Action! If there’s one word associated with cinema, the tension of movie sets, and the focus of attention, it’s this one. Action is very often at the heart of popular cinema: Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock hands in Safety Last! (1923), Cary Grant threatened and strafed by a plane in North by Northwest (1959), Franka Potente gasping for air in Run Lola Run (1998)... Westerns, swashbuckler films, martial arts or adventure flicks, thrillers, all these genres rely on action—sometimes frenetic, sometimes meticulously measured.
From movies by Sergei Eisenstein to Gilles Carle, from John Ford to John Boorman and Werner Herzog, via Paul Verhoeven, Kathryn Bigelow, Park Chan-wook, Érik Canuel, and Nicolas Winding Refn, this series will take you through the full range of emotions, from laughter to thrills, from fear to satisfaction.
Winner of the Best Actress Award for Anne Parillaud, 1991 César Awards
A young woman, who is addicted to drugs and prone to violence, is taken in by the state secret service and will undergo three years of training before being assigned her first mission.
Luc Besson
Luc Besson is a French director, producer, and screenwriter, known for creating around twenty feature films, eight of which are among the 100 highest-grossing French films worldwide. He gained recognition with his early works, Le dernier combat (1983) and Subway (1985), and achieved box office success with The Big Blue (1988), which sold over 9 million tickets and brought him international exposure. He continued his success with films such as Nikita (1990), Léon: The Professional (1994), The Fifth Element (1997), for which he won the César Award for Best Director, and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999). He also wrote three successful film series that did well internationally: Taxi, Taken, and The Transporter. He achieved another international success with Lucy (2014), which became the highest-grossing French film worldwide. The following year, at the 40th César Awards, he was honored with an exceptional gold medal by the Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques for his "exceptional artistic and entrepreneurial contribution to French cinema over three decades."
