when he starts receiving threats from a mysterious witness.

Overdrive

Overdrive

Master car thieves square off against French gangsters in the South of France with money, women and lives all on the line.

Persepolis

Persepolis

In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.

Secrets of State

Secrets of State

In France, terrorist groups and intelligence agencies battle in a merciless war everyday, in the name of radically opposed ideologies. Yet, terrorist and secret agents lead almost the same lives. Condemned to secrecy, these masters of manipulation follow the same methods. Alex and Al Barad are two of them. The former is the head of the D.G.S.E.'s (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the French equivalent of the CIA or the MI6) counter-terrorism unit while the latter reigns over a terrorist network, and both fight using the most rut...

To Take A Wife

To Take A Wife

The story takes place in Haifa, Israel, in 1979, during three days before the Shabbat. A young woman trying to raise three children, work from home, and observe the strict Moroccan traditions of her family finds herself at constant odds with her husband and her brothers, who want her to stay married and leave behind the notions of being loved and free.

Armenia

Armenia

This is a story about returning to ones ancestral homeland. Anna is a cardiologist who discovers her father has fled to his native Armenia after being diagnosed with a heart problem. Despite their contentious relationship, she sets out to bring her father back for this operation. Anna is a tough-minded, headstrong woman with little feeling for her fathers homeland or patience with its politics and socially intrusive culture, yet she finds this journey not only a reunion of sorts, but one of reconciliation as well.

Rebels

Rebels

Sandra, a young woman forced to leave the south of France to flee a violent husband. Without attachment, she returned to Boulogne-sur-Mer, the city of her childhood which she left almost 15 years ago. She finds her mother there and a world she left behind. Without money, she is hired in a fish cannery where she befriends two workers. But one day, one of her colleagues tackles her insistently, she defends herself and kills him accidentally.

Someone, Somewhere

Someone, Somewhere

Rémy and Mélanie live next door to each other in Paris but have never met. The two thirty-year-old Parisians search for connections online, but never have much success. Falling deeper into loneliness and depression, both decide to start attending regular therapy. With the help of their therapists, they uncover the real roots of their issues, and find that the connection they were both searching for is much closer than they thought.

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

The trial story of Viviane Amsalem's five year fight to obtain her divorce in front of the only legal authority competent for divorce cases in Israel, the Rabbinical Court.

Lila Lili

Lila Lili

Micheline, who is pregnant, lives in a home for women from which she tries to observe the world with calm and serenity. Among other women of the home who are also pregnant the frequently asked question is whether they will keep their baby or not.

Les Damnés de la Commune

Les Damnés de la Commune

Black Notebooks

Black Notebooks

With this two-part feature documentary, Shlomi Elkabetz shares a poignant love letter to his sister, the late actress and director Ronit Elkabetz, and delivers a rare cinematic experience.

Off-Season

Off-Season

A seaside resort in the middle of winter, with its abandoned beach bars and rain-battered alleys, can easily flank the drone. Refugees on the top floor of a building in La Grande Motte, Carole and Richard Lazure have zero morale: swindled by their tax advisor and badly defended by an incompetent lawyer, they lost their business, their house and no longer even enough to buy the essentials. The eruption into their life of a childhood friend of Richard, a talkative talker with questionable dating, could be a game-changer - or make their situati...

The Cut

The Cut

In 1915 a man survives the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, but loses his family, speech and faith. One night he learns that his twin daughters may be alive, and goes on a quest to find them.

Colt 45

Colt 45

Vincent Miles, a gunsmith and shooting instructor at the National Police, is an expert in combat shooting who stubbornly refuses to join a field brigade, a choice which their colleagues do not understand. When he meets Milo Cardena, a mysterious and skilled cop, his life changes in such way that he cannot ignore his true nature anymore.

1915

1915

Exactly 100 years after the Armenian Genocide, a theatre director stages a play to bring the ghosts of the past back to life.

The Sonata

The Sonata

After a gifted musician inherits a mansion after her long lost father dies under mysterious circumstances, she discovers his last musical masterpiece riddled with cryptic symbols that unravels an evil secret, triggering dark forces that reach beyond her imagination.

Le Poisson rouge

Le Poisson rouge

Comme une ombre

Comme une ombre